Ronnie Vallance

Assistant Commissioner Sir **Ronald Vallance** is the Head of Police Special Branch at Scotland Yard. He often liaises with M on local matters, or international ones that affect London.

## History

### *Moonraker*

Bond's first meeting with Vallance is in *Moonraker*. Vallance is the Assistant Commissioner (AC) at Scotland Yard with responsibility for the Special Branch, and Gala Brand's boss. Bond is favourably impressed by Vallance's freedom from interdepartmental jealousy and regards him as a friend and an ally.

### *Diamonds are Forever*

Bond meets Vallance again in *Diamonds are Forever*. Vallance's undercover "Ghost Squad" has discovered who is going to be the carrier for the latest delivery of diamonds being smuggled into the United States as part of a vast illicit diamond-trafficking business operating from Sierra Leone. Vallance arranges for a disguised Bond to meet Rufus B. Saye, head of the London branch of "The House of Diamonds", which is suspected of being a front operation for the smugglers.

Vallance then has the intended courier, Peter Franks, arrested for "conspiring to evade the customs" and Bond takes on Franks's identity, keeping his rendezvous with Tiffany Case and smuggling the diamonds into America with the aim of working his way along the smuggling "pipeline".

### "Risico"

Vallance and his Ghost Squad are next mentioned in the short story "Risico". In attempting to halt the influx of heroin into Britain, the Ghost Squad have penetrated back as far as Italy, but can get no further. Vallance requests that the Secret Service take on the case, as Bond had done earlier that year in Mexico (related at the beginning of *Goldfinger* ), but M refuses as this is a misuse of Secret Service resources.

To M's chagrin, Vallance goes over his head to the Home Office and the Ministry of Health, suggesting that this narcotics traffic may be a deliberate attempt to subvert the UK rather than just a profit-making scheme. The reluctant M is ordered by the Prime Minister to send Bond to investigate. Vallance's theory is later proved to be correct, as the man behind the drug-smugglers, Kristatos, is revealed to be in the pay of the Soviets.

### *On Her Majesty's Secret Service*

Vallance is briefly mentioned in *On Her Majesty's Secret Service*, when his full name, "Sir Ronald Vallance of the CID", is given for the first time. M telephones him at his home address on Christmas Day afternoon (disturbing his perusal of a report on teenage prostitution) to enlist his assistance in tracing Polly Tasker, a former patient at the Comte de Bleuville's allergy clinic in Switzerland, who is suspected of having introduced fowl pest into the country. He also warns Vallance that ten more girls will be arriving from Switzerland as part of de Bleuville's biological warfare offensive against the English agricultural economy.

### "The Property of a Lady"

Bond briefly invokes Vallance's name when pretending to be from the CID during his visit to Wartski.

### *Colonel Sun*

In the first Bond novel to be written after Fleming's death, *Colonel Sun*, Assistant Commissioner Vallance makes an appearance at the emergency meeting called following M's kidnapping from his home in Windsor Great Park. Also present are Bond, who did his best to prevent the kidnapping; Bill Tanner, M's chief of staff; Inspector Crawford, of the Windsor police; Sir Ranald Rideout, the Cabinet Minister responsible for the Secret Service, and Bushnell, the Permanent Under-Secretary.

Vallance seems to share the others' dislike of Sir Ranald, and the Minister for his part is described as having mentally dismissed Vallance in the past as "an over-dressed popinjay". Vallance reports on the efforts being made to trace the kidnappers, and the plans for dealing with any publicity. The meeting ends with the agreement that Bond should be sent to Athens following what slender clues were available.

### *Trigger Mortis*

Vallance is mentioned by Bond in Anthony Horowitz's continuation novel *Trigger Mortis*. After Bond and Logan Fairfax rescue Pussy Galore from being painted gold and killed, in the same fashion as Jill Masterton had months earlier, Bond uses his connections with Vallance to halt queries of what had happened to Pussy when they arrived at a local hospital.