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road down. She’d never have that talk. She thought Mr Patel as well mannered and caring as any man she knew, and Mr Ahmed and Mr Dcv and Mr Huq.
    ‘It is disgraceful what has happened to you, and you a senior- citizen lady. You should have the representation of a solicitor, Mrs Barnes. A very good firm acted for us when we bought the shop. I think it is too late for tonight...’
    In ten minutes, with her coat on and her best hat, ignoring the pain of her feet, Mrs Barnes set off for the offices of Greatorex, Wilkins & Protheroe in the centre of Slough. The offices might be closed, but it was for her Tracy, and she did not know what else she could do.
    * * *
    ‘Only a stenographer in Berlin, weren’t you, Tracy? So you wouldn’t have understood much about the intelligence business. I doubt you were alone, doubt that the people running Hans Becker knew much more than you. Did they tell you, Tracy, that running him was in breach of orders? Doubt they did. The running of agents was supposed to be given to us, the professionals. You made, Tracy, the oldest mistake in the book. You went soft on an agent. You couriered to him, didn’t you? Slap and tickle, was there? A tremble in the shadows? So, it was personal when you beat three shades of shit out of Hauptman Krause. Why him, Tracy? Where’s the evidence? You want to talk about the murder of your lover boy, then there has to be evidence . .
    When he heard the banging down below, he was bent over his desk, studying the papers of another grubby little case off the streets of another grubby little town that would end up in the grubby little court on Park Road. Two youths fighting over first use of a petrol pump. The client was the one who had hit straighter and harder.
    It was not a loud banging, just as if someone was knocking on the high street door.
    The partners were long gone, and the typists. The receptionist would have been gone an hour. He worked in the open plan area among the typists’ empty desks, word processors shut down and covered up. The partners’ offices were off the open area, doors locked, darkness behind the glass screens. He worked late so that Mr Wilkins could have all the papers in the morning for the pump rage and the affray, then the indecent assault, a remand job, and the possession with intent to supply.
    The knocking continued, harder, more insistent. He pulled up his tie, hitched his jacket off the back of the chair and went out of the office down the stairs into reception.
    She was outside the door. He let her in.
    She had been crying. Her eyes were red, magnified by the lenses of her spectacles.
    She asked him, straight out, was he a solicitor, and he said that he was ‘nearly’ a solicitor. He took her upstairs, made her a pot of tea, and she told him about her Tracy, and what the officer had said about the search and the warrant.
    ‘Mrs Barnes, what unit is your daughter with?’
    ‘She’s a corporal. She’s with the Intelligence Corps.’
    And that was a bit of his history — quite a large part of Josh Mantle’s history.

Chapter Three
    He dialled the number that Mrs Adie Barnes had given him.
    ‘Hello.’
    ‘Could I speak, please, to Corporal Barnes, Tracy Barnes?’
    A hesitation as if, so early in the morning, her brain was grinding. ‘Who is it?’
    ‘A friend, a solicitor.’
    He knew that block, knew where the call had been answered. He could hear the radios screaming behind her and the shouting, bawling, hollering.
    Softly, and with a hand cupped over the mouthpiece, the voice said, ‘Needs friends, locked up, in the cells, ‘cos she bashed that German.’ A voice change, loud and disinterested. ‘Any calls for the corporal are to go to the main camp number, and you should ask for the Adjutant’s office.’
    He rang off.
    He had showered early. He lived in a small part of a large house, the roof space converted into two rooms. There was a kitchenette area in one and a wash-basin in the other. The lavatory and