It was a dreary-looking pub, large, granite-walled, with about as much character as a multi-storey car park. Whalley was standing by the buffet, with a pint of beer in his hand, ordering some food. I thought about it for a moment. The pub was fairly full. Horace Whalley wasn’t a man of particularly striking presence. From the time Whalley had pulled off the road into that parking lot, to the time I had driven a hundred yards, stopped, got out of my car and sprinted back up to the pub, a maximum of ninety seconds could have passed. It would have taken Whalley at least twenty seconds to park his car, and another twenty seconds to get to the pub, assuming he was moving like lightning – unlikely after a seven and a half hour drive without a break. If he’d marched straight to the bar, and been served immediately, and had given the exact money, he would have beaten the world record for time taken to get a pint of beer in one’s hand from entering a pub door. There was a throng of people at the bar trying to get served, and the staff behind the bar were slow old biddies. No way.

The woman behind the buffet buttered two slices of white bread, plonked a couple of pieces of white turkey meat onto one slice, closed the second slice on top of it, placed the sandwich on a plate, added a sprig of parsley that looked like it had been cultured in the Gobi Desert, and passed it over the glass counter to Whalley. He produced his wallet and handed her a bank note. All the while, he kept the elbow of his left arm pressed tightly to his chest, as though there were something in his coat he didn’t want to let drop.

Dismal though that sandwich looked, I could have paid a very handsome sum for it right now; I was starving. I tried to remember if I’d eaten anything yet today: one Twix bar at about half six this morning on my way in to the Atomic Energy Authority. That was all. I was hungry right now – damned hungry – but something told me I had a long night ahead and that there wasn’t going to be much food in that night for me.

Whalley took his sandwich and his beer and sat down in a corner on his own. Someone had bought that beer for Whalley, but Whalley had been late, and that someone couldn’t stay to drink with him. Only one person had left the pub since I’d arrived. I decided I had been right to have the Capri tailed. What I needed to know was whether Whalley was collecting, or delivering, or both. From the way he continued to hold his arm tight to his chest, he had certainly done a spot of collecting.