of the belly of the plane to where the roaring wind drove an entry through the forward escape hatch. Six men had already jumped into the night that stretched more than three miles beneath. As Jimmy had been about to lever himself into the hole he saw the movement beyond the flapping door of the cockpit. Then the pilot, edging his way toward him. There was a look of surprise on the officer's face, and he had shouted something like, 'I thought they'd all gone,' and his attention was turned from the effort of movement and the pain from the fire that had caught at the upper fabric of his flying tunic. But Jimmy had not heard him. The words were lost in the noise of the wind and the tearing metal as the superstructure of the aircraft struggled to hold itself together in the face of its unnatural and contorted descent.
They had jumped virtually together. Jimmy first, then the officer. It was the first time for the rear gunner: only the tower and the simulator before. He had felt the moment of stark panic before he had pulled the metal hoop fastened to the harness across his chest, and then had followed the decisive and successive sensation of the jolt of the parachute opening, the surge upwards as it billowed out, the silent descent, and then the terror as the earth catapulted up to meet him. The officer had landed less than a hundred yards away, the fire on his body extinguished by the air-rush of his speed of fall.
They had barely disentangled themselves from the cords and webbing of their parachutes when the German soldier reached them, shouting instructions and calling to his colleagues across the fields. Not a front-line man, but middle-aged, a reservist. Jimmy had gestured into the middle distance behind the soldier, and as the man in his inexperience had turned, so Jimmy's heavy flying boot went into his crotch. The German jack-knifed, and simul- taneously the hard outside edge of Jimmy's right hand came down on the bare and exposed inch of the man's neck, between the helmet and the thickened collar of the great-coat. The German had died instantly and without a whimper, giving Jimmy and the officer time to fade into the sanctuary and shadow of the trees. When light came the next morning Jimmy had seen the pilot's face, seen the raw, mashed damage, the legacy of the clinging cockpit oil. The sight had not unduly upset him. He had been sympathetic, interested, nothing more.
The pilot's name was Philip Willoughby-Jones. He was two years older than the rear gunner, and was never to forget the speed and ruthlessness involved in the death of the German. He would never put out of his mind the fresh pleasure that played in Jimmy's eyes, reflected by the moonlight, before they reached the trees, nor the adulation of success that encompassed his young downy mouth. Via the French Resistance they had been smuggled to the Spanish border and after their return home had lost touch
— there had been different postings, different stations.
Following the war, when Jones became a full-time desk-man with the department, he had let it be known there existed a man who could kill without scruple.
His assessment of Jimmy had not been disproved.
The nearest police station to Englefield Road is some six streets away and to the north, beyond Dalston Junction and close to the Balls Pond Road. It is a forbidding, grey-bricked building, dingy and in a general state of disrepair.
Inside attempts had been made to brighten the cavernous passages and interview rooms with quantities of paint; they had been largely unsuccessful.
Police Constable Henry Davies, alsatian dog handler, nine years in the force, was going off duty. That in itself did not entail much work, just signing the time sheet, confirming that his overnight reports were completed and ready for the Day Duty Inspector. It had been a quiet night: no pub fights, no premises broken into. Time for home now — to his ground-floor flat to sleep through the daylight hours, with Zero out in the kennel beside the coal box.
As Davies passed the main desk at the end of the front hall with the dog on its lead, head pressed close to his left knee, the sergeant, old and cheerful in spite of the surroundings, spoke to him.
'Off home then, Henry? Not been much for you tonight.'
'Not a damn thing, Sarge.'
'Seeing Doris this weekend?' He'd need that for his dossier, knew every damn thing about everyone, the old boy.
Davies paused near the door. 'No way, she's staying in through today and tomorrow. Won't be coming out till Monday.'
'Need a good bath and all, then,' said the sergeant. 'I don't know how she does it. Nice clean girl, living with all that muck.'
The constable smiled. 'She doesn't seem to mind. Gets a bit deep about it all, says it's what police work is all about.
Laughs at me for lugging this piece of dog-flesh about.'
'Well, I couldn't do it. Might manage if it was nine to five, Monday to Friday. But not living in among them twenty-four hours, weekends and all.'
The sarcasm was gentle and kindly meant. 'No one's going to ask you to blend into the hippie scene, now are they? Not your style, Sarge. But seriously, she says all the coming and going is at the weekend. When she was at the place behind the Angel they got the pusher at the weekend.
You have to be there the whole time — part of the furniture.'
An old lady moved across the hall towards the desk, diverting the sergeant's attention. Lost her bloody cat, most likely, thought Davies. He gave the dog's lead a slight pull, and the alsatian was up off its haunches. They went together to his van.
He had told Doris, but only half-heartedly, that he wasn't that keen on her living in the commune, and she had dismissed it — told him it was a damned sight more interesting than driving round with a dog for company.
But he'd see her on Monday when she came out of the half-world that she'd infiltrated, when she came out to file her twice-weekly report.
SEVEN
It was Lord Denning who wrote in his report in the wake of the Profumo scandal: 'The Security Service in this country is not established by Statute, nor is it recognized by Common Law. Even the Official Secrets Acts do not acknowledge its existence.' Since its conception back in the late sixteenth century the department has insisted that its moves and practices are cloaked in total secrecy. For years it was successful, and the Security Service remained shrouded in mystery, with its operators able to congratu-late themselves that they had found a near-divine formula for the working of the department. But all good things come to an end, and that very secrecy, once so jealously protected, had now brought the Security Service into hard times. Politicians looking for economic savings in the 1960s and early 1970s found a familiar scapegoat to carry the burden of financial cut-backs; few of them understood what went on in Leconfield House, and those that wanted to discover the strange activities of the personnel there were actively dissuaded from pursuing their inquiries.
The numbers of men employed in the department shriv-elled as fewer funds were channelled towards them. Worse followed when their political masters decided that the autonomy of the service should be curtailed, and appointed a career Civil Servant to take charge. Only recently, after a series of publicly-castigated mishaps, had the Prime Minister reverted to tradition and put a senior man from the service itself into the Director General's office. His identity was unknown to the mass of the population, and was covered by a 'D' Notice, requesting that the media keep it confidential.
The present DG spent much of his working day wrestling with the budget the Security Service was allowed by Parliament, striving to keep his force efficient, while at the same time remaining solvent. It was a soul-destroying job, and one which he detested. Nor was he paid much for his pains — slightly less than the Fleet Street average for a middle-ranking columnist. But inside the department the new man had revitalized morale simply because his subordinates knew that the man who now controlled them understood their work, was sympathetic to their problems, and was always available. The Irish problem had also played its part in lifting the tempo in Curzon Street. Instead of their dealing almost to the exclusion of everything else with the activities of the Iron Curtain embassies and the huge Soviet trade mission on Highgate Hill, an extra dimension had been brought into the work. On top of that came the more recent wave of Arab terrorism throughout Europe. The DG could note with satisfaction that the
