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nose tingled with the astringent smell of fresh paint. Tom Doig, the decorator, pointed out the patch of damp in the room’s western corner, revealed when a bureau had been moved. Bond reluctantly authorised him to investigate further and wrote a cheque for £125 to cover the next period of work. He had been promising himself for years to redecorate his flat. He liked his home – its scale and situation – and had no intention of moving. Besides, his lease still had forty-four years left to run. Bond calculated – I’ll be eighty-nine if I last that long, he thought. Which would be extremely unlikely, he reasoned, given his line of work – then he grew angry with himself. What was he doing thinking about the future? It was the here and now that intrigued and fulfilled him and, as if to prove the truth of this adage to himself, he spent an hour going over all the work in the flat that Doig had completed, deliberately finding fault everywhere.
    When he’d thoroughly irritated and discomfited Doig and his team he told Donalda not to bother preparing a cold supper for him (she went home at six) and he left the decorators to swear and curse at him behind his back.
    There was a hazy afternoon sun and the day was agreeably mild and balmy. He wandered pleasurably west along the King’s Road towards the Café Picasso pondering a late lunch of some kind. The King’s Road was busy but Bond found his mind wasn’t concentrating on the passing parade – the throng of shoppers, the poseurs, the curious, the gilded, carefree young, dressed as if for a fabulous harlequinade somewhere; a noise, a random image, had triggered memories of his dream that morning and he was back in northern France in 1944 walking through an ancient oak wood towards an isolated chateau . . .
    To Bond’s eyes, it looked as if the Chateau Malflacon had been the victim of a rocket attack by a Hawker Typhoon on D-Day. The classic stone facade was cratered with the shallow impact-bursts of the Typhoon’s RP-3 rockets and the left-hand wing of the building had been burnt out, the exposed, charred roof timbers still smouldering in the weak sunshine. Bizarrely, there was a dead Shetland pony lying on the oval patch of lawn surrounded by the gravelled sweep of the driveway. There were no vehicles in sight and everything seemed quiet and deserted. The men of BRODFORCE crouched down amongst the trees of the wooded parkland around the chateau waiting while Major Brodie scanned the building with his binoculars. Birds were singing loudly, Bond remembered. The faint breeze blowing was cool and fresh.
    Then Major Brodie suggested that Corporal Dave Tozer and Mr Bond might circle round the back of the chateau and see if there was any sign of activity there. He would give them ten minutes before the rest of the men stormed through the front door, took occupancy and began their search.
    It was the same kind of hazy, weak sunshine, Bond recalled, as he neared the Café Picasso – that was what had started him thinking, again – the same sort of day as that 7 June – soft, lemony, peaceful. He and Dave Tozer had cut through the woodland and darted past an empty stable block before finding themselves in a sizeable orchard, unkempt and brambly, with some sixty or seventy trees – apple, quince and pear in the main but with some cherries here and there, already showing clumps of heavy maroon fruit. ‘Look at this, Mr Bond,’ Tozer had said with a grin. ‘Let’s snaffle this lot before the others come.’ Bond had raised his hand in caution – he had caught a scent of woodsmoke and thought he heard voices coming from the other side of the orchard. But Tozer had already stepped forward to seize the glossy cherries. His left foot sank into a rabbit hole and his ankle snapped with a crisp, distinctly audible sound, like dry kindling caught by a flame.
    Tozer grunted with pain but managed not to cry out. He also heard the voices now. He waved Bond to him and whispered,