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him. “Well, you might say England, or Winston – and that would be right – but the true answer is the CIGS: General Sir Alan Brooke himself, my old boss, now elevated to head soldier. Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and the word is that he’ll be a Field Marshal by the New Year.”
    “Always said you’d go far, young Shepherd,” Tommy muttered. “Lonely up there at the top is it?”
    “Tommy, tell me you’d rather be working with me at your back. The alternative would be the hairy great coppers with Special Branch. Not a nice thought.”
    Tommy, Suzie noticed, didn’t meet his eye, sucked his teeth again, noncommittal. At last he said, “Then tell me why I have to work with you, Curry?”
    “Because I’m dealing with security for COSSAC.”
    “And what’s COSSAC when it’s home?”
    “Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander. A post that has operated since April without a Supreme Allied Commander.”
    Tommy nodded. “Yes.”
    “But they’ll appoint one soon enough,” Curry smiled. “And next year he’ll be bustling along in front of us all, but there are two reasons why you should be particularly interested in all this…”
    “Do tell,” Tommy, face set in a rictus, acid in his throat.
    Curry nodded, as if to say he understood Tommy’s caustic manner. “Please, I want you to know what’s going on. What I’m going to tell you next is totally classified. It mustn’t leave either of your brains…”
    “Oh, come on…” Tommy began.
    “COSSAC lives, moves and has its being down in St James’s Square. Norfolk House, know it Tom?”
    “I know where it is. Pinky-red building.”
    “Good,” Curry’s normal attitude of languor changed and the words now cracked like bullets passing overhead. “Good, because every couple of days or so there are meetings at COSSAC: forty or fifty senior officers, colonels and upwards, under General Frederick Morgan. These men have been planning the greatest battle so far in this damned war: the invasion of the occupied continent, Hitler’s Fortress Europe.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes, really, Tom. These men know when, where and, to a great extent, how the invasion’ll take place. So they sit on the greatest secret alive in this country at the moment. And, Tommy, maybe you’ll sit up when I tell you that Lieutenant Colonel Tim Weaving was a member of that planning committee. Tim Weaving was a keeper of many of those secrets, so it’s sort of important if he died being tortured. Think about it.”
    During these last words, Curry Shepherd had taken a few steps back towards the door. Now he had reached it, and with a little mock bow and flourish he said, “I go. I come back.”
    He hadn’t been out of the door for more than five seconds before Suzie realised that she missed him.

Chapter Five
    THEY WENT OVER to The Bear Hotel – Tommy, with Suzie and Cathy Wimereux, together with Dennis Free, while the rest of the team found their rooms at The Blue Boar, opposite the Post Office. Tommy, Suzie thought, had used his considerable charm on the lady at reception to get rooms facing onto the Market Square and so close to one another that, to use his own expression, he’d know when she changed her mind.
    For some reason she couldn’t quite comprehend, Suzie was feeling unusually indecisive, and had done so for some time. Not that she had to make any immediate decisions, but deep within her she felt uncertain about life: about her life at the moment within the Metropolitan police, and her long term life with Tommy. The last wasn’t new as she’d been putting him off for the best part of a year, and felt guilty about it. Tommy was the man who had made her into a woman and taught her to love – not just in the physical sense, but in the more lasting and profound way, expanding her mind, helping her to reach higher, to stretch out towards unexplored horizons, teaching her to laugh. Laughter was important she discovered. But Tommy was a good deal older than