Tait lay safe and warm in his bed listening to the rain battering against his window. Outside, the streets were empty and only a few sodden leaves, remnants of the autumn, stirred in the gutter. He liked to lie in on Saturdays, though he had been awake for some time. Now he heard the phone ringing distantly in the house and he cursed. When the phone went it was always for him.

He lay listening for his wife’s footsteps on the stair, but he missed them and was surprised by the gentle creak of the door as it opened.

‘Are you awake?’ Her voice came in a breath.

‘Yes. Who is it?’

‘It’s someone from the paper.’ His wife seemed distressed. ‘A Neil Bannerman. Long-distance. I told him you were still asleep, but he was very rude.’

‘There’s no need to whisper. I am awake.’ He threw back the covers and sat up. What the hell was Bannerman after?

He pulled on his dressing gown, pushing his feet into slippers, and followed her downstairs to take the call in the living room. The children had their own playroom at the back of the house, and as he lifted the phone he heard his wife telling them to keep the noise down. ‘What in God’s name do you want, Bannerman? You realize it’s only just gone nine, and it is Saturday!’

‘I need ten grand. Today if possible, tomorrow at the latest.’

It took several seconds for Bannerman’s words to sink in. ‘Jesus Christ!’ Tait’s first reaction was anger. But then he realized that Bannerman would not phone and ask him for ten thousand pounds at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning unless he had a bloody good reason. He almost resented the fact that Bannerman was as good as he was. It made it all the harder to get rid of him. Although it made no impression on his resolve to do so. No one could speak to Tait the way Bannerman had. ‘Why?’

‘To prove that Robert Gryffe, René Jansen and Michel Lapointe were selling arms to Rhodesia and South Africa.’

Tait ran the implications through his mind with a practised professional detachment. Then he felt the first buzz of adrenalin. ‘Who gets the pay-off?’

‘A guy called Hector Lewis. He has a business based in Switzerland. Does company searches, among other things. I got hold of some information and asked him to check it out. When it turned up what it did he got greedy. He wants a certified cheque in his bankers’ hands by nine on Monday morning at the latest, or he’ll sell the story elsewhere.’

‘Fuck!’

‘Ditto.’

‘How reliable is he? Can you trust him?’

He heard Bannerman’s bitter chuckle. ‘Oh, I think so. He’s good, very good, a real pro. The fact that he’s a twenty-four-carat bastard is merely incidental.’