Thank you to those who reviewed the last chapter. Apologies in advance to any readers who live in the Wirral. Please note some of the attitudes expressed are not those of the author.

Testing testing. For the record this is a routine equipment check to ensure that recording quality would be sustained during a long interrogation. So here goes….

My name is John and I'm a spook. No not a ghost, the other kind, the invisible men who spy. Tell anyone that you are a spy and they all go 'Ah James Bond' and then assume that you spend your life seducing fit birds. I wish. No part of that assumption is accurate, for starters James Bond was Six and I'm employed by Five, and I don't work in London either. I'm based in sun kissed Manchester and we cover the North West of England. Usually we don't have much to do with the London lot. They occupy themselves in the perpetual pursuit of the assorted terrorist loons who keep attempting to imitate Guy Fawkes, only with more success. Whatever time they have left over from that never ending task is taken up with ensuring the safety of HM Queen and her extensive family, not to mention protecting the honourable members who all vanish into the Westminster boozing hole once the election is done and dusted. That's them London MI5, the alphabetised sections of an elite corps anchored in the capital doing all the important work – or so they imply. Meanwhile those of us domiciled in what the civilised individuals who live south of the Watford Gap persist in regarding as the Northern wastelands - occupied exclusively by those with thick accents and even thicker heads - drew the straw labelled 'remnants from Ireland', ie the tow rags who've ignored the peace process and hijacked the various para military groups as a political front for organised crime. For our fun time variation we get 'Al Quaeda: Trans Pennine' branch to sort out.

That's how it is usually, but a couple of week ago it was a little different. I'd missed the curtain raiser as I was stuck on a drugs operation. When I finally hit Headquarters to make my report the office was full of it. A bomb had exploded in Allerton killing a female doctor and rumour had it that this was the start of something huge, so of course the big boys from London took over. Next thing they knew Harry Pearce's merry men were stamping around our patch. The first one had arrived in the form of his Section Chief, Tom Quinn, described to me by my mate as a long tall prong whose face would crack if he smiled. He flew in spreading joy and bonhomie on the wings of the story that the bomb was an unexploded World War two leftover. Do me a favour, whoever thought that one up should be sacked: an entire housing estate plus road built over ancient ironmongery and no one noticed! After a short few hours Quinn returned to his usual haunts, a brief pause ensued, and then part two arrived in the form of a crack surveillance team playing chasies around Liverpool city centre. Given the amount of money they must have spent on that I was tempted to consider setting a bomb off myself – perhaps then I could wrung some new equipment out of the tight fisted gits and I wouldn't now be stuck here talking myself silly as the only realistic method of checking out a recording machine that's on the wobble. Anyway as I was saying - I was even more tempted in that respect when it Act Three poked up its demanding head.

Apparently the woman responsible for all this hassle was an American called Mary Kane. She and her adorable husband specialised in killing abortionists and, as a result, had collected a capital sentence apiece back in the US of A. With her old man due to be fried in the electric chair Mary had escaped over to little ol' England and was now shacked up with a bloke called Steve in a rented cottage in the Wirral. The theory emanating from London was that she was assuaging her broken heart by planning a bombing campaign to commemorate her hubby. While they were probably right - I'm forced to admit that Section D has a good record in second guessing homicidal nutters - if its personnel ever poked their metropolitan noses in the general direction of the Wirral they might have realised that boredom probably played its part in bringing her plans to fruition. Honest, with the prevailing winds from whatever direction whipping across a terrain consisting of freezing mud flat beaches populated by seagulls shitting everywhere, it's a real hive of activity – provided you are a birdwatcher with a yen for having your privates frozen to shrinking point. Anyway London decreed that while they needed more information as a special treat for the natives they'd graciously allow the local yokels to do the donkey work. Good of them I'm sure. Which was where I came in – apparently I'd made my way onto their list of most reliable techies – fame at last, but as we obviously couldn't be trusted without Big Brother, or in this case the Fat Controller, aka Harry Pearce breathing down our necks the actual job would be overseen by one of their own.

We were at least spared the presence of the long tall prong. I mean I know the job's serious but you need a laugh. Thank God he decided that London needed him more than we did and so delegated the job to one of his sidekicks. The person we had to answer to was a female called Zoe. Classy but pleasant, I bet this operation made a change from her usual. With a face like hers she probably spent most of her time honeytrapping in high end clubs. Her orders consisted of one very straightforward instruction: bug everything in the house. We need a junior officer from Section D to tell us how to do that! Someone should have mentioned our expertise in sucking eggs.

The first stage of this fairly standard procedure meant obtaining access to the premises, which in turn meant pretending to be an emergency service. We have a variety of surveillance vans for just this eventuality, all with the principal design brief of being accurate enough to fool the dozy public. Apart from the ubiquitous white van, that one no one dares to approach in case they encounter a hungry Rottweiler licking its lips in the back, we have quasi telephone, electricity, water, gas and ambulance vehicles, even a mobile library. Heaven help us if we ever encounter a real problem when pretending to be one of those services. You can't treat someone having a heart attack with a recording bug, although courtesy of some old biddy one of my colleagues forced to become an instant expert on all things Mills and Boon while in the front cab her fellow operative was listening into the local porn baron promising to give someone a very different form of knee trembler. Anyway as we'd already successfully hacked into Steve's phone line and discovered that he and the bint were due to be visiting his sister that night we all piled into the van, expect for Ringo outriding on his motor bike, and headed off to the love nest in the Wirral. On this occasion we were playing at being the gas board yet again, on the basis that being electrical engineers was a bad idea - the last thing we wanted was light shed on our activities - so unless we punctured a water main this was the only credible service that would be out and about at that time of night. The excuse being that failure to act immediately might result in the line of cottages going boom. As the greatest risk of that happening was down to the person who was about to spend the next hour or so declaiming her gospel of destruction someone was doing a nice line in irony.

So we skulked around the corner and as soon as the duo had headed off for their evening's fun we were round the village green and outside the cottages in seconds. The first thing to do was to soothe the neighbour, an elderly woman by all accounts, so little Zoe, dolled up in coveralls as the most unconvincing gas supervisor ever – super model would be more her line –toddles off to convince Granny that we're the real deal. While she's doing the spiel, with Ringo of the motor bike standing behind setting off a hiss of gas to add verisimilitude to her fiction we're all trying to organise ourselves and our equipment out the van and into the cottage.

Oh God, not an experience I want again. First I'm trying to struggle my way through the frigging front door when a long grey streak rushes past my legs, the sodding cat that I don't know existed had escaped. That might have been okay if the place had boasted a cat flap but no 'Tiddles' wasn't allowed to go a roaming and had clearly seized the chance for freedom with all four speedy paws. Mind it was so cramped in that cottage I couldn't blame the animal. Or maybe it had heard Mary droning on about death to those she didn't approve of and in consequence had decided that it wasn't prepared to risk being turned into a fur coat, or a Chinese meal. Whatever. At that piece of news Zoe was doing her nut. I rather gathered that this was the first time she'd been let out on her own and the furry fiend had done for the operation and her in one. Result: we spent valuable bugging time playing hunt the cat with the aid of cat food. I went along with it, although from the brief glimpse I'd caught of the ruddy fur ball as it streaked past me it had seemed quite well fed, and more interested in seeking adventure than hunting out grub. Still orders are orders so I composed a delicatessen meal for the four legged friend, consisting of tuna flakes marinaded in olive oil. Zoe didn't half give me a funny look when I described this tasty treat. She obviously didn't have me down as a cat man. Actually she was quite correct but in my youth I'd been the possessor of a very old maiden great aunt who lived with about six moggies. She never could keep track of them and was forever asking if anyone had seen her pussy. I always remember that, along my Mum shooting Dad the marital glare when he made a choking sound.

While we continued to play this version of hunt the pussy, not quite the format I indulge in on the odd nights I'm allowed off duty, Zoe was ringing someone – probably the dour Quinn for instructions. Not only had Tiddles rained on her parade but to cap the evening off nicely the heavens literally opened as well. The weather was probably what saved us, despite my specialist knowledge it was Paul's instinct that threaded the vital mental connections -cat – hate – water – hide – bushes - and extracted one very damp feline from its refuge under the green thickets beneath the kitchen window. By now it was a tossup who looked like the bigger disaster zone, Zoe dripping wet, or the equally bedraggled cat now snuggling in my arms as I exhibited my trophy. Anyway she was so thrilled she even asked if I'd marry her. Not sure about marriage but there were other aspects I might have been prepared to explore: not a good idea really. Anyone shafting Zoe has to pass Harry Pearce's vetting and I could just see him coming over all Victorian father on that one. For all I knew he might be doing the job himself – it wouldn't surprise me, even in Manchester we've heard the rumours and on the one occasion when he turned up in our office all the female operatives were swooning, along with our resident gay. Can't think why myself – I mean the man is bald and overweight. Anyway having ignored Zoe's kind offer we all retired indoors. Now we weren't acting as surrogates for the RSCPA we could get on with the job we're really paid for.

Having lost time we had to work quickly. Fortunately while we'd been trying to locate the cat, the pensioner next door had decamped to her sister's, which meant we could make a modicum of noise without blowing our cover. While Zoe set about blow drying Tiddles – being the only female we left her to it as the one who knew best how to handle a hairdryer -the furball loved the fuss, we stuck bugs everywhere, apart from up the cat which as a moveable object couldn't be relied upon to give accurate feedback, despite the James Bond films telling us otherwise. Fire alarm, carriage clock, up the chimney, light fitting screws in every room. By the time we'd worked our way through the premises if either of them whispered a fart it would be picked up. We finished just in time. Practically running out of the place as the car bearing the idiots arrived home, we drove out, doubling back to park up just around the around the corner where I settled down to tune into the noises of the night.

At first we heard nothing and Zoe was stressing over whether the money had been misspent. I tried to reassure her and had just finished informing her that the equipment when adjusted slightly would even pick up breathing when the sounds of silence were replaced by the unmistakable sounds of shagging. Always a possibility when you bug a bedroom, at least this time we didn't have the visuals, shame really, that can be quite educational. Now don't misunderstand, I take all operations I work on seriously, when you know that if you get it wrong some poor bugger will be blown to kingdom come - and with the attitudes of some of our ethnic friends I mean that literally - you can't afford to be casual about what you do, but equally it's nice to have a bit of harmless fun on our job, while listening into other blokes on theirs.

Zoe's initial reaction to all the heavy breathing seemed to be disgust making me wonder if I'd been trapped for the night with the MI5 tribute act to Mary Whitehouse. When she did speak it was with the acid comment, 'So much for a righteous woman' from which I concluded that she wasn't impressed by Mary's hypocrisy. I have got to say, metaphorically speaking, while Mary was presumably fondling Steve's point I saw Zoe's. I mean Mary's claims to be a devout God botherer and is then allowing herself to be shafted on a regular basis by Steve, with her old man about to be sent into eternity. As they settled down to make a night of it I was wishing I had a bloke in with me. Don't get me wrong Zoe's a looker, very easy on the eye, and seems good at her job, but she is a female and I like to think I have some sense of refinement so I couldn't do what we normally do if it's all men together. Then we get out a stop watch and time the guy, in general we techies have our own private tally, how long they last, the number of times they get it up in a evening, and the total number of 'Oh God's' screamed out. Not that we'd have had much to bet on that night anyways. Let's just say that Steve wasn't a stellar performer – there again I don't know how they filled in the earlier part of the day. Mary's fanaticism might just have extended to demanding a regular service in the generic area of big bangs, and like I said the Wirral is short of entertainment, but judging by her comment next morning on useless Brits I doubt it. I didn't get the impression, having listened in, that she was just referring to Steve's bombing prowess. It would seem that Steve didn't satisfactorily keep his end up for Mary or for England. Some things don't make you proud to be British.

That wasn't quite the end of the operation for me but….Ah the clicking noise. This tape is nearing its end so all I need to do now is check the playback and then wipe it.

Thanks for reading and if you have a moment a review would be gratefully received. This will be the last chapter for a few days as I'll be away with variable Internet access.