does think like that, but why should it bother you? And even if she does, she spent most of the evening with you… although she was really quite careful not to touch you too much. Well… maybe that was because so many people were watching… and maybe it was simply that she didn’t like the thought of it. I was on the short cut home that led round the south of Reading, streaking down deserted back roads, going fast for no reason except that speed had become a habit. This car was easily the best I’d

bedroom.’ We went through the door at the end of the sitting-room and this time he murmured aloud. ‘Whose flat is this?’ he asked. ‘Mine.’ He glanced at my face, hearing the dryness in my voice. ‘You resent surprise?’ ‘It amuses me.’ ‘Hughes… it’s a pity you didn’t join the Civil Service. You’d have gone all the way.’ I laughed. ‘There’s still time… Do they take in warned off jockeys at the Administrative Grade?’ ‘So you can joke about it?’ ‘It’s taken nine days. But yes, just about.’

‘Overpowering,’ I said. Lord Ferth took his lower lip between his teeth and shook his head, but I gathered it was at the general situation, not at me. He pressed the start button again. His voice came through, precise, carefully without emotion, gentle as vaseline. ‘Norman, about the composition of the Enquiry… the members of the Disciplinary Committee who sat with you… What guided you to choose Andrew Tring and old Plimborne?’ ‘What guided me?’ He sounded astonished at the question. ‘I

against Ferth’s inner furnace it melted impotently. ‘You agreed to say nothing,’ Gowery said in the same piercing undertone. ‘I would be obliged if you would keep to that.’ Cranfield had stirred beside me in astonishment, and now, thinking about it on the following day, the venomous little exchange seemed even more incredible. What, I now wondered, had Ferth been doing there, where he didn’t really belong and was clearly not appreciated. The telephone bell broke up my thoughts. I went into the

even so, it shows they’d made up their minds. I’ve always wondered why they bothered to hold that second enquiry at all. Waste of everyone’s time, mate.’ ‘It’s incredible,’ I said. But I did believe him: which before my own Enquiry I would not have done. ‘When are they giving you your licence back?’ Jim asked. ‘They didn’t say.’ ‘Didn’t they tell you when you could apply?’ ‘No.’ Jim shoved one very rude word down the wires. ‘And that’s another thing, mate, you want to pick your moment right