myself a final fling and put the nose down and swooped over their heads in a long arrowing dive across the cliff and the beach and the sea, wheeling against the beaten gold reflection and moving into wind again, lowering, the trailing edge fluttering near stalling point a few feet above the ground; then I put the nose down and ran in with my feet ploughing up the sand as I got the last of the wind out of the sail. I was still dismantling when Norton came sprinting along from the cliff path to help me. 'London,' he said. 'I'm frozen stiff,' I told him. 'Look after this, will you?' I left him and ran hard for a mile, as far as the pier and back, feeling better because I'd worked a bit of the frustration out: there was absolutely no point in getting annoyed just because he'd mentioned London. They couldn't send me out again, not this soon. 'Police escort,' Norton said as he strapped the spars together. 'Not my fault.' 'All I need,' I said, 'is a phone.' 'And the best of luck.' 'Oh, for Christ's sake shut up.' I hated panic, and a police escort meant someone in London was panicking. It was ten minutes before we got the kite up the steps in the cliff. The two cops helped us stow it on the rack of Norton's MG, asking a lot of silly questions, what did it feel like, wasn't it dangerous, so forth. They followed us to the hotel and I used the telephone and talked to three people, one of them Tilson; then I put the phone down and came back to the lobby and told Norton: 'You weren't joking.' He puffed out his cheeks. 'Are you taking your car?' 'Yes. I'll need it to come back in, tomorrow.' He didn't make any comment. The two cops were looking at us from the entrance doors and one of them called out: 'We were told to get a move on. It's up to you.' I went over to the desk to pay my bill. 'Give me a lift?' Norton asked me. 'Where to?' I was thinking of Helena. 'London.' I turned and looked at him. 'Do they want you too?' 'They might.' I suppose he could have gone over to the telephone booth by the doors while I was calling London: the first line I'd tried had been engaged. Maybe they'd told him to make sure I got there. 'Look,' I told the cashier, 'there's a Helena Swinburn meeting me here in an hour from now. Give her this message and get the florist to bring round some gardenias, if not, orchids, if not, carnations, all right? Add twenty-five to the card to cover it. And I'm leaving my bags in the room.' He was making notes. 'You'll be keeping the room, then, sir? ' 'Yes. I'll be back tomorrow some time.' I could hear Norton whistling under his breath. He'd caught some of the panic from London when he'd phoned, typical admin reaction. I went over to the cops. 'What's the form?' 'You follow us. If you can't keep up, just give a toot.' 'Bloody cheek,' I said and went out to look for the jag. In the next ten minutes we cleared all the red lights in the town with the siren and flashers going and settled down into the nineties as soon as we got on to the motorway north, reaching Mitcham in seventy minutes flat. 'Chopper,' Norton said. He hadn't spoken before. I'd been watching it. The patrol car was slowing hard in front of us and taking us across the common, pulling up close to the spot where the helicopter was touching down on skis. It was a police machine with the coat-of-arms of the Royal Borough of Westminster on the side; I suppose they hadn't been able to get the Sussex constabulary to fly us in from the coast. Everyone had obviously been playing about with the radio and I began feeling depressed because this was fully-alert procedure and I was meant to be on leave. The door slid back and a voice came above the sound of the blades. 'No baggage?' 'No' 'Hop in.' Norton's foot slipped on the metal rung of the step as he swung up.