‘After Haina is all less of a blur now.’

He recounted their trip to New York and then over the Atlantic, matching details with Bennett’s own memories. Then he filled in some of the blanks of where he and Knox had got to after he’d disappeared in Regent’s Park.

The more they talked, the more grounded and coherent he seemed to Bennett. But she was still most amazed that, despite everything, he still had a sense of humour.

‘Do you remember what happened when you went missing?’ Bennett asked.

‘Not completely,’ he said, his face turning more serious. ‘But I think my brain is trying to tell me. I’ve been having nightmares, but they feel more real than that.’

‘Memories?’

Williams nodded. ‘Or information.’

‘Information about what?’

He paused for a moment, then said, ‘I think I finally know why I’m here. I think someone wants to assassinate Aleksei Kosygin.’

‘Kosygin? How?’

‘I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s going to happen. Soon.’

Bennett took a moment to process the idea and, bizarrely, found herself believing Williams. She could think of plenty of forces, including inside the Soviet Union, who might want Kosygin dead. And killing him on foreign, Western soil could completely shift the balance of global political power.

‘In that case,’ Bennett said, standing up, ‘we need to get out of here right now.’

‘Why?’ Williams asked, getting up onto his feet.

‘Because Kosygin’s in London,’ she replied.

‘Ah.’

Williams followed Bennett over to the locked, handle-less door. He watched her take three steps, then run full-tilt at it, slamming her shoulder into it, flinging it open, and stumbling out into an alleyway.

‘I swear that was locked before,’ she said as she righted herself.

‘I believe you,’ Williams said, suppressing a grin.

They both looked up and down the alley. There were more warehouses on both sides, and Bennett’s MG next to the door she’d just burst through. A few hundred yards away the alley opened up onto some sort of high street. They walked to the junction just as a red double-decker bus passed through it.

‘Where are we?’ Bennett asked.

Williams looked at a street sign bolted above the window of a corner shop opposite them. It said Green Lanes.

‘We’re in Haringey, north London,’ he said.

‘How do you know?’

‘This isn’t the first time I’ve woken up in this neck of the woods with a splitting headache,’ he replied, smiling again.

Chapter 43

Chapter 43