“That’s why you’re still here,” Jackson said. “I’ll check her out.”

“Take it easy,” Chavasse told him. “Send Lucy to the corner shop and she can have a look on the way. Less obvious.”

“Leave it with me,” Jackson said. “Are we going out?”

“Well, I need to eat. Let’s make it The Garrick. I’ll be ready at seven.”

He shaved first, an old habit, showered afterwards, then towelled himself vigorously. He paused to touch the scar of the bullet wound on the left shoulder, then ran his finger across a similar scar on his chest on the right side with the six-inch line below it where a very dangerous young woman had tried to gut him with a knife more years ago than he cared to remember.

He slipped the towel around his waist and combed his hair, white at the temples now but still dark, though not as dark as the eyes in a handsome, rather aristocratic face. The high cheekbones were a legacy of his Breton father, the slightly world-weary look of a man who had seen too much of the dark side of life.

“Still, not bad for sixty-five, old stick,” he said softly. “Only what comes now? D day tomorrow!”

It was his private and not very funny joke, for the D stood for disposal and on the following day he was retiring from the Bureau, that most elusive of all sections of the British Secret Intelligence Service. Forty years: twenty as a field agent, another twenty as Chief after his old boss had died, not that it had turned out to be the usual kind of desk job – not with the Irish troubles.

So now it was all over, he told himself as he dressed quickly in a soft white shirt and an easy-fitting dark blue Armani suit. No more passion, no more action by night, he thought as he knotted his tie. And no woman in his life to fall back on, although there had always been plenty available. The trouble was that the only one he had truly loved had died far too early and far too brutally. Even the revenge he had exacted had failed to take away the bitter taste. Yes, there had been women in his life, but never another he had wanted to marry.