Barry hardly dared speak. His heart was racing and he could feel an anxiety attack coming on as he answered.

“She doesn’t own any assets in the UK any more, apart from a few hundred pounds in her current account. The remaining assets of the business were sold to the employees for one pound under a legal covenant last week. Later the same day the employees transferred their assets in the company to another greeting card company for an undisclosed amount.

SOCA says that the deal is watertight without clear evidence that criminal funds purchased, or were invested in, the company, and we have no such evidence. It seems that she paid around three million for the business when she acquired it and took around three million when she left. SOCA say that the courts would accept the argument that the illegal assets , if any, were paid into the company and paid out by the company in equal amounts, and so no money laundering has taken place and no illegal assets remain in the company. In short, their lawyers say that we have no case, even if we could prove Gillian Davis had accrued her three million investment money illegally. None of that is relevant anyway; we simply have no idea where her money is now.”

The director flung back the stressless office recliner he used as a desk chair, which was clearly not working to reduce his stress, and leaned over Barry Mitchinson, hatred burning in his eyes.

“I’d say Cuba has a good chance of being the new home of Davis’s fortune, wouldn’t you? Idiot!”

Sorry, sir,” Barry responded meekly. This seemed to send the Director into an uncontrollable rage.

“Sorry? You spineless piece of garbage! Are you just going to sit around for the rest of your life and let people defecate on you from a great height? You were a Director here, for heaven’s sake. You had a Thames view, and when they told you the special operations division was going you meekly sat back and let the DG demote you. Have you no pride?

Do you know that the powers that be had a bet on how low you could be demoted before pride kicked in and you raised a fuss? But you never did, and so they all lost their bets. I won because I said you’d stay even if I sent you to work in the cafeteria. They had a good laugh at that. You are a joke. Now, get out of my office. I need to call your wife and tell her I need a good blow job tonight. She’ll come running, as she always does - as she always has. Then, whilst she is mopping up, she’ll make some joke about you not being able to get it up. Poor Eloise; she deserves a good shagging and I’ll make damn sure she gets one.”

***

Something in Barry Mitchinson snapped; the stress, the drugs and the drink combined to produce a white heat of rage such as he had never before experienced. He toyed with the idea of telling the Director that he knew all about his wife and her many conquests, and how he used his wife to extract useful information from the Director in their post coital banter.

Barry wanted to tell him that for years he had been banging the Director’s own secretary, the delicious Maureen, often over the Director’s own desk and in his precious thousand pound ‘stressless’ chair.

He wanted to humiliate the man by telling him that between them he and Maureen had amassed almost a million pounds from foreign governments, who believed it was the Director they had in their pockets when they had never even spoken to him. But he did none of these things; he reacted as he had never done before. He reacted physically.

The first blow was a head butt that spread the Director’s nose over his face, blood trickling down the crevices made by his jowls. The second blow was a firm punch to the solar plexus, which doubled the Director over towards Barry’s third blow, an uppercut that sent the older man back into his chair, unconscious.

***

Mitchinson was still shaking when Maureen came into the room.

“My word, Barry, I heard what he said, but this! This will get you sent down.”

Barry was suddenly back in control. He looked at Maureen, and with the hand that seconds before had inflicted a terrible violence on his boss, he gently stroked her cheek.

“It’s still early, and there aren’t many people around. We need to act quickly. Bring me your keyboard and mouse.”

Maureen looked confused, but she did as her lover asked and returned with a standard keyboard and mouse.

Barry plugged both appliances into the Director’s laptop and opened Microsoft Word. Typing carefully on Maureen’s keyboard, he wrote a note on the Directors machine.

To Security Service Director General; Dame Monica Stewart - Smith.

Dear Monica,

I realise this will come as a shock but I cannot go on, I have made mistakes, too many to mention, but they have taken their toll. I was never there for my children and my wife is well aware of my continuing infidelity. I have betrayed my college friend Barry Mitchinson by conducting a long term affair with his wife and my former girlfriend Eloise, and on this issue I simply cannot find it in me to be ashamed.

Where I do feel ashamed is in my illegal dealings with foreign agencies who have asked for, and have been granted favours and access they were not entitled to receive.

I have betrayed you, my wife, MI5 and my country.

Having removed the people who knew about my indiscretions, I believed I was safe, though I do regret that Doug and Tim had to die to keep my secret safe. Unfortunately one more person knows all about my secret arrangements, and she has avoided my attempts at assassination and has flown to Cuba. I have no doubt she will reveal all as soon as she lands.

I am, at heart, something of a coward in these matters and I cannot take the shame and opprobrium that awaits me and so this will be my last missive. Please ensure that my wife receives all of the benefits to which she is entitled. She has been faithful, true and blameless in all of this.

I hope that this final selfish action can, in some way protect the agency and the country from embarrassment.

Ian.

Barry did not bother to print the note, rather he saved it to the ‘documents’ folder and left it displaying on the screen. He unplugged the keyboard and mouse and handed them back to Maureen. She took them back to her desk and re-attached them to her own machine.

With both office doors secured, as they had been during their passionate lovemaking in the past, Barry spoke as he wiped the blood from the desk with a screen wipe.

“This is how it happened. You heard a loud noise and so you tapped on the door to see if the Director needed assistance, only to discover he was beyond help. You then noticed the message on his screen. And this is the most important part, you will say that it is not possible that anyone passed you, either in or out, between his closing the door and his suicide. Do you understand?”

Maureen nodded blankly. Barry held her shoulders gently. Looking into her tear-filled eyes, he continued.

“Responding to his earlier call to me to join him for coffee, I arrived to find you sobbing uncontrollably on the sofa. OK?”

“Yes. But what are you going to do?”

“You’ll see. When it’s done I’ll leave and return in a few minutes. Are you with me on this?” Maureen nodded again. “Now is the time for us to move on and spend some of that money we‘ve salted away, to spend more time together.”

Realising the nature of the proposal, Maureen buried her face in his shoulders. Barry held her at arm’s length and said, nodding in the direction of their dead boss, “Save your tears for him. He will need someone to mourn his sorry life.”

***

As with all other buildings in the UK, smoking was not allowed inside Thames House, and so smokers were expected to congregate outside in a designated area. The trouble with that arrangement, of course, was that it smelled awful and cigarette debris overflowed the bin and contaminated the whole area. It was a foul place, and it was meant to be that way. Perry Jameson was cleverer than the bosses, though; or so he thought.