Nightingale was silent. Beddoes must know that he had been discussing the affair with his superiors. Superior Wisdom had preferred the point as a likely landing ground, had frowned on too implicit a trust in Pink, had wanted at least to split the county’s available force to watch both places. Nightingale, suffering contradiction, swallowing retorts, in the grim but ultimately successful battle to have things his own way, had passed an unpleasant half-hour, He had emerged feeling that a knot had been drawn tight inside him and that the atmospheric pressure had somehow increased.

“So we are watching the fort?” said Beddoes.

“Yes,” said Nightingale, flushing. “You can take yourself down there in time to be in at the end.”

“In what capacity?” asked Beddoes.

Nightingale had to pause again. Superior Wisdom had taken moderate umbrage at some of Beddoes’ twitting which had been wafted, as Beddoes would say, to its ears. The Superior Thumb had come down unequivocally on Nightingale’s proposal to give Beddoes a major part in handling the Richborough crisis; and Nightingale, conscious that insistence might lose him his whole hard-won position, had preferred to sacrifice Beddoes.

“Well, just go down,” he said. “Introduce yourself to the Superintendent—he knows you’re coming—”

“And take a ringside seat,” concluded Beddoes. “You meanwhile—”

“I shall be following Majendie, and hoping also to roll up to Richborough in time.”

Beddoes frowned. “Following? On the train and by car? Then—excuse me—but why not send me, or any old one?”

“Because if Majendie has a guilty conscience, he’ll probably be sensitive to being followed, and if he looks round and sees a stranger he may take fright. Whereas I’ve already spent some time with him, and he’s used to the idea of my interest, which must appear singularly harmless and off the track. And I think it will be all to the good, if I’m to be seen by anyone, that I should not be heading for Richborough this afternoon. I don’t want anyone to take fright. I want the helicopter to go up, wherever it is.”

“With any luck the light’ll be too bad for anyone to recognise you. But why belittle your power to strike terror into Majendie?”

Nightingale shrugged. He could hardly say to Beddoes: because Majendie will think I’ve been softened by the preliminary douceur, and will only smile to see me keeping up a pretence of chasing him.

“And by the way,” said Beddoes, “how do they propose to cope with a heli? Borrow one of Manston’s to sit on top of it?”