Subconsciously, she flashed a look towards Johnny who she knew was at a loose end, envisaging all that she had to do before she could get home and put her feet up. She was suddenly so tired, it was as though her body was surrendering already, and this made her want to push back harder against it. Besides, if she didn’t do it, Johnny would.

‘If you’re busy I can do it myself,’ he said, clocking her expression and making as if to walk away.

‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘Of course I can do it. What do you need?’

‘Just a couple of files pulling out, like I said. Some wonderfully tedious stuff about trade deals in Equatorial Guinea.’

She didn’t pause to ask her boss what he might need with such documents, given that they had no obvious link to any work being done in their department. In hindsight, she would justify it by telling herself she hadn’t believed it was her place to question him.

‘Sure,’ she said, ‘I could probably clear some time this afternoon and email it across to you.’

He cleared his throat. ‘Well, the thing is, I really need a physical copy to look over on my flight to Moscow next week; it’s a time-saving exercise more than anything. I wondered whether you might download something and print it out for me? You know what a Luddite I am.’

‘I don’t think we’re supposed to …’

In Counter-Terrorism, middle-weight employees like Gabriela had access to three different levels of email service – open, confidential and top secret. But each of these, she knew as well as he did, was trackable. For anyone other than the digital bods with their access to a ‘dirty network’, there was only one option if you wanted to take a document out of the building: the printer.

He smiled. ‘As I say, I could do it myself, only I have so much to sort before I leave and you know how cack-handed I am with all that technical mumbo-jumbo.’ He made a self-deprecating hand gesture, tossing her a knowing smile. ‘Or I could ask someone else.’

She thought again of Johnny, of his constant attempts to upstage her in front of their boss, how he would revel in this opportunity to do Emsworth’s special bidding.

‘No,’ she said quickly, telling herself she was just being a jobsworth for her doubts; this was her boss after all. Besides, no one would ever know. Bags were only frisked coming into the building – never on the way out …

‘I can do it,’ Gabriela said. ‘Just tell me what you need.’