'Occasionally,' he said conversationally, 'we're asked to investigate in areas for which none of our regular people are ideal.'

I looked at my coffee.

'We need someone now who knows whisky. Someone who can tell malt whisky from grain whisky, as Flora says you can.'

'Someone who knows a grain from the great grey green greasy Limpopo River?' I said. 'The Limpopo River, don't forget, was full of crocodiles.'

'I'm not asking you to do anything dangerous,' he said reasonably.

'No.' I sighed. 'Go on, then.'

'What are you doing on Sunday?' he said.

'Opening the shop from twelve to two. Washing the car. Doing the crossword.' Damn all, I thought.

'Will you give me the rest of your day from two o'clock on?' he asked.

It sounded harmless, and in any case I still felt considerable camaraderie with him because of our labours in the tent, and Sundays after all were depressing, even without horseboxes.

'O.K.' I said. 'Two o'clock onwards. What do you want me to do?'

He was in no great hurry, it seemed, to tell me. Instead he said, 'Does all grain whisky taste the same?'

'That's why you need a real expert,' I said. 'The answer is no it doesn't quite, but the differences are small. It depends on the grain used and the water, and how long the spirit's been aged.'

'Aged?'

'Newly distilled scotch,' I said, 'burns your throat and scrubs your tongue like fire. It has to be stored in wooden casks for at least three years to become drinkable.'

'Always in wood?'

'Yes. Wood breathes. In wooden casks all spirit grows blander but if you put it in metal or glass containers instead it stays the same for ever. You could keep newly distilled spirits a thousand years in glass and when you opened it it would be as raw as the day it was bottled.'

'One lives and learns,' he said.

'Anyway,' I added after a pause. 'Practically no one sells pure grain whisky. Even the cheapest bulk whisky is a blend of grain and malt, though the amount of malt in some of them is like a pinch of salt in a swimming pool.'

'Flora said you told her some of the scotch at the Silver Moondance was like that,' McGregor said.

'Yes, it was. They were selling it in the bar out of a Bell's bottle, and in the restaurant as Laphroaig.'

McGregor called for the bill. 'This wasn't my case to begin with,' he said almost absentmindedly as he sorted out a credit card. 'One of my colleagues passed it on to me because it seemed to be developing so close to my own doorstep.'

'Do you mean,' I asked, surprised, 'that your firm were already interested in the Silver Moodance?'

'That's right.'

'But how? I mean, in what connection?'

'In connection with some stolen scotch that we were looking for. And it seems, my dear Tony, that you have found it.'

'Good grief,' I said blankly. 'And lost it again.'

'I'm afraid so. We're very much back where we started. But that's hardly your fault, of course. If Jack's secretary had been less fond of Laphroaig... if Larry Trent hadn't invited him to dinner... One can go back and back saying "if", and it's profitless. We were treading delicately towards the Silver Moondance when the horsebox plunged into the marquee; and it's ironic in the extreme that I didn't know that the Arthur Lawrence Trent who owned that place had horses in training with Jack, and I didn't know he was at the party. I didn't know him by sight... and I didn't know that he was one of the men we found dead. If I'd known he was going to be at the party I'd have got Jack or Flora to introduce me.' He shrugged, 'If and if.'

'But you were... um... investigating him?' I asked.

'No,' McGregor said pleasantly. 'The person we suspected was an employee of his. A man called Zarac'

I'm sure my mouth physically dropped open. Gerard McGregor placidly finished paying the bill, glancing with dry understanding at my face.

'Yes, he's dead,' he said. 'We really are totally back at the beginning.'

'I don't consider,' I said intensely, 'that Zarac is a matter of no crocodiles.'

I spent most of Saturday with my fingers hovering over the telephone, almost deciding at every minute to ring Flora and ask her for Gerard McGregor's number so that I could cancel my agreement for Sunday. If I did nothing he would turn up at two o'clock and whisk me off heaven knew where to meet his client, the one whose scotch had turned up on my tongue. (Probably.) In the end I did ring Flora but even after she'd answered I was still shilly-shallying.

'How's Jack?' I said.

'In a vile temper, I'm afraid, Tony dear. The doctors won't let him come home for several more days. They put a rod right down inside his bone, through the marrow, it seems, and they want to make sure it's all settled before they let him loose on crutches.'

'And are you all right?'

'Yes, much better every day.'

'A friend of yours,' I said slowly, 'came to see me. Er... Gerard McGregor.'

'Oh yes,' Flora said warmly. 'Such a nice man. And his wife's such a dear. He said you and he together had helped a good few people last Sunday. He asked who you were, and I'm afraid, Tony dear, that I told him quite a lot about you and then about everything that happened at the Silver Moondance, and he seemed frightfully interested though it seems to me now that I did go on and on a bit.'

'I don't think he minded,' I said soothingly. 'Um... what does he do, do you know?

'Some sort of business consultant, I believe. All those jobs are so frightfully vague, don't you think? He's always travelling all over the place, anyway, and Tina... that's his wife... never seems to know when he'll be home.'

'Have you known them long?' I asked.

'We met them at other people's parties several times before we really got to know them, which would be about a year ago.'

'I mean... has he always lived near here?'

'Only about five years, I think. They were saying the other evening how much they preferred it to London even though Gerard has to travel more. He's such a clever man, Tony dear, it just oozes out of his pores. I told him he should buy some wine from you, so perhaps he will.'

'Perhaps,' I said. 'Er... do you have his telephone number?'

'Of course,' Flora said happily, and found it for me. I wrote it down and we disconnected, and I was still looking at it indeterminately at nine o'clock when I closed the shop.

'I half expected you to cry off,' he said, when he picked me up at two the next day.

'I half did.'

'But?'

'Curiosity, I suppose.'

He smiled. Neither of us pointed out that it was curiosity that got the Elephant's Child into deep trouble with the crocodiles in the Limpopo River, though it was quite definitely in my mind, and Gerard, as he had told me to call him, was of the generation that would have had the Just So Stories Just So Stories fed to him as a matter of course. fed to him as a matter of course.

He was dressed that afternoon in a wool checked shirt, knitted tie and tweed jacket, much like myself, and he told me we were going to Watford.

I sensed a change in him immediately I'd committed myself and was too far literally along the road to ask him to turn back. A good deal of surface social manner disappeared and in its place came a tough professional attitude which I felt would shrivel irrelevant comment in the utterer's throat. I listened therefore in silence, and he spoke throughout with his eyes straight ahead, not glancing to my face for reactions.

'Our client is a man called Kenneth Charter,' he said.'Managing Director and Founder of Charter Carriers, a company whose business is transporting bulk liquids by road in tankers. The company will transport any liquid within reason, the sole limiting factor being that it must be possible to clean the tanker thoroughly afterwards, ready for a change of contents. Today's hydrochloric acid, for instance, must not contaminate next week's crop-sprayer.'

He drove steadily, not fast, but with easy judgement of available space. A Mercedes, fairly new, with velvety upholstery and a walnut dash, automatic gears changing on a purr.

'More than half of their business,' he went on, 'is the transport of various types of inflammable spirit, and in this category they include whisky.' He paused. 'It's of course in their interest if they can arrange to pick up one load near to where they deliver another, the limiting factor again being the cleaning. They have steam cleaning facilities and chemical scrubbing agents at their Watford headquarters, but these are not readily available everywhere. In any case, one of their regular runs has been to take bulk gin to Scotland, wash out the tanker with water, and bring scotch back.'

He stopped talking to navigate throught a town of small streets, and then said, 'While the scotch is in the tanker it is considered to be still in a warehouse. That is to say, it is still in bond. Duty has not been paid.'

I nodded. I knew that.

'As Charter's tankers carry six thousand imperial gallons,' Gerard said neutrally, 'the amount of duty involved in each load is a good deal more than a hundred thousand pounds. The whisky itself, as you know, is of relatively minor worth.'

I nodded slightly again. Customs and Excise duty, value added tax and income tax paid by the shopkeeper meant that three-quarters of the selling price of every standard bottle of whisky went in one way or another to the inland revenue. One quarter paid for manufacture, bottles, shipping, advertising, and all the labour force needed between the sowing of the barley and the wrapping in a shop. The liquid itself, in that context, cost practically nothing.

'Three times this year,' Gerard said, 'a tanker of Charter's hasn't reached its destination. It wouldn't be accurate to say the tanker was stolen, because on each occasion it turned up.

But the contents of course had vanished. The contents each time were bulk scotch. The Customs and Excise immediately demanded duty since the scotch was no longer in the tanker. Charter Carriers have twice had to pay up.'

He paused as if to let me catch up with what he was saying.

'Charter Carriers are of course insured, or have been, and that's where they've run into serious trouble. The insurers, notwithstanding that they rocketed their premiums on each past occasion, now say that enough is enough, they are not satisfied and are withholding payment. They also say no further cover will be extended. Charter's face having to raise the cash themselves, which would be crippling, but more seriously they can't operate without insurance. On top of that the Customs and Excise are threatening to take away their licence to carry goods in bond, which would in itself destroy a large part of their business.' He paused again for appreciable seconds. 'The Excise people are investigating the latest theft, but chiefly because they want the duty, and the police also, but routinely. Charter's feel that this isn't enough because it in no way guarantees the continuation of their licence or the reinstatement of their insurance. They're extremely worried indeed, and they applied to us for help.'

We were speeding by this time along the M40. Another silence lengthened until Gerard eventually said, 'Any questions?'

'Well... dozens, I suppose.'

'Such as?'

'Such as why was it always the scotch that was stolen and not the gin? Such as was it always the same driver and was it always the same tanker? Such as what happened to the driver, did he say? Such as where did the tankers turn up? Such as how did you connect it all with Zarac?'

He positively grinned, his teeth showing in what looked like delight.

'Anything else?' he asked.

'Such as where did the scotch start from and where was it supposed to be going and how many crooks have you turned up at each place, and such as does Kenneth Charter trust his own office staff and why wasn't his security invincible third time around?' .

I stopped and he said without sarcasm, 'Those'll do to be going on with. The answers I can give you are that no it wasn't always the same driver but yes it was always the same tanker. The tanker turned up every time abandoned in Scotland in transport cafe carparks, but always with so many extra miles on the clock that it could have been driven as far as London or Cardiff and back.'

Another pause, then he said, 'The drivers don't remember what happened to them.'

I blinked. 'Don't remember?'

'No. They remember setting off. They remember driving as far as the English border, where they all stopped at a motorway service station for a pee. They stopped at two different service stations. None of them remembers anything else except waking up in a ditch. Never the same ditch.' He smiled. 'After the second theft Kenneth Charter made it a rule that on that run no one was to eat or drink in cafes. The drivers had to take what they wanted with them in the cab. All the same they still had to stop for nature. The police say the thieves must have been following the tanker each time, waiting for that. Then when the driver was out of the cab, they put in an open canister of gas... perhaps nitrous oxide, which has no smell and acts fast... it's what dentists use... and when the driver climbed back in he'd be unconscious before he could drive off.'

'How regular was that run?' I asked.

'Normally twice a week.'

'Always the same tanker?'

'No,' he said contentedly. 'Charter's keep four tankers exclusively for drinkable liquids. One of those. The other three made the run just as often, but weren't touched. It may be coincidence, maybe not.'

'How long ago was the last load stolen?' I asked.

'Three weeks last Wednesday.'

'And before that?'

'One in April, one in June.'

'That's three in six months,' I said, surprised.

'Yes, exactly.'

'No wonder the insurers are kicking up a fuss.'

'Mm.' He drove quietly for a while and then said, 'Every time the scotch was destined for the same place, a bottling plant at Watford, north of London. The scotch didn't however always come from the same distillery, or the same warehouse. The stolen loads came from three different places. The last lot came from a warehouse near Helensburgh in Dunbartonshire, but it set off from there in the normal way and we don't think that's where the trouble is.'

'In the bottling plant?' I asked.

'We don't know, for sure, but we don't think so. The lead to the Silver Moondance looked so conclusive that it was decided we should start from there.'

'What was the lead?' I said.

He didn't answer immediately but in the end said, 'I think Kenneth Charter had better tell you himself.'

'O.K.'

'I should explain,' he said presently, 'that when firms call us in it's often because there are things they don't necessarily want to tell the police. Companies very often like to deal privately, for instance, with frauds. By no means do they always want to prosecute, they just want the fraud stopped. Public admission that a fraud was going on under their noses can be embarrassing.'

'I see,' I said.

'Kenneth Charter told me certain things in confidence which he didn't tell the police or the Customs and Excise. He wants his transport firm to survive, but not at any price. Not if the price in personal terms is too high. He agreed I should bring you in as a consultant, but I'll leave it to him to decide how much he wants you to know.'