The barman nodded, lifting the telephone back off the bar-top, and the three locals made appreciative noises, none of which sounded like ‘thank you’.

‘Nothing for yourself, sir?’ one of them asked Hepton as the pint glasses were being refilled.

Hepton shook his head. ‘We really should be going,’ he said.

They watched as he went back to his table and spoke a few words to the Londoner. Then both men left the bar without so much as a wave of the hand or a nod of the head, carrying the bag with them.

‘Forgot all about his change,’ the barman noted drily.

‘In that case,’ said the oldest of the locals, ‘keep the beer coming, Gerry.’

At one of the tables by the window, where a middle-aged couple were sitting, the wife suddenly produced a portable telephone from her handbag. The man took the phone and pressed a lot of digits, then waited. Eventually he said a few words, not much more than a sentence, and in a quiet voice. Then he gave the contraption back to his wife, who replaced it in her handbag. They finished their drinks and left the pub, the woman bowing her head slightly towards the bar as she left.

‘Cheerio then,’ the barman called in response.

‘There’s a lot of queer folk about,’ said one local. The others nodded agreement and went back to their drinks. The rest of the night was to come as something of an anticlimax.

28

Hepton considered that he had seen Sanders’ driving at its absolute worst. The journey back to London, however, served to impress upon him that this was an age without absolutes. Sanders seemed seized by demons, and determined to get back to the relative safety of the city as soon as he could. The men at the Bull had angered him, that was for sure. He was used to being undermined by his superiors, but not by people he would consider his inferiors by a fairly large margin. The needle on the dashboard flickered wildly around the seventy mark on the narrower roads, and Hepton felt sick in his stomach, the beer inside him sloshing wildly. On wider roads, they hit one hundred and ten miles per hour. It was, thank God, the only thing they hit.

Hepton, however, said nothing. He too was keen to get back to the safe house. Keen to watch the video tapes and see what he might discover. It was dark when they arrived, the sky spotted with yet darker clouds. The air was growing chill, so that they had to close the car windows and put on the heater for a little while. The night became greenish-yellow as the London street lights began to shine.