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I looked in the vanity mirror at the black car four vehicles behind.
'Still with us?' asked Bowden.
'Yup. Let's find out what they want. Take a left here, then left again and drop me off. Carry on for a hundred yards and then pull up.'
Bowden dropped me off as instructed, sped on past the next corner and stopped, blocking the street. I ducked behind a parked car and, sure enough, the large black Pontiac swept past me. It drove round the next corner, stopped abruptly when it saw Bowden and started to reverse. The car was big and the road narrow, and with me tapping on the smoked-glass window and waving my badge, the driver obviously thought brazening it out would be a better course of action.
'So here I am,' I told him as soon as he had wound down the window. 'What do you want?'
The driver looked at me.
'We seem to have taken a wrong turning, miss. Can you tell me the way to Pete and Dave's Dodo Emporium?'
I was unimpressed by their drab cover story, but I smiled anyway. They were SpecOps as much as I was.
'We can lose you just as easily, boys. Why don't you just tell me who you are so we can all get along a lot better?'
The two men looked at one another and then held up their badges for me to see. They were SO-5, the same Search & Containment unit I was at when we hunted down Hades.
'SO-5?' I queried. 'Tamworth's old outfit?'
'I'm Phodder,' said the driver. 'My associate here is Kannon. SpecOps 5 has been reassigned.'
'Does that mean Acheron Hades is officially dead?'
'The case will always remain open, Miss Next – but Acheron was only the third most evil criminal mind on the planet.'
'Then who – or what — are you after this time?'
'Classified. Your name came up in preliminary enquiries. Tell me, has anything odd happened to you recently?'
'What do you mean, odd?'
'Unusual. Deviating from the customary. Something outside the usual parameters of normalcy. An occurrence of unprecedented weird.'
I thought for a moment.
'No.'
'Well,' said Mr Phodder, 'if it does, would you call me on this number?'
'Sure.'
I took the card, bade them goodbye and returned to Bowden. We were soon heading north to the Cirencester road, the Pontiac nowhere in sight. I explained who they were to Bowden, who raised his eyebrows and said:
'Sounds ominous. Someone worse than Hades?'
'Perhaps. Where's the next stop?'
'Cirencester and Lord Volescamper.'
'Really?' I replied in some surprise. 'Why would someone as eminent as Volescamper get embroiled in a Cardenio scam?'
'Search me. He's a golfing buddy of Braxton's so this could be political. Better not dismiss it out of hand and make him look an idiot – we'll only be clobbered by the chief.'
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We swung in through the battered and rusty gates of Vole Towers and motored up the long drive, which was more weed than gravel. We pulled up outside the imposing Gothic Revival house which was clearly in need of repair, and Lord Volescamper came out to meet us. Volescamper was a tall man with grey hair and an exuberant manner. He was wearing an old pair of herringbone tweeds and brandished a pair of secateurs like a cavalry sabre.
