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    'What can I expect from Customs if they ask for a statement?'
    'Exactly what I said last year.  When confronted you co-operated fully and we found no reason to bring any charges.  It happens all the time.  I'll see if anyone has been trying to breach security.'  He promised to get back to me and we parted company. 
    The next day Martin Lennon rang me on the mobile.  'The only thing I'm authorised to disclose is that Customs and Excise has not given any information out from the file we have on you.  However, a person by the name of a Mr Harding has been recorded as trying to acquire it.'
    'Thanks Martin.'
    Two days later, on Friday, I thought I'd better touch base with my old supporter from The Manchester Evening News, Andy Spinoza, the gossip columnist on "Mr Manchester's Diary."  I telephoned the "News" and was told he'd left to start his own PR company.  I obtained his cellphone number and called him.
    He sounded pleased to hear from me.  'What can I do for you?'
    'Do you remember I told you a few months ago about my investigation into The Guardian?  Well, they might give you a call to try and dig something up on me.  Call me if you hear from them, will you?'
    'I've been meaning to phone you but I lost your number.  They've already been to see me.'
    'What?  Was it Luke Harding?'
    'Yes.  He wanted to know all about you.'
    'Thanks Andy.  Good luck with the new business.  Bye.'
    After getting back to my apartment I telephoned just about everyone I could think of who I had been in contact with during our investigation.  And then, over the weekend, I thought that, for the purposes of this book, I had better get the day correct.  I thought about it for a second or two.  As I had volunteered Spinoza's name to Luke Harding on the Tuesday, and Spinoza had already been visited three days later on Friday when I called him, then Harding must have journeyed up from London on either the Wednesday or the Thursday.  I needed confirmation of the day.
    On Monday I phoned Spinoza again. 'Andy, it's Jonathan Hunt again.  Can you just tell me which day it was last week when Harding came up?  Was it Wednesday or Thursday?'
    'No,' Andy said.  'Luke Harding came up here about three weeks ago.'
    For Harding to have been up to see Spinoza three weeks before I had given him Spinoza's name, The Guardian must have put some serious time into researching me.  And yet, though he claimed to want to know all about me for a 'profile,' he didn't contact me when he was in Manchester digging up the dirt. 
    Harding had also been busy elsewhere.  On Thursday 16 April, Malcolm Keith-Hill called me from Brazil. 'You're not going to believe this,' he said, 'but I've had a visit from a Guardian journalist named Alex Bellos.'  The line was a very poor and with a lot of interference.  I got the gist of what he was saying, but decided it would be handy to have it on record, and asked him to write with the details.
    Which he did.  The letter ran:

    Dear Jonathan,
    
    You asked me to let you have a written statement regarding the visit of The Guardian reporter to my home here in Rio.
    Toward the end of March 1998 at around midday, I was surprised to find a young Englishman on my doorstep here in Barra de Guaratiba.  He introduced himself as Alex Bellos and gave me his card, which showed him to be a reporter from The Guardian.
    The purpose of his visit was, he explained, to find out more about me and my present activities!  He had received a call from London asking him to go and find me, providing him with my above address which they had apparently got from my mother, in Cornwall.
    What was I doing here in Brazil?  What was I running away from?  Who had paid me to come out here? - and for this house?  Whose house is this?  Oh - it's yours!  Where did the money come from?  Are you working at present on any production?  And so on…The subject then turned to Hamilton and our report, etc. 
Why did you produce this report?  Who put you up to it?  Who paid for you to do it, and how much?  What are your motives for wanting to criticise The Guardian?, etc…  What did you find during your research?  What are your criticisms/denunciation of The Guardian and its staff?  Why do you think you are right and The Guardian are wrong?  Do you really think Neil Hamilton is innocent, or what?  And so on…
    Naturally, I only had to tell him the truth and he soon realised that he was on a loser.  Apparently he had thought he was going to discover some hidden secrets or facts about me and you, in order to discredit us and the work we have done on this.
    About an hour and a half later, he took off in the taxi he had arrived in, which had been waiting for him in the lane - must have cost them a fortune, The Guardian that is!  Before he went, he asked me if he could take a photo of me on the veranda, with the fabulous view we have here in the background -sort of … the good life in Rio style of shot!!  Naturally I refused.  He gave me his telephone number in Rio and promised me a copy of his article when published.  Since then I have neither seen nor heard anything from him, so I don't know if The Guardian have printed his report yet.
    Looking forward to seeing you in the not too distant future…  Keep up the good work, I hope you are going to like what I have been doing out here when you see it.
    Please give my kind regards to Neil and Christine … and please apologise for me not writing to them all this time -- I think this is the first letter I have written since arriving here in December '97!
    
   All the best, friend.
   
   Malcolm.

Malcolm telephoned me a few weeks later and provided his parents' telephone number.  I subsequently rang Mrs Keith-Hill and she told me how The Guardian had deceived her into disclosing her son's address.  As with Malcolm, I asked her to put her experience into writing.

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