Williams took another bite of pie, then his body abruptly stilled. He didn’t look like he was searching his memories, he looked like he wasn’t thinking at all.

‘The Surcouf ,’ he said, flatly. ‘Diving under and approaching the hull. That’s it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Knox said. His voice was a whisper as he finally said to Williams what he’d repeated to his ghost every day for seven years.

Williams’s jaw moved. But he wasn’t clenching it to hold back his anger. He was chewing. After a long, silent moment he swallowed.

‘One of those things,’ he replied, his voice still strangely even.

Knox had never dared to imagine forgiveness for what had happened to Williams—what Knox had let happen to him—but he couldn’t believe Williams was dismissing it so easily and casually.

Whenever Knox had had this conversation in his head he’d fantasised every response Williams might give: sobbing into his arms, or screaming at him, or attacking him, and Knox taking punch after punch because he deserved them all. But he hadn’t prepared for this reaction.

Williams had another bite of pie, then offered a wedge to Knox. He took it. The pastry was tough, but it crumbled and melted as it started to mix with the fat and meat in his mouth. It was delicious and he hated it.

‘What happened to everyone else?’ Williams asked when he’d swallowed his pie.

Knox stared at the crumbs on his fingertips as he said, ‘They were fine.’

‘Well, then,’ Williams replied, wiping his hands. ‘Just one of those things.’

The two men fell back into silence. There was no way Knox could ask Williams any more about the Surcouf, or the supposed attack on London, now. He couldn’t even look him in the eye.

Knox felt like they could stay seated next to each other under Smithfield forever, stuck in their own personal limbos. But after a few more moments of unbearable quiet their solitude was interrupted.

Two men appeared in the doorway of the cold store. Knox had no idea who they were, or how they’d managed to get down five flights of half-lit stairs without making a single noise, but their sudden materialisation jolted him out of his despair. He felt Williams tense next to him too.

‘It’s polite to knock,’ Knox said, standing up as the two strangers stepped into the store.

One of the men was in an open-collared shirt and blazer, the other was wearing a leather bomber jacket.

‘Is there something we can do for you?’ Knox asked.

‘Not you, him,’ the man in the blazer said in accentless English, pointing at Williams.

‘He’s busy,’ Knox said, moving between them.

‘Not any more,’ the man replied, squaring up to Knox as his partner kept guard on the door.