Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett

“Papers in order and he ain’t been robbed.”
    “He’s only been here a week or so,” the landlord said. “I don’t know much about him at all. He came from North Wales to work in a factory.”
    “Well,” the sergeant observed, “if he was as healthy as he looked he’d be in the Army.” He opened the suitcase on the table. “Bloody hell, what’s this lot?”
    The landlord and the old man had edged their way into the room now. The landlord said, “It’s a radio” at the same time as the old man said, “He’s bleeding.”
    “Don’t touch that body!” the sergeant said.
    “He’s had a knife in the guts,” the old man persisted.
    The sergeant gingerly lifted one of the dead hands from the chest to reveal a small trickle of dried blood. “He was bleeding,” he said. “Where’s the nearest phone?”
    “Five doors down,” the landlord told him.
    “Lock this room and stay out until I get back.”
    The sergeant left the house and knocked at the door of the neighbor with the phone. A woman opened it. “Good morning, madam. May I use your telephone?”
    “Come in.” She showed him the phone, on a stand in the hall. “What’s happened—anything exciting?”
    “A tenant died in a lodging house just up the road,” he told her as he dialed.
    “Murdered?” she asked, wide-eyed.
    “I leave that to the experts. Hello? Superintendent Jones, please. This is Canter.” He looked at the woman. “Might I ask you just to pop in the kitchen while I talk to my governor?”
    She went, disappointed.
    “Hello, Super. This body’s got a knife wound and a suitcase radio.”
    “What’s the address again, Sarge?”
    Sergeant Canter told him.
    “Yes, that’s the one they’ve been watching. This is an MI5 job, Sarge. Go to number 42 and tell the surveillance team there what you’ve found. I’ll get on to their chief. Off you go.”
    Canter thanked the woman and crossed the road. He was quite thrilled; this was only his second murder in thirty-one years as a Metropolitan Policeman, and it turned out to involve espionage! He might make Inspector yet.
    He knocked on the door of number 42. It opened and two men stood there.
    Sergeant Canter said: “Are you the secret agents from MI5?”
     
     
     
    BLOGGS ARRIVED at the same time as a Special Branch man, Detective-Inspector Harris, whom he had known in his Scotland Yard days. Canter showed them the body.
    They stood still for a moment, looking at the peaceful young face with its blond moustache.
    Harris said, “Who is he?”
    “Codename Blondie,” Bloggs told him. “We think he came in by parachute a couple of weeks ago. We picked up a radio message to another agent arranging a rendezvous. We knew the code, so we were able to watch the rendezvous. We hoped Blondie would lead us to the resident agent, who would be a much more dangerous specimen.”
    “So what happened here?”
    “Damned if I know.”
    Harris looked at the wound in the agent’s chest. “Stiletto?”
    “Something like that. A very neat job. Under the ribs and straight up into the heart. Quick. Would you like to see the method of entry?”
    He led them downstairs to the kitchen. They looked at the window-frame and the unbroken pane of glass lying on the lawn.
    Canter said, “Also, the lock on the bedroom door had been picked.”
    They sat down at the kitchen table, and Canter made tea. Bloggs said, “It happened the night after I lost him in Leicester Square. I fouled it all up.”
    Harris said, “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
    They drank their tea in silence for a while. Harris said, “How are things with you, anyway? You don’t drop in at the Yard.”
    “Busy.”
    “How’s Christine?”
    “Killed in the bombing.”
    Harris’s eyes widened. “You poor bastard.”
    “You all right?”
    “Lost my brother in North Africa. Did you ever meet Johnny?”
    “No.”
    “He was a lad. Drink? You’ve never seen anything like it. Spent so much on booze, he could never afford to