I nodded.
‘And you represent the company of B. & H. Evans of Manchester.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I was due to catch the plane to Munich and Milan at eleven-thirty this morning. Would you be good enough to tell me why I have been arrested?’
He looked across at me with a slight lift of his tuffy eyebrows. ‘Arrested, pan Farrell? Come now — all we wish is to put a few questions to you.’
‘If there was any way I could have helped you,’ I said, ‘surely it would have been sufficient to have sent an officer down to the hotel before I left?’
He smiled. I didn’t like that smile. It was slightly sadistic. He was like a psychiatrist whose career has taken some peculiar twist. ‘I am sorry you have been inconvenienced.’ He made it clear that he enjoyed inconveniencing people. I waited and after a moment, he said, ‘You knew pan Tucek I believe?’
‘That is correct,’ I answered.
‘You are with him when he is in England in 1940.’
I nodded.
‘And you saw him at the Tuckovy ocelarny the day before yesterday?’