“Right,” said Jude. “I’d no idea they ran something like that in Antwerp.”

I smiled sweetly and refrained from saying that that’s why I’d chosen the Belgian city. No one in Britain has ever been to Antwerp, though I don’t know why. It’s more attractive, interesting and friendly than almost any other city I’ve ever been to. It’s where Bill’s parents came from originally and he still has a tribe of aunts, uncles and cousins there that he visits regularly. I’ve been over with him a couple of times, and fell in love with it at first sight. I always use Antwerp now for obscure cover stories. No one ever questions it. Jude was no exception. She swallowed my story, made a note on her form then got to her feet.

“What I’ll do is show you round now, to let you see exactly what we’ve got going here. Then I suggest you come to our weekly collective meeting tomorrow evening and see if you feel you’ll fit in with us, and we feel we’ll fit in with you,” she added, moving towards the door.

My heart sank. The thought of enduring a meeting of the Seagull Project’s collective filled me with gloom. I hate the endless circular debate of collectives. I like decisions to be made logically, with the pros and cons neatly laid out. I know all the theory about how consensus is supposed to make everyone feel they have a stake in the decision-making. But in my experience, it usually ends up with

I hid my despair behind a cheerful smile and followed Jude on her tour of the building. My target was clearly the second room we entered. There were filing cabinets the length of one wall and an IBM PC clone on one of the two desks. As well as its hard disc drive, I noted a slot for 5.25” floppies. A man in his early thirties was sitting at the computer keyboard, and Jude introduced him as Andy.

Andy looked up and grinned vaguely at me before returning to his keyboard.

“The filing cabinets hold details of all the clients we’ve had through here, all the other agencies we work with, and all our workers. We’re trying to transfer all our records to computer, most recent cases first, but it’s going to take a while,” Jude explained as we left Andy to his task. I noticed that the only lock on the door was a simple Yale.