On reflection, Bannerman thought that perhaps this office had a little more character than the others he had been in. A large old oak desk sat at an angle across one corner. Wire trays were piled high with ageing reports, a dog-eared blotter was scribbled with a hundred phone numbers, names, doodles. There were two overflowing heavy glass ashtrays, a fountain pen, a broken pencil. On the wall behind the desk, maps of Belgium and Brussels, charts and a Playboy calendar. Beside the door stood a tall, old-fashioned coat stand hung with two long dark raincoats that had seen better days, and an old tweed jacket. A broken umbrella leaned against the wall beside a pair of muddy gumboots. Along the door wall and the far wall, filing cabinets of different heights, some wooden, some a grey-painted metal, were pushed together, yet more documents piled untidily on top. The room was lit by an Anglepoise lamp on the desk.

Bannerman sat waiting on a hard wooden chair in front of the desk. He had been waiting for nearly three hours. The doctor had examined him first, dressing the wound on the back of his head. There were no ribs broken, but he was severely bruised. He might suffer the effects of concussion for some time, the doctor had warned. He should have plenty of rest, plenty of sleep.

Then he had spent a gruelling half-hour in a room with two plain-clothes policemen who spoke bad English. They had paid no heed to the doctor’s advice. Who was he? Who did he work for? What was he doing at Slater’s flat? Who had attacked him? What had been taken from the safe? What did he know about Robert Gryffe? Bannerman had answered everything they asked without ever seeming to satisfy them. They, in turn, had told him nothing. His curiosity had been dulled by his own discomfort and he had not pressed for information. He had been brought a bowl of soup and a cup of cold coffee, then taken to this office where he had sat watching darkness descend on Brussels.

He checked with his watch. Six-thirty. He was hungry, enormously weary, stiff, the pulsing in his head still painful. He ran his tongue over his lips where the blood had dried leaving dark brown rims. Whatever they told him eventually, he thought, would not surprise him, though he had given little conscious thought to what that might be. There was an unreal quality about everything. Like a dream. Or more correctly, a nightmare. A sequence of events through which he had passed without ever feeling that he had in any way participated.