John Gardner - Never send flowers

`I'd feel happier if I knew where Carmel had got to." `Oh, damn Carmel.

`No, Fredericka. She has serious problems, as does the Security Service. The idiot officer who's head of their Anti-terrorist Section is about as efficient as a wasp in a jar, and I guess he's capable of almost anything, though I doubt if murder comes into it. To be honest, I'm worried in case this other girl, Heather Barnabus, has been snuffed in error.

`You still have to clear yourself with the local law, darling.

He nodded, kissed her lightly on the cheek and headed for the bathroom.

Some twenty minutes later, shaved, showered and dressed, he called West End Central Police Station and asked for CID. The line was answered by somebody who called himself Detective Sergeant Tibble.

`The Heather Barnabus murder,' Bond began.

`I'd like to speak with the officer in charge of the investigation." `That would be Detective Chief Superintendent Daily, sir. Can I tell him who's calling?" `Yes. Bond. James Bond.

There was an immediate reaction, as though the detective had been jabbed with a pin. Seconds later a honey-smooth voice came on the line. `DCS Daily, Mr Bond. We've been looking for you." `I've just seen the papers. I'd like to get a few things straight." `So would we, Mr Bond. Where can I pick you up?" `You can't. I'm coming to see you." `You're sure of that?" `Absolutely. I'll be with you in less than half an hour." He gave Fredericka strict instructions. `Stay in this room, even when the chambermaids come to make up the room. Don't let anyone else in. If the phone rings, pick it up and say nothing. .

`I do know how to handle it, James. I've been in the business for some time.

West End Central Police Station is a utilitarian building, without any personality, which lies off Regent Street. Over the years, an encyclopaedia of London's more fashionable criminals has walked up its front steps, and through the swing doors; infamous murderers and insignificant petty villains have sat in its bare unvarnished interrogation rooms. Now, James Bond sat on a chair that was bolted to the floor. Across the table, similarly bolted, sat the smooth-jowled Detective Chief Superintendent George Daily. A second plainclothes man hovered near the door.

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.