‘Welcome to your cabin, Harry. I am your cabin hostess. Let me fix you a drink and unpack your bag for you. What would you like – a nice cold beer, or an American cocktail?’ She marched over to the door, took Slan’s bag in one hand and Slan in the other, and pushed the door shut behind them with her foot.

Chapter 5

5

Horace Whalley was a pragmatic-looking man, in his early fifties. He had a thick-set face at the front of a conical head, with a large nose that dipped slightly downwards, and grey hair that was cropped short, and he looked as though he carried the burdens of the world on his shoulders. He was about five foot seven, wore unassuming worsted suits, drab wool ties, and had a generally meek air. He stooped slightly, and never took large footsteps. Unknown to him, there was a tiny electronic microphone concealed in every room of his house, inside his car, inside his office, and inside his Rotary Club tie-pin, which normally he always wore but had recently mislaid.

He munched his bran and prunes breakfast, unaware that the sounds of his eating were being heard, with perfect fidelity, by six men in three motor cars, parked in the vicinity of his house, in the tree-lined Surbiton avenue, in such a manner that they could follow him unobtrusively, regardless of which direction he decided to take on leaving his house.

It was the seventeenth morning of their vigil, and they had heard him, as usual, take his wife a cup of tea in bed, murmur. ‘Goodbye, dear, I’ll see you later,’ go downstairs, pick up his briefcase and umbrella from beside the door, go out and into the garage. A few moments later, the tail of a powder blue Vauxhall Cavalier would start pouring out choked exhaust smoke, the reversing lights would shine on, and the car would start to move backwards down the short concrete driveway. None of the six men needed to look at their wristwatches: they knew it was 6.15 a.m. precisely.

There were twelve men in the team altogether, six were always on while the other six rested. All twelve of them had come to the conclusion several days ago that following Horace Whalley was a waste of time. His routine each day was exactly the same: from the time he left the office at four forty-five in the afternoon to the time he returned to it at seven in the morning, any one of them could have told me, with his eyes shut and his ears blocked, exactly where Whalley was and what he was doing. But they were professional enough to understand that this was the point. Whalley’s normal routine was completely taped; any deviation from it would stand out like a sore thumb – and it was a deviation that we all waited for.