Admiral Kirkland said: "Good God," but let the question stand.

"Some." Maxim wondered whether to try and count back, then added a tentative inspiration: "And I've seen quite a number of people hit by small-arms fire in operational situations. If they're not moving already, they tend to crumple or stagger to keep their balance."

Had he tried to be too helpful? But the glances and feeling around the table had swung against the AC. Policemen, Maxim was coming to realise, were seen in Cabinet Office circles as co-existent but certainly not equal.

Admiral Kirkland said: "Quite. What I'd say from my own experience. Don't expect we'll ever clear that point up."

The AC opened his mouth for another question, then turned a page of Maxim's statement instead. "Now, halfway down page 2, you met the inspector in the East Cloister. Where had he come from?"

"I don't know. There's several…" Maxim checked himself in time. "He was a bit further up the Cloister, towards the Abbey." Several members glanced at the big ground plan of the Abbey buildings which lay in the middle of the table, speckled with tiny coloured markers and pencil tracks. Maxim had already charted his own movements on it.

"How far from you?"

"Six-no, more, eight or ten feet."

"What did he say?"

"I said to him-I can't remember the exact words, but-"

"Just go ahead," Admiral Kirkland assured him. "Give us the sense of it."

"I asked if anybody had come past him and he said No, and then he said the shooting had been inside. The Abbey."

"What did he do then?"

"I don't know. I went the other way, into the Dark Cloister, after Person X."

"You didn't see him again after the explosion?"

Maxim thought. "Not to remember. There were quite a lot of people around immediately after that."

"Would you describe the inspector, please?"

Puzzled, Maxim tried to dredge back the hasty glimpse. "A bit shorter than me, say five-ten… older, fiftyish… just a bit of short grey hair over his ears… I think a thin face, a moustache… The rest was his uniform."

"You're sure he was an inspector?"

"The two pips on his shoulders."

"Did you notice his number?"

"He didn't have a number." Inspectors didn't.

"Yes, I'm sorry… How long would you say you spent with him?"

"Hardly any time at all. Just long enough to say what we said."

"How long would that be?"

"I don't know… three, four seconds?"

"You were looking at him the whole time?"

"No. I was trying to watch down the Dark Cloister."

"So you perhaps saw him for… one second?"

"It might have been that."

"One second." The AC broke off and thumbed through a neat stack of papers, reaching without looking for a cigarette from an open packet on the table, lighting it with a throwaway lighter. All the time thatone second hung in the air dissolving slower than his first breath of smoke. The Committee glanced at Maxim and away again, all except Sprague who smiled throughout with rich sympathy. The AC grunted, drew out a paper and skimmed it.

"Sir Roderick"-he looked up at the chairman-"we had three inspectors covering that area, by which I mean the Deanery, the Revestry and the door at the west end of the North Cloister. Two are in their thirties, one just forty: we prefer to have the younger men on these security jobs. None of them reports having seen or spoken to Major Maxim between the shooting in the Abbey and the explosion. I spoke to them all myself. Oh, none of them has a moustache, either."

Emotions swept through Maxim as quick as heartbeats: disbelief, annoyance, apprehension and then, to his ownsurprise, relief. He said: "You've got a fake copper, then. And a conspiracy. Just put on a uniform and walk in carrying a clip-board."

"Was he carrying a clip-board?" That was the dry, disinterested voice of the D-G from five, at the far end of the table.

"Yes, sir, he was. I remember now."

"You remember now. Good." The D-G took up the questioning. "And what did this man, thisfake copper, actually do?"

"Well, he… didn't really do anything."

"Did he call a warning to the Person X?"

"No, sir."

"Or try to misdirect you away from him?"

"Well, there wasn't much point… No."

"Or try to impede you in any way?"

"No."

"You wouldn't say that this/afeecopper, whom you saw for one second-approximately-was of much constructive help to any conspiracy, then?" The D-G was speaking to a distant corner of the ceiling and sounded very bored.

"No, sir."

I blew it, Maxim thought.

"Yes, on the whole, it would appear that you did," George said equably. "A phoney copperis a new dimension… the trouble is, it rather forces an issue that we'd all been hoping to avoid. It proves either that there was a conspiracy, or that you're a fantasist. Not much middle ground for us to do any deals over, now."

"If we could find the copper…"

"Quite. But don't expect any help from the police if they don't believe he exists-and they'd rather hedidn't exist, seeing what he proves about their security."

"How's the Army going to come out of it now?"

"I shall need to think about that… They may see the easiest way as taking some responsibility for the security aspect…"

"Would it help if I resigned my commission right now?"

"Dear me, no. It would be the height of presumption for the sacrificial lamb to ruin the ceremony by committing suicide first, and you would probably, and rightly, find yourself reincarnated in the Royal Air Force. Anyway, why choose self-pity when there's still the option of alcoholic beverages? Have another?"

"Thanks. I think I will."

"You will? You must be in a bad way." George collected the glasses and got up. "Don't get carried away by the atmosphere in here and do the Decent Thing. You know how I hate drinking alone."

Maxim smiled wanly. Boodle's was just one of he didn't know how many clubs, institutions and associations George belonged to-probably George didn't know himself-and that early in the evening they had the big drawing-room to themselves. With its tall ceiling, sombercolours and the undergrowth of dark leather Chesterfields, armchairs and small tables, it could well have been the anteroom of a well-born regiment at the turn of the century. Or perhaps a film producer's idea of one, and in such films somebody always placed a loaded revolver in the table drawer and left the disgraced officer alone…

There was a final edition of the Standard in the rack: the President had flown direct to Paris from Lakenheath air base, but the front page picture was the drawing of Person X that Maxim had helped a police artist construct. Releasing that showed that other lines of inquiry had failed, and Maxim wasn't too sure even he would recognise the man from the drawing. It was just a squarish, middle-aged face with thinning hair and no pronounced features. Moreover, it looked somehow coarser than his brief memory, and he hadn't been able to explain just how. He suspected the artist put a hint of criminality into all his faces; it would be difficult not to, after so many years at it.

George who usually managed to be a few hours ahead of the public-although never as far ahead as Sprague-had seen the picture already. "Aged between forty-five and sixty (extraordinary they can't do better than that), probably sedentary life, appendicitis scar, non-smoker… The trouble is, that anybody who thinks 'That looks like old Fred' isn't going to think of old Fred as shooting people in the Abbey. We're not dealing with the criminal class. Maybe in a month or two they'll connect it up with some Missing Persons report, but… By the way, I saw the report on the rifle. It hadn't jammed, just got a dud round up the spout. So he could've cleared it just by working the action: instead, he dropped it and ran. Any comment?"