'You don't have to do this you know?' Pawser leant back against the wall, stuffed his hands deep into his pockets and warily watched as a car turned into the street, its lights dipping as they found them both standing in the shop front.

'I do, Pawser. If it helps find whoever killed Barry, then I must.' The cars headlights momentarily picked out Pandora's face as it crawled past.

'If it's because Dirk and Killerman have let me down, don't feel you have to. I can go alone, this is a big deal you know?' Through the plumes of his breath, he could see the car's rear lights glow red as it stopped at the far end of the road. The vehicle turned and disappeared off down Park Street.

'I understand. Why should they risk everything for this? Have you spoken to Sir Berty about the diaries?'

'I can't, how can I even know they even exist. If he refuses to hand them over and I steal them he'll know it was me. Berty's heart isn't in this despite Barry's death; a spy in the ranks is the last thing he needs.' He shook his head. 'Pandora, you'll lose your job if we get caught. They'll probably prosecute us.'

In the darkness she pulled herself close to him. 'I think it's a bit late now, isn't it. Berty was a bit elliptical about what he's going to do about me, but the minute he tells Icabalde Mayheme my security clearance will be rescinded and I'm out of a job.' She tugged her woollen hat low over her forehead and turned up the collar of her jacket. 'Let's go before I change my mind.'

'If you're sure.' Pawser fumbled in his pocket. 'Here's Dirks pass.' He slipped his arm through hers and they causally strolled over the road toward the building entrance. With one final check down the street they quickly ran up the steps and pressed themselves to pillars either side of the porch way.

Standing in Admiralty Entrance, Pawser had to concentrate hard to stop his nerves getting the better of him. Last time he'd been inside he'd almost failed to get out, now he was risking even more. Getting to the library would be no easy task, he'd have to avoid the Mr Bentley's housekeeper patrols and the ever present possibility that his heart might turn itself into a knot and pop out of his chest. He took one deep breath, ran his card through the lock, the door clicked open and they slipped into reception.

'Right, we go through this door and up to the lobby via the back staircase. Then we have to cross it without being spotted by the security team in the front atrium. Any mobile patrols we'll have to dodge and just hope we don't get seen. Ready?'

At the stop of the first stairwell, Pawser pulled open the door and peered through the crack. Two security guards leant against the reception desk, chatting. The space across to the other side of the lift lobby looked vast. 'Not a chance, not while their standing there. We'll never get across to the door over there.'

'Then we'll have to wait,' whispered Pandora.

'Hold on.' Pawser opened the door an inch further. Outside a pizza bike pulled up. The driver climbed off, grabbed a cardboard box from his seat, entered the portico and knocked loudly on the glass. The guards nodded to each other and walked across the marble floor. One undid the locks, the other pulled the door open.

'Right. Now!' Hissed Pawser. Exiting the stairwell, they darted into the corridor on the far side of the lobby. 'Quickly now.' Pawser pushed open the heavy doors of the library and they dodged through.

With a clunk he released the door, the dull noise echoing around the library. Pawser cursed, grabbed Pandora and pushed her roughly into the shadows.

'Pawser!'

'Shush.' Holding his breath he stared back through the glass panelled door. From the gloom of the passageway padded the solitary figure of Mr White, one of the Mr Bentley's housekeepers. A bolt upright security hound with dull bulldog eyes and a thick, low slung mandible. For a moment Whitey glowered at the doors then hearing laughter coming from reception, tilted his head resolutely down, thrust his shoulders forward and trotted off toward the sound.

'That was too close.' Pawser could hear the tremors in Pandora's voice. 'Where's the diary going to be?'

'To be honest, I don't know, but not out here. There's a door at the back Mrs Coaker used. She always made sure she locked it behind her, there were book filled shelves in the room beyond. Let's try that.'

Pawser led Pandora down the central aisle between the bookshelves, accompanied by the soft squeaking of the soles of their shoes on the polished floor. At the back of the room, the bright moonlight streamed through the tall windows illuminating the dull surface of a single reinforced steel door.

Pawser knelt in front of the door and unfurled his tool roll, rubbed his hands together to warm his fingers up and cracked his knuckles; the bone thin noise ricocheting around the room.

'Do you have to do that?' Pandora shuddered.

'Sorry, force of habit. It's a high security lock, it could take me a few moments but I should be able to get it open.' He extracted a hooked pin and a thin angled pick from his kit. He threw a long glance back behind them, carefully checking each of the aisles for movement. He'd been surprised in here once before and he was not going to get caught out again. Apart for the looming shapes of the packed shelves, he and Pandora were alone. Far off he could make out the distant hoot of a horn across the river. Beneath them the floor vibrated as a late night truck passed by the front of the building. Then it fell eerily silent.

Satisfied, Pawser inserted the hook, ran it around the inside if the mechanism until he felt the resistance of the first tumbler, then he carefully inserted the other. With the concentration evident on his face he twisted both tools in an anticlockwise direction feeling the pressure build up on his fingers.

It took ten minutes before he found his way around the inner maze of the lock. For a moment the mechanism held and with a final push it gave up a satisfying click. As the tumblers inside fell into alignment, one of Pawser's picks twisted out of his fingers, shot up in the air and disappeared into the darkness. With a dull thud, it hit something high above them.

'Was that meant to happen?' Pandora pulled a face and looked up into the darkness.

Inwardly Pawser cursed. Sitting down on the floor he angled his light up into the ceiling. Above them the narrow beam picked out the gun metal glint of his lock pick impaled in a ceiling tile. Moving his torch around he could pick out at least another six dust covered lock picks skewered into the polystyrene high them. He was clearly not the first to be drawn like a moth to the flame of the libraries secrets.

'Have you been a regular visitor to this library, Pawser?'

'They're not all mine, if that's what you mean.' He slid his remaining pick back into its pouch and glanced through the keyhole. The other side of the lock, an unblinking, bloodshot eye was staring back at him.

'Jesus!' Pawser threw himself back against the bookshelf behind him.

'What. What's wrong?'

For a few moments he sat, heart pounding against his chest before plucking up the courage to bend foward and look through the keyhole – nothing. 'Christ, sorry. I thought I saw something.'

'Let's see.' Pandora stooped down and peered through the key hole, 'Nothing here. You're getting the heebie-jeebies. Come on.' Turning the handle, she pushed the door open.

Inside Pawser swung his pencil penlight around the room. The room was packed with row upon row of monolithic bookshelves, crowded with piles of dust laden of books and pamphlets. Stacked in corners, tottered drunken piles of leather bound volumes, each precariously resting against its fellow like a stack of dominos likely to tumble at the faintest touch. The place looked like an absolute dump.

'Where will they be?' Pawser could hear the doubt creeping into Pandora's voice. She was probably right; this looked like a fool's errand.

'I don't know. It could take ages to find them in here. It's a set of Lockwood's diaries, hand written, small, leather bound I should think. Here take this.' he handed her his spare penlight. 'You go that way, I'll go this.'

'Ok. See you in a few moments.' He watched as Pandora's light disappeared off down the crowded aisles. Turning he headed the other way, his torch's beam bouncing off the rows of decrepit books as he squinted at the raggedy spines. At the end of the bookshelf, a single low monolith loomed up out of the darkness. His torch picked out a large mahogany table, its top laden with unopened packages and piles of neatly stacked books. Pawser, crossed to the table, picked up one of the packages and checked the postmark. It was three days old. If Lockwood had bequeathed his diaries, chances were they'd be on this table. Balancing his torch on the edge of the table he began easing the wrapping off the other packages.

Then he stopped and held his breath. Far off he could make out a soft scraping noise, like a rat scuttling along a drain. It was moving toward him.

Pawser reached over and turned off his penlight. Standing stock still in the darkness, he slowly turned his head to locate the source of the noise. What he saw made his blood run cold.

Emerging from the end of an aisle, a thin withered hand bearing an old electric lamp appeared. The hand grew into an arm then a bent, hooded figure emerged from the gloom and turned like a ghost ship toward him.

Pawser backed away until his retreat was barred by the edge of the table and watched, stupefied as the apparition glided across the floor and drifted to a halt just in front of him. Under its hood he could make out the bottom of a pale white chin creased with age and the cracked red line of a thin pair of lips. Slowly one arm rose up revealing a chicken bone forearm with a scrawny finger that turned and pointed at him. 'You!' the figure whispered hoarsely. 'You are not welcome here.'

Pawser opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

'You!' croaked the blood red lips. 'Should leave. Now!'

A sound resembling a wet duck with a severe intestinal complaint being slowly reversed over by a tarmacadam roller emanated from around Pawser's nether regions. 'Phaarrrt, phat, phat, phat, phat....'

For a moment the apparition appeared a little unsettled by the noise as it echoed around the library walls. But having gained its composure it continued. 'Why! Why are you still here? Out!'

Pawser gulped down a breath of dust laden air, just as the room flooded with light revealing a wry looking Dirk standing with his hand on the light switch and Lucy, her hands folded over her ample chest, shaking her head in disbelief.

Pawser blinked in the sudden brightness and unglued his tongue from the top of his mouth. 'What the...'

Lucy swept over to the monk and grabbed the lantern off it. 'Miss Pedsel, are you still here, come on now you must be going home. Yes, yes, I know. He has got permission, I'll deal with it.' She glanced over to Pawser, put her fingers to her lips and hustled the assistant librarian through the door.

Dirk leaned back against the wall and shook his head. 'I thought I said you shouldn't come here tonight. Mind you if I knew you had a thing for Miss Pedsel, I'd have given you a little longer.'

'Christ, Dirk,' Pawser ran a clammy hand across his forehead, 'I thought I'd entered the finale of a horror novel. What the hell's she doing sneaking around the library at this time of night? She really put the wind up me.'

'Sounded like the wind was going the other way to us, Pawser. In fact, it was most apt given that this is a library. There she was giving her all as Miss Havisham, while you threw at her, somewhat robustly I must say, your interpretation of the whole volume of Wind in the Willows.'

Lucy reappeared through the door. 'She does work here, Pawser. So she's not exactly sneaking around. Not like you.'

'I thought she was going to put a witches curse on me and then do something unconscionable with that lamp. Oh here's Pandora. Do you remember her from the party?'

'Nobody remembers much from that party, Pawser. Let's hope it remains that way. Hello Pandora.' Lucy busied herself around the table. 'We often work late. Its lights out in the library at 10.00pm otherwise we get every Tom, Dirk and Harry rolling up to use the facilities. We work here under the table lamp and we have a spare portable lamp for doing the rounds last thing. Didn't you wonder why the main library door was still open? Anyway, I've just bumped into one of Mr Bentley's team and told him I'll be working late so we won't be disturbed. He's just taking Miss Pedsel back down to reception to put her in a taxi.' Lucy switched on the brass table lamp. 'Goodness, who's that?'

Far down the aisle a dark figure appeared. Clad in a black jumpsuit the Ninja danced this way and that in the lamplight, before furtively darting off between the bookshelves.

'Killerman, stop mucking around and get down here.' Pawser called after him.

Moments later, they all sat around the long wooden table, the thin light of the lamp making pale masks of their faces as they sipped their steaming cups. 'So,' said Pawser stirring his tea. 'Do you want to tell me what's been going on?'

'To be honest, Pawser,' Dirk's watch glinted in the lamplight as he adjusted the knot on his silk tie, 'I thought you'd done enough. You're almost a lifer with MI5 and close to getting your pension. Why risk it all on this stupid break-in. I was trying to put you off while I got hold of the diaries for you. '

'Ditto.' Killerman scrunched up his balaclava in his fingers and dropped it in his haversack. 'I didn't know Dirk was going to be here. I said I was busy to put you both off so I could get in here and grab them for you.'

'You know Pawser;' Dirk pulled a wolfish grin. 'Remember the photo you showed us? Of the three amigos', Hitler, Eva and Musso. Sticking together through thick and thin. Comrades in arms and all that. Well I guess it must have permeated a bit, we weren't going to leave you in the lurch, either of us.'

'I'll drink to that.' Killerman raised his cup in the air.

'Boys, I'm gobsmacked. I don't know what to say.' It was a revelation to Pawser that after all his efforts, finally something had stuck with his team. Maybe rather than being remembered as the louche Pawser Bingham, his epitaph at MI5 might be something more becoming. Like a 'true stalwart', or, a 'born leader and a sad loss to the service', or maybe, 'an unrecognised, potential future head of MI5...'

'Pawser are you listening? You should be asking about the diaries.'

'What, you've found them? In this mess?' Pawser looked at the collapsing towers of folders in front of him, 'Sorry Lucy, but I bet this place is full of crap. I should think 90% of it are reports of UFO abductees being probed by aliens with huge proboscis's interlaced with dubious stories of rutting politicians dressed as goats, impaling naked young virgins on the Backbenches at Parliament during the PM's question time. I should think what you've got here is the biggest repository of do-do, dally, loo, this country has to offer. You'd have to be a sucker to believe in any of it.' He glanced at the open volume in front of him. 'Shit Lucy, is this real?'

'Probably Pawser, so close it if you don't mind. Miss Coaker was a bit of a hoarder I'm afraid and not that organised, so our archive here got into a bit of a mess. Miss Pedsel and I have been working late to try and get some of this catalogued and rated so Berty can establish what we've got down here and decide what to do with it.'

'Jesus. Look at this!' Dirk had picked up another sheaf of papers. 'Have you read this, Lucy?'

'Dirk please can you not touch anything and I'll have back those papers you've just stuffed in your pocket. Thank you.'

'Wait a minute,' Pawser looked questioningly at Lucy. 'What are you doing here anyway?'

'That's fairly straightforward. Just after Dirk told me you wanted to find Lockwood's dairies for Ferker-Rose, Berty gave me a call and asked me the same, though not for Ferker-Rose. I got the distinct impression they might just disappear if I gave them to Berty. Too many books down here carry the weight of political inconvenience with them. They should be preserved whatever they hold for future generations. You'd never have found them Pawser, not down here. I offered Dirk to help with your little problem. For Queen and Country, of course.' Lucy pulled a large brown paper parcel from under the reading table and placed it under the lamp. Pulling open the paper allowed a large pile of black booklets to slip out over the desk.

'My god, you've got them. You're a gem, Lucy.' Pawser picked one up and flicked through it. 'We're in trouble here, Lockwood wrote like a priest who's been possessed by the spirit of Ivan the Illiterate on the night his nemesis, Novak the Numerical Numpty challenged him to a finger lopping competition.'

'You're right, I can't read any of this either,' agreed Dirk turning to Lucy.

Lucy shrugged her shoulders and huffed. 'Oh all right, I'll look at them. Only because it might put this whole thing to bed. What is it you're looking for?'

'It's err, well, you know.' Pawser struggled in vain for something substantive.

'I take it from that lucid annunciation of your requirements that your investigation has reached an advanced stage,' declared Lucy turning her one operative eye heavenward in despair.

'To be honest Lucy, we haven't got much to go on.'

'So anything in the diaries that says, 'with certainty, the mole is...' could certainly prove to be a useful pointer.' nodded Dirk.

'Okay. So I'm looking for anything that might allude to a mole, in any manner, in any time period in Lockwood's diaries.' Lucy looked doubtfully at the large pile of books in front of her before picking one up and scanning its contents.

'That's about it, Lucy. Mind you there is the possibility that he doesn't mention anything at all. So it may be a total waste of time?'

'Thanks for that, Pawser.'

'No problem. How's Neville by the way,'

'How's Orifices and Crevices, its already seven days overdue. I'm thinking of asking one of Bentley's men to pop around to your house to collect it. And levy the penalty.' Lucy replied, dropping the booklet on the table. 'Look, this is pointless. Going through these will take ages. I'll get these to Olga tomorrow and she'll pass them to Ferker-Rose. Maybe she'll find what you need.'

'Thanks Lucy.' A slow look of realisation crawled across Pawser's face. He pushed his tea away, slumped forward and rested his head in his hands. 'Everyone, I can only say I'm really touched but I think I've reached the end of the line. Tomorrow, Jack Springer is coming calling, looking to fill one of his goolie bags. And those Irish hoods are probably eyeing up one of Penny's horses even as we speak. They'll likely detach the front bit from the back and leave it like a chocolate surprise on my pillow. I haven't identified the mole and I've made a bit of a cock up planting a forged Will for the Deputy PM.'

Lucy patted him on the shoulder. 'I was going to say it can't be that bad Pawser, but actually it sounds like you've got you head stuck up round the U-tube and someone's about to press the flusher.'

'Thanks Lucy. I needed that.'

'Come on guys,' Killerman stood up and punched his fist into the air. 'We're not going to give up this easily are we? Did General Custer give up before the Indians attacked, did our boys lose their nerve as they rode into the Valley of Death? When Nelson stood on the burning ship and one of the deck hands shouted, 'you might want to duck now, sir'. Did he move? Did he heck?'

'Very lucid Killerman, if slightly scant on motivational material. Yes, I'm afraid I'm throwing in the towel. I think I'm going to nip round to Rex's, borrow a dress and wig and spend the rest of my years living incognito as an aged pole dancer with a slight hormonal balance problem.'

'Nice idea,' said Dirk, 'I always saw you as pigtails sort of guy. But before you go out and buy a lady shave and a pair of high heels, look around you, Pawser. We've get an eminent scientist, an Oxford educated librarian, a code breaker, a navy trained officer and some bloke who likes to shoot dogs. Together we must be able to think of something before tomorrow comes?'

'You think so?'

'He's right, Pawser,' chimed in Pandora. 'Let's sit down, go through this mess and see what we can make of it.'