I went up the stairs and turned left. Merrick must have been in the lav when she'd rung because he was back in Personnel when I got there. Twenty-four, medium height, brown hair, blue eyes, heavy spectacle frames, recent scar left hand. 'A slight accident,' Egerton had told me. There were a few other people in the room and Merrick's desk was near the door. A girl in a lemon blouse looked in and said:

'Oh there you are. Visitor for you in the hall.'

He'd seen me and said: 'Yes, he's here, thank you.'

She gave me a pert blink. 'Well that was quick.'

Someone on a phone was saying: 'If I were you I'd put Mrs Pymm on to it — she'll sort it out if anyone can.'

'Where do we talk?' I asked Merrick.

'I'm not quite sure.' He was standing behind the desk, his long fingers shifting some papers to no purpose, his slightly magnified eyes watching me nervously.

'Come on, then.'

'Yes.' He followed me out, catching his foot against something. 'I think there's one of the under-secretaries at a conference this afternoon, so I suppose we could use his room. It's just along here.'

I sensed him watching me obliquely so I said: 'Worst bloody winter since '47.'

He worked it out as quickly as he could and then took it straight from the book. 'In my paper it said since 1939.'

'You mean '39?'

'Oh. Yes.' By the tone of his voice he was kicking himself.

It wasn't important, here and now; but as the years go by you learn to worry less about the mistakes you've made and more about what would have happened if the circumstances had made them important. The code introduction for 5th to 12th was to throw in a random two-digit number and listen for one below and two above, the same thing in London, Rio or Hong Kong, wherever you were and whatever you were doing, it made the whole thing simple. He'd put in the circumspect '19' from sheer nerves.