He didn’t know where he was headed, but he knew where he was avoiding going: the offices of the London Herald. Could he face Jilly? What would she say? Would she help him? He tried to rehearse various lines as he walked the streets. They all sounded false. They all were false. What was more important, however, was that he should shake this tail before he tried to contact her. Otherwise he would be drawing her into the nasty little web, and that was the last thing he wanted to do.

Lunchtime approached, and he felt hungry again. Breakfast at Heathrow seemed an eternity ago. He touched the roll of banknotes in his pocket and decided to treat himself to something at Fortnum’s. But the queue for the Fountain restaurant was disheartening, so he left again. Besides, his clothes were looking decidedly shabby and slept in: definitely not the stuff of a Fortnum’s luncheon. One of the floorwalkers had kept a beady eye on him all the way around the ground floor.

He had been expecting a tail, of course. Now that Villiers had found him, he would want to keep tabs on him. But who was Villiers? He appeared to be some not-very-minor official at the Foreign Office. What was all or any of this to him? Hepton didn’t know. But he did know one thing. Like a dog offered a bone, it was time for him to shake his tail.

At Piccadilly Circus there was a large record shop – new since his last visit to London and exactly what he was looking for. He entered the noise and the confusion of aisles. At the main door he had spotted a uniformed security guard, and had passed the alarm system with its warning to potential shoplifters. The place was well protected. He walked up and down the aisles, squeezing past this and that browser. He paused by a display of compact discs and saw, from the corner of his eye, the tail browsing a few aisles further along. He smiled and picked up a disc enclosed in a protective clear plastic sheath. On the back of the packaging was a price label and a barcode. Through the barcode ran a strip of silver. Pleased, he examined the disc again. Barbed Wire Kisses by The Jesus and Mary Chain. Yes, this would do.

He walked casually back along the aisle, towards where the tail was now enthusiastically reading the sleeve notes to an offering by The Dead Milkmen. As he was about to pass the man, he paused and put a hand on his shoulder. The tail flinched, but kept his eyes on the record. Hepton kept his hand where it was and brought his face close to the man’s ear.