A Delicate Truth A Novel

4





The brown A4 envelope landed face upwards on the doormat of Toby Bell’s flat in Islington at twenty past three on a Saturday morning, shortly after his return from a rewarding but stressful tour at the British Embassy in Beirut. Immediately on security alert, he grabbed a hand torch from his bedside and tiptoed warily along the corridor to the sound of softly retreating footsteps down the stairs and the closing of the front door.

The envelope was of the thick, oily variety, and unfranked. The words PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL were written in large inked capitals in the top-left corner. The address T. Bell, Esquire, Flat 2, was done in a cursive, English-looking hand he didn’t recognize. The back flap was double sealed with sticky tape, the torn-off ends of which were folded round to the front. No sender’s name was offered, and if the antiquated Esquire, spelt out in full, was intended to reassure him, it had the opposite effect. The contents of the envelope appeared to be flat – so technically a letter, not a package. But Toby knew from his training that devices don’t have to be bulky to blow your hands off.

There was no great mystery about how a letter could be delivered to his first-floor flat at such an hour. At weekends the front door to the house was often left unlocked all night. Steeling himself, he picked up the envelope and, holding it at arm’s length, took it to the kitchen. After examining it under the overhead light, he cut into the side of it with a kitchen knife and discovered a second envelope addressed in the same hand: ATTENTION OF T. BELL, ESQ. ONLY.

This interior envelope too was sealed with sticky tape. Inside it were two tightly written sheets of headed blue notepaper, undated.

As from:

The Manor,

St Pirran,

Bodmin,

Cornwall


My dear Bell,

Forgive this cloak-and-dagger missive, and the furtive manner of its delivery. My researches inform me that three years ago you were Private Secretary to a certain junior minister. If I tell you that we have a mutual acquaintance by the name of Paul, you will guess the nature of my concern and appreciate why I am not at liberty to expand in writing.

The situation in which I find myself is so acute that I have no option but to appeal to your natural human instincts and solicit your complete discretion. I am asking you for a personal meeting at your earliest possible convenience, here in the obscurity of North Cornwall rather than in London, on any day of your choosing. No prior warning, whether by email, telephone or the public post, is necessary, or advisable.

Our house is presently under renovation, but we have ample room to accommodate you. I am delivering this at the start of the weekend in the hope that it may expedite your visit.

Yours sincerely,

Christopher (Kit) Probyn.

PS Sketch map and How to Reach Us attached. C.P.

PPS Obtained your address from a former colleague under a pretext. C.P.

As Toby read this, a kind of magisterial calm descended over him, of fulfilment, and of vindication. For three years he had waited for just such a sign, and now here it was, lying before him on the kitchen table. Even in the worst times in Beirut – amid bomb scares, kidnap fears, curfews, assassinations and clandestine meetings with unpredictable militia chiefs – he had never once ceased to wrestle with the mystery of the Operation That Never Was, and Giles Oakley’s inexplicable U-turn. The decision of Fergus Quinn, MP, white hope of the powers-that-be in Downing Street, announced just days after Toby was whisked off to Beirut, to step down from politics and accept the post of Defence Procurement Consultant to one of the Emirates, had provided fodder for the weekend gossip writers, but produced nothing of substance.

Still in his dressing gown, Toby hurried to his desktop. Christopher (Kit) Probyn, born 1950, educated Marlborough College and Caius, Cambridge, second-class honours in Mathematics and Biology, rated one tight paragraph in Who’s Who. Married to Suzanna née Cardew, one daughter. Served in Paris, Bucharest, Ankara, Vienna, then various home-based appointments before becoming High Commissioner to a pattern of Caribbean islands.

Knighted en poste by the Queen, retired one year ago.

With this harmless entry, the floodgates of recognition were flung wide open.

Yes, Sir Christopher, we do indeed have a mutual acquaintance by the name of Paul!

And yes, Kit, I really do guess the nature of your concern and appreciate why you are not at liberty to expand in writing!

And I’m not at all surprised that no email, telephone or public post is necessary or advisable. Because Paul is Kit, and Kit is Paul! And between you, you make one low flyer and one red telephone, and you are appealing to my natural human instincts. Well, Kit – well, Paul – you will not appeal in vain.


As a single man in London, Toby had made a point of never owning a car. It took him ten infuriating minutes to extract a railway timetable from the Web, and another ten to arrange a self-drive from Bodmin Parkway station. By midday he was sitting in the buffet section watching the rolling fields of the West Country stutter past so slowly that he despaired of arriving at his destination before nightfall. By late afternoon nevertheless, he was driving an overlarge saloon with a slipping clutch and bad steering through narrow lanes so overhung with foliage that they resembled tunnels pierced with strands of sunlight. Soon he was picking up the promised landmarks: a ford, a hairpin bend, a solitary phone box, a cul-de-sac sign, and finally a milestone saying ST PIRRAN CH’TOWN 2 MILES.

He descended a steep hill and passed between fields of corn and rape bordered by granite hedges. A cluster of farm cottages rose up at him, then a sprawl of modern bungalows, then a stubby granite church and a village street; and at the end of the street on its own small rise, the Manor, an ugly nineteenth-century yeoman’s farmhouse with a pillared porch and a pair of outsized iron gates and two pompous gateposts mounted with stone lions.

Toby did not slow down on this first pass. He was Beirut Man, accustomed to collecting all available information in advance of an encounter. Selecting an unmetalled track that offered a traverse of the hillside, he was soon able to look down on a jumble of pitched slate roofs with ladders laid across them, a row of dilapidated greenhouses and a stables with a clock tower and no clock. And in the stable yard, a cement mixer and a heap of sand. The house is presently under renovation, but we have ample room to accommodate you.

His reconnaissance complete, he drove back to the village high street and, by way of a short, pitted drive, drew up at the Manor porch. Finding no bell but a brass knocker, he gave it a resounding whack and heard a dog barking and sounds of ferocious hammering from the depths of the house. The door flew open and a small, intrepid-looking woman in her sixties sternly examined him with her sharp blue eyes. From her side, a mud-caked yellow Labrador did the same.

‘My name’s Toby Bell. I wondered if I might have a word with Sir Christopher,’ he said, upon which her gaunt face at once relaxed into a warm, rather beautiful smile.

‘But of course you’re Toby Bell! D’you know, for a moment I really thought you were too young for the part? I’m so sorry. That’s the problem with being a hundred years old. He’s here, darling! It’s Toby Bell. Where is the man? Kitchen probably. He’s arguing with an old bread oven. Kit, stop banging for once and come, darling! I bought him a pair of those plastic earmuff things but he won’t wear them. Sheer male obstinacy. Sheba, say hullo to Toby. You don’t mind being Toby, do you? I’m Suzanna. Nicely, Sheba! Oh dear, she needs a wash.’

The hammering stopped. The mud-caked Labrador nuzzled Toby’s thigh. Following Suzanna’s gaze, he peered down an ill-lit flagstone corridor.

‘That really him, darling? Sure you’ve got the right chap? Can’t be too careful, you know. Might be the new plumber.’

An inward leap of recognition: after three years of waiting, Toby was hearing the voice of the true Paul.

‘Of course he’s the right chap, darling!’ Suzanna was calling back. ‘And he’s absolutely dying for a shower and a stiff drink after his journey, aren’t you, Toby?’

‘Good trip, Toby? Found your way and everything? Directions didn’t lead you astray?’

‘Absolutely fine! Your directions were impressively accurate,’ Toby called, equally heartily, down the empty passage.

‘Give me thirty seconds to wash my hands and get these boots off and I’ll be with you.’

Torrent of tap water, honk, gurgle of pipes. The true Paul’s measured footsteps approaching over flagstones. And finally the man himself, first in silhouette, then in worker’s overalls and ancient gym-shoes, drying his hands on a tea cloth before grasping Toby’s in a double grip.

‘Bloody good of you to come,’ he said fervently. ‘Can’t tell you what it means to us. We’ve been absolutely worried sick, haven’t we, darling?’

But before Suzanna could confirm this, a tall, slender woman in her late twenties with dark hair and wide Italian eyes had appeared as if from nowhere and was standing at Kit’s side. And since she seemed more interested in taking a look at Toby than greeting him, his first assumption was that she was some kind of house servant, perhaps an au pair.

‘Hi. I’m Emily. Daughter of the house,’ she said curtly, reaching past her father to give his hand a perfunctory shake, but with no accompanying smile.

‘Brought your toothbrush?’ Kit was asking. ‘Good man! In the car? You fetch your things, I’ll show you up to your room. And darling, you’ll rustle up some boys’ supper for us, will you? The fellow must be starving after his travels. One of Mrs Marlow’s pies will do him a power.’


The main staircase was work in progress, so they were using the old servants’ staircase. The paint on the wall should be dry, but best not touch it, Kit said. The women had disappeared. From a scullery, sounds of Sheba getting her wash.

‘Em’s a medic,’ Kit volunteered as they climbed, his voice echoing up and down the stairwell. ‘Qualified at Bart’s. Top of her year, bless her. Tends the poor and needy of the East End, lucky devils. Dicky floorboard here, so watch your step.’

They had reached a landing with a row of doors. Kit threw open the middle one. Dormer windows gave on to a walled garden. A single bed was neatly turned down. On a writing table lay foolscap paper and ballpoint pens.

‘Scotch in the library as soon as you’ve powdered your nose,’ Kit announced from the doorway. ‘Stroll before supper if you’re up for it. Easier to talk when the girls aren’t around,’ he added awkwardly. ‘And watch out for the shower: it’s a bit of a hot number.’

Entering the bathroom and about to undress, Toby was startled to hear a blare of angry voices coming through the door. He stepped back into the bedroom to see Emily in tracksuit and sneakers, balancing a remote control in her hand, standing over the television, running through the channels.

‘I thought I’d better check that it worked,’ she explained over her shoulder, making no effort to lower the sound. ‘We’re in a foreign posting here. Nobody’s allowed to hear what anyone is saying to anyone else. Plus walls have ears and we haven’t got any carpets.’

The television still blaring, she came a stride closer.

‘Are you here instead of Jeb?’ she demanded, straight into his face.

‘Who?’

‘Jeb. J–E–B.’

‘No. No, I’m not.’

‘Do you know Jeb?’

‘No. I don’t.’

‘Well, Dad does. It’s his big secret. Except Jeb calls him Paul. He was supposed to be here last Wednesday. He didn’t show. You’re in his bed, actually,’ she added, still regarding him with her brown gaze.

On the television, a quiz-show host was whipping up a furore.

‘I don’t know a Jeb, and I’ve never met a Jeb in my life,’ Toby replied in a carefully measured voice. ‘I’m Toby Bell, and I’m Foreign Office.’ And as a calculated afterthought, ‘But I’m also a private person, whatever that means.’

‘So which are you being now?’

‘A private person. Your family’s guest.’

‘But you still don’t know Jeb?’

‘Not as a private person, nor as a Foreign Service official do I know a Jeb. I thought I made that clear.’

‘So why’ve you come?’

‘Your father needs to talk to me. He hasn’t yet said why.’

Her tone eased, but only a little:

‘My mother’s discreet unto death. She’s also ill and doesn’t respond well to stress, which is unfortunate because there’s a lot of it about. So what I’m wondering is, are you here to make things worse or better? Or don’t you know that either?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

‘Does the Foreign Office know you’re here?’

‘No.’

‘But on Monday, it will.’

‘I don’t think you should presume that at all.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because first I need to listen to your father.’

Howls of jubilation from the television set as somebody wins a million pounds.

‘You talk to my father tonight and leave in the morning. Is that the plan?’

‘Assuming we’ve done our business by then.’

‘It’s St Pirran’s turn for Matins. My parents will be on church parade at ten. Dad’s a sidesman or a beadle or something. If you say your goodbyes before they leave for church, you could stay behind and we could compare notes.’

‘So far as we can, I’d be happy to.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘If your father wants to talk confidentially, then I have to respect his confidence.’

‘What about if I want to talk confidentially?’

‘Then I would respect your confidence too.’

‘Ten o’clock then.’

‘Ten o’clock.’

Kit was standing in the hall, clutching a spare anorak:

‘Mind if we do whisky later? Spot of weather coming up.’


They tramped through the drenched walled garden, Kit flourishing an old ash walking stick, Sheba at his heels and Toby struggling after them in a pair of borrowed wellingtons that were too big for him. They followed a towpath lined with bluebells and crossed a rickety bridge marked DANGER. A granite stile gave on to the open hillside. As they climbed, a west wind blew fine rain into their faces. There was a bench on the hilltop, but it was too wet to sit on, so they stood partly facing each other, eyes half closed against the rain.

‘All right up here?’ Kit asked, meaning, presumably: do you mind standing here in the rain?

‘Of course. Love it,’ Toby said politely, and there was a hiatus in which Kit seemed to screw up his courage, then plunge.

‘Operation Wildlife,’ he barked. ‘Roaring success, we were told. Drinks all round. Knighthoods for me, promotion for you – what?’

And waited, scowling.

‘I’m sorry,’ Toby said.

‘What for?’

‘I’ve never heard of Operation Wildlife.’

Kit was staring at him, the affability draining from his face. ‘Wildlife, for Christ’s sake, man! Hugely secret operation! Public-private enterprise to kidnap a high-value terrorist’ – and when Toby still gave no sign of recognition: ‘Look here. If you’re going to deny you ever heard of it, why the devil did you come down here?’

Then stood there glowering, with the rain running down his face, waiting for Toby’s answer.

‘I know you were Paul,’ Toby said, in the same measured tone he had employed with Emily. ‘But I’d never heard of Operation Wildlife until you mentioned it just now. I never saw any papers relating to Wildlife. I never attended meetings. Quinn kept me out of the loop.’

‘But you were his Private Secretary, for Christ’s sake!’

‘Yes. For Christ’s sake, I was his Private Secretary.’

‘How about Elliot? You heard of Elliot?’

‘Only indirectly.’

‘Crispin?’

‘Yes, I’ve heard of Crispin,’ Toby conceded, in the same level tone. ‘I’ve even met him. And I’ve heard of Ethical Outcomes, if that’s any help.’

‘Jeb? How about Jeb? Heard of Jeb?’

‘Jeb is also a name to me. But Wildlife isn’t, and I’m still waiting to know why you asked me to come here.’

If this was supposed to mollify Kit, it had the opposite effect. Jabbing his stick at the dip directly below them, he roared above the wind:

‘I’ll tell you why you’re here. That’s where Jeb parked his bloody van! Down there! Tyre marks till the cows trampled them. Jeb. Leader of our gallant British detachment. The chap they chucked on the scrapheap for telling them the truth. Down on his uppers. And you had no part in any of it, I suppose?’

‘None whatever,’ Toby replied.

‘Then maybe you’ll tell me,’ Kit suggested, his rage abating slightly, ‘before one or other of us goes mad, or we both do: how come you don’t know what Operation Wildlife was about, whereas you do know Paul and Jeb and the rest of them despite the fact that your own minister kept you out of the loop, which I personally find bloody hard to believe?’

Delivering his simple answer, Toby was surprised to discover that he had undergone no crisis of the soul, only an agreeable sense of catharsis:

‘Because I tape-recorded your meeting with the minister. The one where you said you were his red telephone.’

Kit took a while to absorb this:

‘Why the hell would Quinn do that? I never saw a man so jumpy. Tape his own secret meeting? Why?’

‘He didn’t tape it. I did.’

‘Who for?’

‘Nobody.’

Kit was having trouble making himself believe this:

‘Nobody told you to do it? You did it absolutely on your own. Secretly? With nobody’s permission?’

‘Correct.’

‘What an absolutely bloody filthy thing to do.’

‘Yes. Wasn’t it?’ Toby agreed.

In single file they returned to the house, Kit stomping ahead with Sheba and Toby trailing at a respectful distance.


Heads down, they sat at the long pine table drinking Kit’s best Burgundy and eating Mrs Marlow’s steak-and-kidney pie while Sheba watched covetously from her basket. It was beyond Kit’s powers to neglect his duties as a host, and Toby, whatever his faults might be, was his guest.

‘Don’t envy you bloody Beirut, I will say,’ he said stiffly, replenishing Toby’s glass.

But when, in a spirit of reciprocity, Toby enquired after Kit’s tour of the Caribbean, he was curtly warned off:

‘Not a good subject in this house, I’m afraid. Bit of a sore point.’

After which, they had to make do with Foreign Office chit-chat – who the big guns were these days, and whether Washington might finally come back to the Office, or be given to another outsider. But Kit very quickly lost patience and soon they were scurrying across the stable yard in pouring rain, Kit leading the way with a torch as they skirted piles of sand and granite setts. Then the sweet smell of hay as they passed empty horseboxes on their way to the old saddle room, with its brick walls, high, arched windows, and iron Victorian fireplace, ready laid.

And on an old linen press that did duty as a sofa-table, a wad of A4 paper, a pack of best bitter beer and a bottle of J&B, unbroached – all set ready, Toby assumed, not in honour of himself, but of Jeb, the guest who hadn’t come.

Kit had dropped into a crouch and was holding a match to the fire.

‘We’ve got a thing here called Bailey’s Fayre,’ he said into the fireplace, poking with his long forefinger at the flames. ‘It’s supposed to go back to God knows when. Load of balls.’ And after puffing vigorously at the kindling: ‘I’m about to break every bloody rule I ever believed in, in case you didn’t know.’

‘Well, that makes two of us, doesn’t it?’ Toby replied.

And some kind of complicity was born.


Toby is a good listener, and for a couple of hours he has barely spoken except to offer the odd murmured word of sympathy.

Kit has described his recruitment by Fergus Quinn, and his briefing by Elliot. He has flown to Gibraltar as Paul Anderson, paced his hated hotel room, huddled on the hillside with Jeb, Shorty, Andy and Don, and provided his own ear- and eyewitness account of Operation Wildlife and its supposedly glorious conclusion.

He has described the Fayre: scrupulously monitoring himself as he goes along, catching himself out on this or that small point and correcting himself, then carrying on.

He has described with determined dispassion, though it comes hard to him, the discovery of Jeb’s handwritten receipt, and its impact upon Suzanna, then himself. He has yanked open a drawer of his desk and with a brusque ‘take a look for yourself’, pressed on him the flimsy piece of lined paper.

He has described with thinly disguised revulsion his meeting with Jay Crispin at the Connaught, and his reassuring phone call to Suzanna that in retrospect seems to cause him more pain than any other single episode.

And now he is describing his encounter with Jeb at the club.

‘How the hell did he know you were staying there?’ Toby interrupted in subdued bewilderment, at which a kind of joy briefly suffused Kit’s harrowed features.

‘Bugger stalked me,’ he said proudly. ‘Don’t ask me how. All the way from here to London. Saw me board the train in Bodmin, rode on it himself. Stalked me to the Connaught, stalked me to my club. Stealth,’ he added in marvel, as if stealth were a brand-new concept to him.


The club bedroom boasts a school bedstead, a washbasin with a towel no bigger than a pocket handkerchief and a two-bar electric fire that used to be coin-operated until an historic decision by the committee ruled that the cost of heating be included in the nightly charge. The shower is an up-ended coffin of white plastic crammed into a cupboard. Kit has successfully found the light switch but not yet closed the bedroom door behind him. Wordless, he watches Jeb get up from his chair, advance across the floor to him, pick the room key out of his hand, lock the door with it, drop it into the pocket of his smart blazer, and return to his seat beneath the open window.

Jeb orders Kit to switch off the overhead light. Kit obeys. Now the only light source is the glow of London’s orange night sky through the window. Jeb asks Kit for his cellphone. Kit mutely hands it over. Unbothered by the half-darkness, Jeb removes the battery, then the SIM card as deftly as if he were stripping down a gun, and tosses the pieces on to the bed.

‘Take your jacket off, please, Paul. How drunk are you?’

Kit manages ‘not very’. The Paul discomforts him but he takes his jacket off anyway.

‘Have a shower if you like, Paul. Just leave the door open.’

Kit doesn’t like, but ducks his head into the washbasin and sluices water on to his face, then rubs his face and hair with the towel in an effort to rub himself sober, but he is becoming more sober by the second anyway. A mind under siege can do a lot of things at once, and Kit’s is doing most of them. He is making a last-ditch effort to persuade himself that Jay Crispin was telling the truth and Jeb is the barking psychopath with the gift of the gab that Crispin said he was. The bureaucrat in him assesses his best course of action on this unproven assumption. Should he humour Jeb, offer him sympathy, medical help? Or should he – fat chance – lull him into complacency and wrest the key from him? Or failing that, make a mad dash for the open window and the fire escape? All this over urgently transmitted messages of love and abject apology to Suzanna, and requests to Emily for advice on the handling of the mentally sick and potentially violent patient.

Jeb’s first question is the more alarming for its placidity:

‘What did Crispin tell you about me, Paul, back there in the Connaught Hotel?’

To which Kit mumbles something to the effect that Crispin merely confirmed that Operation Wildlife was an unqualified success, an intelligence coup of exceptional value, and bloodless:

‘Everything it was trumped up to be, in fact. More’ – cavalierly adding – ‘despite that foul message you wrote on your so-called receipt for my wife’s handbag.’

Jeb stares at Kit without expression, as if he has misheard. He whispers something to himself that Kit can’t catch. Then there follows a moment which Kit, for all his determined objectivity, seems at a loss to describe in comprehensible terms. Somehow Jeb has crossed the bit of threadbare carpet that separates him from Kit. And Kit, with no memory of how he got there, finds himself jammed up against the door with one arm behind his back and one of Jeb’s hands holding him by the throat, and Jeb is talking into his face and encouraging Kit’s replies with smacks of his head against the doorpost.

Kit stoically recounts what happened next:

‘Bang. Head against the doorpost. Red sky at night. “What were you getting out of it, Paul?” What d’you mean? I say. “Money, what d’you think I mean?” Not a bloody bean, I told him. You’ve got the wrong man. Bang. “What was your share of the bounty, Paul?” Bang. Didn’t have a bloody share, I told him, and take your hands off me. Bang. I was angry with him by then. He’d got my arm in this bloody horrible twist. If you go on doing that, I said, you’ll break my f*cking arm, and neither of us will be any the wiser. I’ve told you everything I know, so leave me alone.’

Kit’s voice lifts in pleased surprise:

‘And he did, dammit! Just like that. Left me alone. Took a long look at me, stood back and watched me slide down the wall in a heap. Then helped me to my feet again like a bloody Samaritan.’

Which was what Kit called the turning point: when Jeb went back to his chair and sat in it like a beaten boxer. But now Kit becomes the Samaritan. He doesn’t like the way Jeb is heaving and shaking:

‘Sort of sobbing noise coming out of him. Lot of choking. Well’ – indignantly – ‘if your wife’s been ill half her life, and your daughter’s a bloody doctor, you don’t just sit there gawping, do you? You do something.’

So Kit’s first question of Jeb, after they have sat in their separate corners for a while, is whether there’s anything Kit can get for him, his idea being – though he keeps the thought to himself – that in extremis he’ll track down old Em, as he insists on calling her, and get her to phone through a prescription to the nearest all-night chemist. But Jeb’s only response is to shake his head, get up, walk across the room, pour himself a tooth-glass of water from the washbasin, offer it to Kit, drink some himself, and sit down again in his corner.

Then after a while – could have been minutes, says Kit, but neither of them’s going anywhere so far as he knows – Jeb asks, in a hazy sort of voice, whether there’s any food about. It’s not that he’s actually hungry as such, he explains – bit of pride kicking in here, according to Kit – it’s for fuel purposes.

Kit regrets he has no food with him, but offers to pop downstairs and see if he can rustle something up with the night porter. Jeb receives this suggestion with another prolonged silence:

‘Seemed a bit out of it, poor chap. Gave me the impression he’d lost his train of thought and was having a spot of trouble getting it back. Know the feeling well.’

But in due course, good soldier that he is, Jeb braces himself, and digs in his pocket and hands over the bedroom key. Kit gets up from the bed and puts on his jacket.

‘Cheese all right?’

Cheese will be fine, says Jeb. But plain mousetrap, he can’t handle blue. Kit thinks that’s all he’s got to say, but he’s mistaken. Jeb needs to make a mission statement before Kit goes off to find cheese:

‘It was one big load of lies, see, Paul,’ he explains, just as Kit is preparing to go downstairs. ‘Punter was never in Gibraltar. It was all made up, see. And Aladdin, well, he was never going to meet him, not in those houses or anywhere else, was he?’

Kit is wise enough to say nothing.

‘They conned him. Ethical did. Conned that minister of yours, Mr Fergus Quinn. Jay Crispin, the great one-man private-intelligence service. They led Quinn up the garden path and over the edge, same as where he led us, didn’t he? Nobody wants to admit they handed over a couple of million dollars in a suitcase for a load of old cobblers, well do they?’

Kit supposes not.

Jeb’s face has gone back into darkness and he is either silently laughing or – only Kit’s guess – silently weeping. Kit dithers at the door, not wanting to leave him, but not wanting to fuss over him either.

Jeb’s shoulders settle. Kit decides it’s all right to go downstairs.


Returned from his foray in the bowels of the club, Kit heaves the bedside table to the middle of the floor and sets a chair either side of it. He lays out a knife, bread, butter, Cheddar cheese and two pint bottles of beer and a jar of Branston Pickle that the night porter insisted on including in exchange for his twenty-pound tip.

The bread is white and pre-sliced in anticipation of tomorrow’s breakfast. With a slice laid flat on his palm, Jeb spreads butter, adds the cheese and trims it till it tessellates on the bread. Then he spoons pickle on top, takes up another slice of bread and makes a sandwich and cuts it methodically into quarters. Regarding such precision as unnatural in a Special Forces soldier, Kit puts it down to Jeb’s troubled state of mind and busies himself with the beer.

‘So down the hill we go to the terrace then, don’t we?’ Jeb resumes, when he’s taken the edge off his appetite. ‘No point in not, really, is there? Well, we had our reservations, naturally. Fix, find and finish? Well, maybe we hadn’t begun, what with Andy having done a job with Elliot way back, and not possessing a high opinion of him, frankly, not of his abilities, and not of the intelligence at his disposal either. Source Sapphire her name was, according to Elliot at the pre-operational briefing.’

‘What briefing was that then, Jeb?’ Kit interrupts, momentarily resentful that he wasn’t invited.

‘The briefing in Algeciras, Paul,’ Jeb replies patiently. ‘Pre-op. Just across the bay from Gibraltar. Just before we’re to get ourselves into position on the hillside. In a big room above a Spanish restaurant, it was, and us all pretending to be a business conference. And Elliot up there on the platform, telling us how it’s going to be, and his ragtag team of American freebooters sitting there in the front row, not talking to us because we’re regular and Brits. Source Sapphire says this, source Sapphire says that. Or Elliot says she does. It’s all according to Sapphire, and she’s right there with Aladdin on the fancy yacht. She’s Aladdin’s mistress and I don’t know what else she isn’t, all the pillow talk she’s hearing. Reading his emails over his shoulder, listening to his phone calls in bed, sneaking up on deck and telling it all to her real boyfriend back in Beirut, who passes it on to Mr Crispin at Ethical, and Bob’s your uncle, like.’

He loses the thread, finds it, and resumes:

‘Except Bob isn’t anybody’s uncle, is he? Not Bob. Maybe as far as Ethical is concerned, he is. But not for our own British intelligence. Because British intelligence won’t buy into the operation, will it? Same as the regiment won’t – or nearly won’t. The regiment doesn’t like the smell of it – who would? But it doesn’t like missing out either. And it doesn’t like political pressure. So it’s a good old British compromise: a deniable toe in the water but not the whole foot. And me and the boys, we’re the toe, like. And Jeb here will be in charge because good old Jeb’s the steady one. Maybe a bit on the pernickety side, but with those daredevil mercs around, all the better for it. Granny Jeb, they used to call me. Not that I minded, if it meant not taking unnecessary risks.’

Jeb takes a sip of his beer, closes his eyes, and plunges quickly on.

‘House number seven it’s supposed to be. Well, we thought: let’s take six and eight too while we’re about it, one house per man and me the back-up, it’s all a bit daft anyway, what with Elliot at the controls there. All a bit Mickey Mouse, frankly, half the equipment not working the way it ought, what’s the difference? There’s no way they’d teach you that in training, is there? But the targets weren’t going to be armed, were they? Not according to Elliot’s brilliant intelligence. Plus we only wanted one of them, and the other we can’t touch. So go into the three houses simultaneously for the surprise, we say, and do a room-by-room. Catch your man, make sure he’s the right man, bundle him over the balcony to the shore party, keeping your feet at all times planted firmly on the Rock. Simple really. We had the layout of the houses, each the same as the other. One nice living room with big balcony on the seaward side. One master bedroom with sea views and one cupboard-sized second bedroom for a child. Bathroom and kitchen-diner below, and the walls paper-thin, which we knew from the estate agent’s particulars. So if you don’t hear anything apart from the sea, assume they’re hiding or not there, employ extreme caution at all times, plus don’t use your weapon except in self-defence and get the hell out in double-quick time. It didn’t feel like an op, why should it? More a silly ghost walk. The boys go in, one house each. I’m outside keeping an eye on the open staircases down to the seashore. “Nothing there.” That’s Don in six. “Nothing there.” That’s Andy, house eight. “I’ve got something.” That’s Shorty, in seven. What have you got, Shorty? “Droppings.” What the hell d’you mean, boy, droppings? “Come and see for yourself, man.”

‘Well, you can fake an empty house, I know that, but house seven was truly empty. Not a skid-mark on the parquet floor. Not a hair in the bathtub. Kitchen the same. Except for this one plastic bowl on the floor, pink plastic, with bits of pitta bread and chicken meat in it, torn up small like you would for’ – he is searching for the right small creature – ‘for a cat, a young cat.’ But cat’s not right: ‘Or a puppy or something. And the bowl, the pink bowl, warm to touch. If it hadn’t been on the floor, I suppose I would have thought different. Not cats and dogs but something else. I wish I had now. If I’d thought different, maybe it wouldn’t have happened, would it? But I didn’t. I thought cat or dog. And the food in the bowl warm too. I pulled my glove off to put my knuckles on it. Like a warm body, it was. There’s a small frosted window overlooking the outside staircase. The latch is loose. You’d have to be a midget to squeeze through a space like that. But maybe it’s a midget we’re looking for. I call up to Don and Shorty: check the outside staircases, but no going down to the shore, mind, because if anyone’s going to tangle with the boat party it’ll be me.

‘I’m talking slow motion because that’s how I remember it,’ Jeb explains apologetically, while Kit watches the sweat running down his face like tears. ‘It’s one thing then the next thing for me. Everything single, like. That’s how I remember it. Don comes through. He’s heard this scuffle. Thinks there’s someone hiding down on the rocks underneath the outside staircase. “Don’t go down there, Don,” I tell him. “Stay right where you are, Don, I’m coming right up.” The intercom’s a proper madhouse, frankly. Everything’s going through Elliot. “We’ve had a tentative, Elliot,” I tell him. “Exterior staircase number seven. Underneath.” Message received and out. Don’s standing sentry at the top, pointing down with his thumb.’

Kit’s own thumb, as if unknown to him, was making the same gesture as he told Jeb’s story into the flames.

‘So I’m going down the outside staircase. One step, pause. Another step, pause. It’s concrete all the way, no gaps. There’s a turn to the staircase, like a half-landing. And there’s six armed men on the rocks below me, four flat on their bellies and two kneeling, plus two more back in the inflatable behind them. And they’re all in their firing positions, every one of them, silenced semis at the ready. And underneath me – right under my feet here – there’s this scrabbling noise like a big rat. And then a little shriek to go with it, like. Not a loud shriek. More pressed in, like it was too scared to speak. And I don’t know – and never will, will I? – whether that shriek came from the mother or her child. Nor will they, I don’t suppose. I couldn’t count the bullets – who could? But I can hear them now, like the sound you get inside your head when they pull your teeth out. And there she is, dead. She’s a young Muslim woman, brown-skinned, wearing a hijab, an illegal from Morocco, I suppose, hiding in the empty houses and living off her friends, shot to ribbons while she’s holding her baby girl away from her to keep her out of the line of fire, the little girl she’s been making the food for. The same food I thought was for a cat because it was on the floor, see. If I’d used my head better, I’d have known it was a child, wouldn’t I? Then I could have saved her, I suppose. And her mother too. Curled up on the rocks like she’s flying forward on her knees from the bullets they put into her, the mother is. And the baby girl lying out of her grasp in front of her. A couple of the sea party look a bit puzzled. One man stands with his fingers spread across his face like he’s trying to tear it off. And there’s this quiet moment, like, when you’d have thought they were going to have a good quarrel about who’s responsible, until they decide there’s no time for any of that. They’re trained men – of a sort, anyway – they know what to do in an emergency, all right, even if they don’t know anything else. Those two bodies were on the inflatable and back to the mother ship faster than ever Punter would have been. And Elliot’s boys along with them, all eight, no stragglers.’

The two men are staring at one another across the bedside table, just as Toby is staring at Kit now, Kit’s rigid face lit not by the glow of the London night but by the firelight in the stable.

‘Did Elliot lead the sea party?’ Kit asks Jeb.

Jeb shakes his head. ‘Not American, see, Paul. Not immune. Not exceptional. Elliot stays home with the mother ship.’

‘So why did the men fire?’ Toby asked at last.

‘You think I didn’t bloody ask him?’ Kit flared.

‘I’m sure you did. What did he say?’

It took several deep breaths for Kit to come up with a version of Jeb’s answer.

‘Self-defence,’ he snapped.

‘You mean, she was armed?’

‘No I bloody don’t! Neither did Jeb. He’s thought of nothing else for three years, can’t you imagine? Telling himself he was to blame. Trying to work out why. She knew somebody was there, sussed them somehow – saw them or heard them – so she grabbed the child and wrapped it in her robe. I didn’t presume to ask him why she ran down the steps instead of heading inland. He’s been asking himself the same question day and night. Maybe inland scared her more than the sea. Her food bag had been picked up, but who by? Maybe she mistook the boat team for people smugglers, the same crowd that had brought her to the Rock in the first place – if they did – and they were bringing her man to her, and she was running down the steps to greet him. All Jeb knows is, she came down the steps. Bulked out by the child inside her robe. And what did the beach team think? Bloody suicide bomber, coming to blow them up. So they shot her. Shot her child while he watched. “I could have stopped them.” That’s all the poor bugger can say to himself when he can’t sleep.’


Summoned by the lights of a passing car, Kit strode to the arched window and, standing on tiptoe, peered keenly out until the lights disappeared.

‘Did Jeb tell you what happened to him and his men after the boat party had returned to the mother ship with the bodies?’ Toby asked, of his back.

‘Flown to Crete same night by charter. For a debriefing, so-called. The Americans have got a bloody great airbase there, apparently.’

‘Debriefing by?’

‘Men, plain-clothes chaps. Brainwashing, by the sound of it. Professionals, was all he could say. Two Americans, two Brits. No names, no introductions. Said one of the Americans was a little fat bastard with effeminate mannerisms. Pansy-boy, according to Jeb. The pansy-boy was the worst.’

But better known to the staff of the Private Office as Brad the Music Man, thought Toby.

‘Soon as the British combat team touched down in Crete they were separated,’ Kit went on. ‘Jeb was leader so he got the heavy treatment. Said the pansy-boy ranted at him like Hitler. Tried to persuade him he hadn’t seen what he saw. When that didn’t work, he offered him a hundred thousand dollars not to bubble. Jeb told him to shove it up his arse. Thinks he was confined in a special compound for non-accountable prisoners in transit. Thinks it’s where they would’ve put Punter if the story hadn’t been a lot of bollocks from the start.’

‘How about Jeb’s comrades-in-arms?’ Toby persisted. ‘Shorty and the others. What became of them?’

‘Thin air. Jeb’s hunch is, Crispin made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. Jeb didn’t blame them. Not that sort of chap. Fair-minded to a fault.’

Kit had lapsed into silence, so Toby did the same. More headlights drifted across the rafters and vanished.

‘And now?’ Toby asked.

‘Now? Now nothing! The big empty. Jeb was due here last Wednesday. Breakfast 9 a.m. sharp, and we’d go to work. Said he was a punctual chap. I didn’t doubt him. Said he’d do the journey at night, safer. Asked me if he could hide his van in the barn. I said of course he bloody could. What did he want for breakfast? Scrambled egg. Couldn’t get enough of scrambled egg. I’d get rid of the women, we’d scramble ourselves some eggs, then put the story down on paper: his part, my part. Chapter and verse all the way. I’d be amanuensis, editor, scribe, and we’d take as long as it took. He’d got this piece of evidence he was all excited about. Didn’t say what it was. Cagey to a fault, so I didn’t press. You don’t press a chap like that. He’d bring it or he wouldn’t. I accepted that. I’d make the written presentation for both of us, he’d vet it, sign off on it, and it would be my job to see it through the proper channels to the top. That was the deal. Shook hands on it. We were –’ he broke off, scowled into the flames. ‘Happy as fleas,’ he said jerkily, colouring. ‘Eager for the fray. Pumped up. Not just him. Both of us.’

‘Because?’ Toby ventured.

‘Because we were going to tell the bloody truth at last, why d’you think?’ Kit barked angrily, taking a pull of Scotch and subsiding into his chair. ‘Last time I saw him, all right?’

‘All right,’ Toby agreed softly, and a long silence followed, until Kit grudgingly resumed.

‘Gave me a cellphone number. Not his own. Hasn’t got one. A friend’s. Comrade’s. Only chap he still trusted. Well, partly, anyway. My guess is it was Shorty, because they seemed to have a rapport in the hide. I didn’t ask, wasn’t my business. If I left a message, somebody would get it to him. That was all that mattered. Then he left. Left the club. Down the stairs and away, don’t ask me how. I thought he’d leave by the fire escape, but he didn’t. He just left.’

Another pull of Scotch.

‘And you?’ Toby enquired in the same quiet, respectful voice.

‘I came home. What d’you think? To this place. To Suzanna, my wife. I’d promised her everything was all right, now I had to tell her it wasn’t all right at all. You can’t fake it with Suzanna. I didn’t tell her the details. I told her Jeb was coming to stay, and between us we’d sort it out. Suzanna took it – the way she does. “Just as long as it means resolution, Kit.” I said it did, and that was good enough for her,’ he ended aggressively.

Another wait while Kit wrestled with his memory.

‘Wednesday came. All right? Midday, Jeb still hadn’t shown up. Two o’clock, three, still hadn’t. I call the cellphone number he’s given me, get an automated answer, leave a message. Nightfall, I leave another message: hullo, it’s me, Paul, here again. Just wondered what happened to our date. Keeping Paul as my code name. For security. I’d given him our landline number here because we don’t get a signal. Thursday I leave another bloody message, get the same answering service. Friday morning, ten, we get a phone call. Jesus Christ!’

He has clapped a bony hand over his lower jaw and is holding it there, muzzling the pain that refuses to be stilled, because the worst is evidently still to come.


Kit isn’t sitting in his club bedroom listening to Jeb any more. He isn’t shaking Jeb’s hand by the light of a London dawn, or watching him slip away down the club stairs. He’s not happy as a flea or pumped up, even if he’s still eager for the fray. He’s back home at the Manor and, having broken the bad news to Suzanna, he’s worried sick and eating his heart out, praying with every hour that slips by for a belated sign of life from Jeb. In an effort to keep himself busy, he’s sanding the floorboards next to the guest room and he can’t hear a bloody thing, so when the phone rings in the kitchen, it’s Suzanna who picks it up, and Suzanna who has to climb the stairs to the top floor and hammer on Kit’s shoulder to get his attention.

‘It’s somebody wanting Paul,’ she says, when he’s turned off the sander. ‘A woman.’

‘What sort of woman, for God’s sake?’ – Kit, already heading downstairs.

‘She won’t say. She needs to speak to Paul personally’ – Suzanna, hurrying down after him.

In the kitchen, Mrs Marlow, all agog, is doing flowers at the sink.

‘Bit of privacy, if you don’t mind, Mrs M,’ Kit commands.

And waits till she has left the room before picking up the phone from the sideboard. Suzanna closes the door after her and stands rigid beside him, arms across her chest. The telephone has a loudspeaker mode for when Emily calls. Suzanna knows how to work it, and switches it on.

‘Am I speaking to Paul, please?’ – educated, middle-aged female in professional mode.

‘Who’s this?’ Kit asks warily.

‘My name is Dr Costello and I’m calling from the mental-health wing of Ruislip General Hospital, at the request of an inpatient who wishes to be known only as Jeb. Am I speaking to Paul, or to someone else?’

Fierce nod from Suzanna.

‘I’m Paul. What’s the matter with Jeb? Is he all right?’

‘Jeb is receiving excellent professional care and is in good physical health. I understand you were expecting a visit from him.’

‘Yes. I was. Still am. Why?’

‘Jeb has asked me to speak to you frankly, in confidence. May I do that? And this really is Paul?’

Another nod from Suzanna.

‘Of course it is. It’s Paul. Absolutely. Go ahead.’

‘I assume you know that Jeb has been mentally unwell for some years.’

‘I was aware of that. So what?’

‘Last night, Jeb volunteered himself as an inpatient here. We diagnosed chronic schizophrenia and acute depression. He has been sedated and is on suicide watch. In his lucid moments his greatest concern is for you. For Paul.’

‘Why? Why should he be worried about me?’ – eyes on Suzanna – ‘I should be worrying about him, for Heaven’s sake.’

‘Jeb is suffering from severe guilt syndrome brought on in part by malicious stories that he fears he’s been spreading among his friends. He asked that you treat them for what they are: symptoms of his schizophrenic condition, with no basis in reality.’

Suzanna thrusts a note at him: Visit?

‘Yes, well look here, Dr Costello, the point is, when can I come and see him? I could hop in the car now, if that would help. I mean, d’you have hours? What goes on?’

‘I’m very sorry, Paul. I’m afraid a visit by you at this time could cause serious damage to Jeb’s mental health. You are his fear object and he is not ready for a confrontation.’

Fear object? Me? Kit would like to refute this outrageous allegation but tactic prevails.

‘Well, who else has he got?’ he demands, this time off his own bat, no prompting from Suzanna. ‘Has he got other friends who visit him? Relatives? I know he’s not exactly gregarious. How about his wife?’

‘They’re estranged.’

‘Not exactly what he told me, but still.’

Brief silence while Dr Costello apparently checks the record:

‘We are in touch with a mother,’ she recites. ‘Any developments, any decisions regarding Jeb’s treatment and welfare, will be referred to his natural mother. She is also his empowered guardian.’

The phone pressed to his ear, Kit flings up an arm, and at the same time swings round to Suzanna in astonishment and blatant disbelief. But his voice stays steady. He’s a diplomat, he’s not about to give the game away.

‘Well, many thanks for that, Dr Costello. Very kind of you indeed. At least he’s got some family to look after him. Can you give me his mother’s phone number? Maybe she and I could have a chat.’

But Dr Costello, kind though she may be, cites data protection and regrets that parting with Jeb’s mother’s number is not, in the circumstances, something she is able to do. She rings off.

Kit on fire.

With Suzanna looking on in approving silence, he dials 1471 and establishes that the caller withheld her number.

He calls Enquiries, gets himself put through to Ruislip General Hospital, asks for the mental-health wing, asks for Dr Costello.

The male nurse couldn’t be more helpful:

‘Dr Costello’s attending a course, mate, back next week.’

‘How long’s she been away?’

‘Also a week, mate. It’s a he, actually. Joachim. Sounds more German to me, but he’s Portuguese.’

Kit somehow keeps his head.

‘And Dr Costello has not come into the hospital during all that time?’

‘No, mate, sorry. Can anyone else help at all?’

‘Well, yes, actually, I’d like to talk to one of your inpatients, a chap named Jeb. Just tell him it’s Paul.’

‘Jeb? Doesn’t ring a bell, mate, hang on a jiffy –’

A different nurse comes to the phone, also male, but not so friendly:

‘No Jeb here. Got a John, got a Jack. That’s your lot.’

‘But I thought he was a regular,’ Kit protests.

‘Not here. Not Jeb. Try Sutton.’

Now the same thought occurs simultaneously to both Kit and Suzanna: get on to Emily, fast.

Best if Suzanna rings her. With Kit, just at the moment, she tends to be a bit scratchy.

Suzanna calls Emily’s cellphone, leaves a message.

By midday, Emily has called back twice. The sum of her enquiries is that a Dr Joachim Costello recently joined the mental-health unit at Ruislip as a temporary, but he’s a Portuguese citizen and the course he’s attending is to improve his English. Did their Costello sound Portuguese?

‘No she bloody didn’t!’ Kit roars at Toby, repeating the answer he gave Emily on the phone as he paces the stable floor. ‘And she was a bloody woman, and she sounded like an Essex schoolmistress with a plum up her arse, and Jeb hasn’t got a bloody mother and never did have, as he was pleased to tell me. I’m not a big chap for intimate revelations as a rule, but he was talking his heart out for the first time in three bloody years. Never met his mother, only thing he knows about her is her name: Caron. He fled the coop when he was fifteen and joined the army as an apprentice. Now tell me he made it all up!’


It is Toby’s turn to go to the window and, freed from Kit’s accusing stare, abandon himself to his thoughts.

‘By the time this Dr Costello rang off, had you given her any reason to think you didn’t believe her?’ he asks at last.

Equally long deliberation by Kit:

‘No. I hadn’t. I played her along.’

‘Then as far as she’s concerned, or they are: mission accomplished.’

‘Probably.’

But Toby isn’t about to be satisfied with ‘probably’:

‘So far as they’re concerned, whoever they are, you’ve been squared. Fobbed off. You’re on side’ – gathering conviction as he speaks. ‘You believe the gospel according to Crispin, you believe Dr Costello even if she’s the wrong sex, and you believe Jeb is schizoid and a compulsive liar and is sitting in the isolation ward of a mental hospital in Ruislip and can’t be visited by his fear object.’

‘No, I bloody don’t,’ Kit snaps. ‘Jeb was telling me the literal truth. It shone out of him. It may be tearing him apart: that’s another matter. Man’s as sane as you or me.’

‘I absolutely accept that, Kit. I really do,’ Toby says at his most forbearing. ‘However, for Suzanna’s protection as well as your own, I suggest that the position you have very cleverly carved out for yourself in the eyes of the opposition is well worth preserving.’

‘Until when?’ Kit demands, unappeased.

‘How about until I find Jeb? Isn’t that why you asked me to come here? Or are you proposing to go and look for him yourself – thereby, incidentally, setting the whole howling mob on you?’ Toby demands, no longer quite so diplomatically.

And to this, for a while at least, Kit can find no convincing answer, so instead chews at his lip, and grimaces, and gives himself a gulp of Scotch.

‘Anyway, you’ve got that tape you stole,’ he growls, by way of bitter consolation. ‘That meeting in the Private Office with Quinn, Jeb and me. Stored away somewhere. That’s proof, if it’s ever needed. It would scupper you, all right. Might scupper me as well. Not sure I care too much about that either.’

‘My stolen tape proves intent,’ Toby replies. ‘It doesn’t prove the operation ever took place, and it certainly doesn’t address the outcome.’

Kit grudgingly mulls this over.

‘So what you’re trying to tell me is’ – as if Toby is somehow dodging the point – ‘Jeb’s the only witness to the shootings. Right?’

‘Well, the only one willing to talk, so far as we know,’ Toby agrees, not quite liking the sound of what he has just said.


If he slept he wasn’t aware of it.

Sometime in the few short hours in bed he heard a woman’s cry and supposed it was Suzanna’s. And after the cry, a flurry of feet across the dust sheets in the corridor below him, and they must have been Emily’s feet, hastening to her mother’s side, a theory borne out by the murmurings that followed.

And after the murmurings, Emily’s bedside light shining up through the cracks in the floorboards – is she reading, thinking, or listening for her mother? – until either he or Emily went to sleep, and he supposed he went first because he didn’t remember her light going out.

And when he woke later than he meant to, and hurried downstairs to breakfast: no Emily and no Sheba, just Kit in his church tweeds and Suzanna in her hat.

‘It was honourable of you, Toby,’ Suzanna said, grasping his hand and keeping it. ‘Wasn’t it, Kit? Kit was worried sick, we both were, and you came straight away. And poor Jeb’s honourable too. And Kit’s not good at sly, are you, darling? Not that you are, Toby, I don’t mean that at all. But you’re young and you’re clever, you’re in the Office, and you can delve without, well’ – little smile – ‘losing your pension.’

Standing in the granite porch she fervently embraces him:

‘We never had a son, you see, Toby. We tried to, but we lost him.’

Followed by a gruff ‘be in touch then’ from Kit.


Toby and Emily sat in the conservatory, Toby perched on an old sunlounger and Emily on a rush chair at the furthest end of the room. The distance between them was something they had tacitly agreed upon.

‘Good talk with Dad last night?’

‘If you can call it that.’

‘Perhaps you’d like me to go first,’ Emily suggested. ‘Then you won’t be tempted into some indiscretion you may regret.’

‘Thank you,’ Toby replied politely.

‘Jeb and my father are planning to produce a document about their exploits together, nature unknown. Their document will have earth-shaking consequences in official quarters. In other words, they will be whistle-blowers. At issue are a dead woman and her child, according to my mother. Or possibly dead. Or probably dead. We don’t know, but we fear the worst. Am I warm so far?’

Receiving only a straight stare from Toby, she drew in her breath and went on:

‘Jeb fails to make the date. So no whistle. Instead, a woman doctor who is patently not a doctor and should have been a man calls Kit, alias Paul, and tells him that Jeb has been confined in a mental hospital. Investigations reveal this to be untrue. I feel I’m talking to myself.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Jeb, meanwhile, is unfindable. He has no surname, and is not in the habit of leaving a forwarding address. Official avenues of enquiry, such as the police, are closed – not for us frail women to reason why. You’re still listening, I hope?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Toby Bell is some kind of player in this scenario. My mother likes you. My father prefers not to, but sees you as a necessary evil. Is that because he doubts your allegiance to the cause?’

‘You’d have to ask him that.’

‘I thought I’d ask you. Is he expecting you to find Jeb for him?’

‘Yes.’

‘For both of you, then?’

‘In a way.’

‘Can you find him?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you know what you’ll do when you have found him? I mean, if Jeb’s about to blow the whistle on some great scandal, perhaps you might have a last-minute change of heart and feel bound to turn him over to the authorities. Might you?’

‘No.’

‘And I’m to believe that?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re not settling some old score?’

‘Why the hell should I be doing that?’ Toby protested, but Emily graciously ignored this little display of temper.

‘I’ve got his registration number,’ she said.

She had lost him. ‘You’ve what?’

‘Jeb’s.’ She was fumbling in the thigh pocket of her tracksuit. ‘I photographed his van while he was giving Dad grief at Bailey’s. I photographed the licence disc, too’ – extracting an iPhone and fiddling with the icons – ‘Valid twelve months and paid eight weeks ago.’

‘Then why haven’t you given the registration number to Kit?’ Toby asked in bewilderment.

‘Because Kit f*cks up, and I don’t want my mother living through a f*cked-up manhunt.’

Unfolding herself from the rush chair, she strolled over to him and held the phone deliberately to his face.

‘I’m not putting this into my own phone,’ Toby said. ‘Kit doesn’t want electronic. I don’t either.’

He had a pen but nothing to write on. She produced a piece of paper from a drawer. He wrote down the registration number of Jeb’s van.

‘If you give me your cellphone number, perhaps I can tell you how my enquiries are going,’ he suggested, by now recovered.

She gave him her cellphone number. He wrote that down too.

‘And you might as well have my surgery number and hospital roster,’ she said, and watched him add it all to his collection.

‘But we say absolutely nothing specific to each other over the phone, all right?’ he warned her severely. ‘No winks and nods or arch references’ – remembering his security training – ‘and if I text you or need to leave a message for you, I’ll be Bailey, after the Fayre.’

She gave a shrug, as if to humour him.

‘And will I be disturbing you if I have to call you late at night?’ he enquired finally, doing his best to sound, if anything, even more practical and down-to-earth.

‘I live alone, if that’s what you’re asking,’ she said.

It was.