‘Literally dropping dead? Maybe the ones very close to the power station would die immediately or very quickly, but further downwind – say fifty to one hundred miles – surely not? If a power station blows up fifty miles from London and the wind blows the stuff over London, the Londoners aren’t all going to drop dead on the spot are they?’

‘No. A few would die fairly quickly – within a couple of weeks probably – the rest, during the next five to fifteen years. And of course there would be a horrendous incidence of deformed children born.’

‘Would everyone in London be affected?’

‘No – probably about fifty per cent.’

‘No one would be able to prove anything would they? Not conclusively? A high incidence of deformed children, and of cancer five years later. That’s a long time; people forget. What could the people do anyway?’

Quoit stared at Fifeshire. A look of horror was on his face. ‘Do you mean, Charles, that you are suggesting nothing would be done to protect the public should these power stations be blown up?’

‘Yes, I am. There isn’t anything we could do, and if we tried to do anything at all, let the cat out of the bag about what had happened, it would cause blind nationwide panic. We would have to put the country onto full nuclear alert and stop all movement throughout the country. No one would be any the better off for knowing.’

There was a silence in the room while Fifeshire’s words sank in.

‘What about protecting the services?’ said Quoit.

‘Yes, of course we would do that. We would mount Operation Midwicket – which is what we call the soft nuclear alert, as opposed to Operation Longstop, which is the full-scale nuclear alert. In Midwicket, certain key ministers and military personnel and civil servants quietly move into nuclear shelters – without their families. The whole operation is carried out as if it were an exercise only, to avoid panic, and these people would never know it was anything more than an exercise. The Atomic Energy Authority, if questioned about its detonated reactors, would categorically deny any leak of radiation whatsoever.’

‘Well, I think it’s disgraceful,’ said Quoit.

‘Let’s hope we can find our elements,’ said Fifeshire, ‘and maybe it won’t come to that.’

‘They would need a truck,’ said Quoit suddenly. ‘They would have rented it. They must have had one to transport the bundles from Shoreham! Surely there can’t be many people who have rented trucks at this time of year? What if you called all the truck-hire people and asked them for descriptions of all the people who had hired trucks during the last week?’

As a nuclear energy expert, Quoit might have been brilliant. As a fledgling detective, he wasn’t quite so hot.