Free Injury Time by Catherine Aird

unaccompanied it was the happy custom of the club that members themselves, if lunching alone, joined those eating at the long refectory table at the far end of the panelled dining-room.
    This was how it was that Henry Tyler came to be sitting next to Commander Alan Howkins, a senior policeman with much on his mind. It was a Monday morning and they were so far alone at the communal luncheon table.
    â€˜Good weekend?’ enquired Henry Tyler politely. He was a little stiff himself from an excess of gardening at his home in the country and he was glad that the week ahead back at his desk at the Foreign Office promised to be less taxing—physically, at least.
    The Commander shook his head. ‘Rather disappointing, actually.’
    â€˜Sorry about that.’
    â€˜Can’t expect to win them all, I suppose,’ said the policeman.
    â€˜True,’ observed Henry, projecting the proper sympathy due from a member of one of Her Majesty’s Offices of State to another. Lessons about not always winning had been learned at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office a long time ago and had been regularly reinforced by international events over the years.
    â€˜But I don’t like being beaten,’ said Howkins with unexpected savagery.
    â€˜Who does?’ said Tyler. Not that the Foreign Office ever admitted to being beaten—something which, quite typically there, they saw as completely different from ‘not winning’. What they did when it happened—for instance, in 1776—was to use another expression altogether. The Foreign Office was great on euphemisms.
    â€˜Outwitted,’ said Howkins, tearing a bread roll apart with unnecessary vigour. ‘That’s what we were.’
    â€˜Ah,’ said Tyler. So Scotland Yard, then, didn’t go in for euphemisms …
    â€˜Lost Mr Big,’ said Howkins briefly, turning to the hovering waiter. ‘I’ll have the whitebait, please, and the beef. Under-done.’
    â€˜Tough,’ said Henry Tyler. ‘No, no,’ he said hastily to the waiter, ‘I wasn’t talking about the beef. I’ll have that, too.’
    (The letters between Sir John Mordaunt and his wife had frequently dwelt on game, brawn, pickled bacon and such-like country fare and a tradition of good cooking was maintained at the club.)
    â€˜I suppose it’s always the big fish that get away,’ resumed the policeman, more philosophically.
    â€˜No,’ said Henry kindly, ‘but you miss them more than the little ones when you do lose them and you remember them for longer.’
    â€˜True.’
    â€˜Better luck next time, anyway,’ said the Foreign Office man.
    â€˜That’s what the Assistant Commissioner said after the first time,’ said Howkins.
    â€˜Like that, is it?’
    â€˜And after the second time,’ murmured the Commander into his drink, ‘he said he hoped it would be a case of third time lucky.’
    â€˜And it wasn’t?’ divined Henry Tyler without too much difficulty.
    â€˜Slipped through our fingers again on Saturday night.’
    â€˜Bad luck.’
    â€˜Oh, it can’t be luck,’ said Howkins at once. ‘He must have a system. The only trouble is that we can’t break it.’
    â€˜His luck may run out, though.’ Henry Tyler felt he ought to make a pitch for Lady Luck, who had come to the aid of the Foreign Office more often than he liked to think about.
    â€˜I’d rather ours held,’ said Howkins, demonstrating that policemen could play with words too. ‘I shouldn’t think we’ll get many more chances with this fellow.’
    â€˜Slippery customer, eh?’
    â€˜Let me tell you this much, Tyler …’
    Henry bent his head forward attentively although there were no guests within earshot. The Mordaunt Club members themselves had an unbroken history of total discretion which was implicit and not enjoined upon them. It was in the