Daily's reputation was not unknown to Bond, for he was one of the new generation of policemen, university educated, smart, sharp and eminently likeable. Daily had been with the now renamed Special Branch when it really was special, so he was well known among members of both the Security and Secret Intelligence Services which was probably the reason he had been assigned this case in the first place.
`Well, Captain Bond, I've always wanted to meet you. You have quite a reputation, and I recognized you from the photofit.' His accent was not quite what you would call upper class, which was a blessing for that affected drawl was anathema to Bond.
`Then with due respect, Chief Superintendent, why didn't you blaze my name all over this morning's front pages?' Daily gave a little half smile. On the table in front of him were a leather notebook and an expensive gold pen. Bond thought he should mention to the man that it was not always wise to leave something like a pen on a desk when interrogating. He figured his chances and knew he could probably take out Daily by snatching the pen and thrusting it hard into the man's eye. The other cop could be dealt with in a more orthodox manner.
`Why didn't I have you named in the Press release, Mr Bond? Well, I could have been mistaken. We got the photofit from a waiter who says he saw you with the victim. He says you arrived a little before six.
He claims to have actually spoken with you, telling you that they had finished serving tea. You replied that you were to meet someone, and he says he saw you join the victim. Eye witnesses are often wrong.
The description could well have been inaccurate: photofits often are, as I suspect you already know.' `So you gave me the benefit of the doubt?' Again Daily gave his most charming smile. `No.
No, not really. I took the precaution of telephoning your Chief when I saw the likeness, and he had a little story for me.
`So you know I was there?' `I do. I also know that you went there to see somebody else, and that's quite important, because the someone else looked very much like the victim.
`You know who she was the person I was meeting?' `Oh, yes. In fact, I've worked with Carmel on a number of occasions, and, while the victim is superficially like her, facially really, she was not at all like her in the flesh so to speak. Yet..
`She could have been mistaken for His Chantry. .
`In the dusk with the light behind her, to quote W. S. Gilbert.
`Oh, I do think you educated policemen are wonderful.' Bond gave him a crooked smile. `But you think there was a mistake?' `No doubt in my mind. Once the balloon went up, and I'd spoken with your guy'nor, we removed the other lady from the hotel.' His eyes strayed to the plainclothes man by the door. `I think you can leave us now, Meyer.' A friendly nod and a wink.
The cop shrugged, but left, closing the door behind him.
`In fact, I have a message from your boss.. `I don't think he'd appreciate being called either guy'nor or boss...
`No? Well, he's not going to hear me, is he? He says that His C is safe and that your Mr Grant is also safe, contained, in fact, under house arrest.
Strikes me that the ladies and gentlemen of the Security Service are in the midst of a crisis.' `Does it now?' The last thing he wanted to do was to get drawn into any loose talk concerning MIS. You never knew with policemen.
After a pause that went on a shade too long, Daily said that M also wanted him to telephone.
`He asked me to tell you that he had removed surveillance on you and would you call him. Been a naughty boy, have we, Mr Bond?' `Not so as you'd notice,' he said icily.
He telephoned M from a public coin box, or at least that was what they used to be called before the proliferation of public telephones that only took credit cards, or British Telecom calling cards.
`Just wanted you to know that our sisters have got themselves an almost entirely new Anti-terrorist Section,' M growled.
`About time, if all I've heard is true.' `Mmm. Well, I fear it is. The former Head of Department has been guilty of much folly, and many a cover-up. The work got done, but he had to watch his back, and he'll now be doing it from an easy chair on half pension-if that. `You think someone was out to get His C as well as the other late lamented lady, sir?' `Could be. I've spoken to their Director General, and the lady you saw last night is in very safe hands. Now, I will be in touch, just make the most of this enforced rest.
`Of course, sir.' He spent almost two hours getting to his final destination, running the back doubles and practising every anti-surveillance trick in the book.
no doubt, had been keeping an eye on him and he had a healthy respect for that; but, with all that seemed to be going on, he wanted to be certain that nobody else was hard on his heels.
It was almost two-thirty in the afternoon by the time he turned into the pleasant little street off the King's Road, with its plane trees dusty from the August he at.
Inside his apartment, he rapidly did all his personal security checks. Nobody appeared to be watching the house, though he still could not rule out a listening device or telephone bug. With an anti-bug scanner, loaned to him some time ago by Ann Reilly, assistant to the armourer who provided all hardware for the service, he scoured every inch of wall and floor. Only when he was ninety-nine percent certain that there were no unauthorized electronics in the house, spiked through the walls, or hidden manually by some expert cut-and-run professional, did he telephone the Inn on the Park.
Fredericka picked up without answering.
`It's me. `Who's me?' `James. `How do I know it's James?' `You have a small mole high on the inside of your left thigh. That good enough?' `Yes. Go on.' `Have you heard from your Alpine friend yet?' `They brought in a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown or at least their version of that verdict.' `And the frineral?' `Tomorrow.
She left instructions apparently.
Two o'clock tomorrow afternoon at a crematorium in Bournemouth.
It appears that she liked that area. Do we go?' `Yes, but first I must give you some instructions.
He told her to check out of the hotel and come over to his flat.
`Not the easy way, it would be best if you ran some interference for yourself. I'm pretty sure that I'm clean, but anyone could have been waiting for me where you are now. If so, they'll pick you up, so give them a run for their money.' `Will do.' She broke the contact. Very professional, he considered. Then he wondered why he had asked her to come to him. He seldom invited ladies to the apartment. It was one of those things he very rarely did, and even then never had he let them stay overnight.
Fredericka arrived just after six-thirty, having come via Heathrow Airport and then the Underground into central London, and again another runaround involving three taxis. For the first time, a woman slept in the apartment, and it proved to be one of those world champion nights about which most people only fantasize.
The crematorium was about as personal as a public convenience.
Bond had the feeling that it was worked on the production line principle, with clergy of many denominations doing shifts at the numerous chapels.
Apart from Fredericka and Bond, only three other people turned up for the service, which the clergyman read as though he was bored stiff with the entire thing. At last, the coffin slid away and the little velvet curtains closed with only a slight whirr of machinery.
Two of the other mourners had MIS written all over them, if only because they had tried to look completely normal a man and a woman.
The woman wept as she left the chapel of rest, and the man did nothing to comfort her. The other person was a man of around forty, dressed in a well-tailored suit. He showed no emotion and walked quickly away from the place as soon as it was all done.
At the door of the chapel, the undertaker told them that there had been a few floral tributes, though the deceased had asked for none.
`It was all a bit of a rush, I'm afraid,' he said, looking at Bond as though he would know exactly what was meant.
He pointed the way to the garden area where Laura March's flowers were lying in a rather pathetic little row, and they went to take a quick look.
There was a medium-sized wreath with a card that simply said, `From the Director and Members of the Board with tender memories.' Bond thought it reeked of officialdom. There was another from the aunt in
