Fenton snapped, "We have conduits of information, some more reliable than others. I have to tell you, the information we are acting upon is first class. The threat is a fact-' "I won't run again."

Fenton's right fist slammed into the palm of his left hand.

"We're not urging this course of action lightly. Look, you did it before-' "No."

"You can do it a second time."

"No."

"I have the impression that you wish to delude yourself on the strength of the threat. Well, let us understand each other. I am not accustomed to leaving my desk for a day, journeying into this sort of backwater, for my own amusement-' "I won't run again final."

Fenton brayed, at the back of Perry's head, "There is evidence of a very considerable danger. Got me? Hard evidence, real danger From where he stood at the door, Geoff Markham thought that Perry's silhouetted shoulders drooped slightly, as if he'd been cudgelled. Then they stiffened and straightened.

"I won't run again."

Fenton ground on relentlessly, "Look, it's a pretty straightforward process. Getting there is something we're expert at. You move on, you take a new identity… A cash sum to tide you over the incidental expenses. Just leave it to us. New national insurance, new NHS number, new Inland Revenue coding-' "Not again. No."

"Bloody hell, Mr. Perry, do me the courtesy of hearing me out. They have your name, not the old one, they have Frank Perry get that into your skull. If they have the name, then I have to examine the probability that they have the location…"

Perry turned from the window. There was a pallor now to his cheeks, and his jaw muscles seemed to flex, slacken and flex again. There was weariness in his eyes. He didn't cower. He stood his full height. He gazed back at Fenton. Geoff Markham didn't know the details on Perry's file, had not been shown it, but if he deserved the threat, then there was something in his past that required raw toughness.