I wondered if this was where Astana’s intelligentsia gathered. Yussopova went to a small kitchen at the side and put a kettle on. I checked my phone, picked up the emissions of recording devices nearby.

There was a radio on the desk. I put it on to drown our voices. Russian hip-hop. I turned it up. A framed photograph beside it showed a family of four, including a thirty-something Yussopova and her murdered husband. There was an unframed one of Yussopova being dragged away from a protesting group, megaphone in hand. There are good people, then people who will die for the good. It’s a different breed, and one that always fascinated me. Joanna used to joke that I spied on them to find out what morality meant. I wanted to know what made them tick, but I didn’t idolise them. It was a mistake, as a spy, to think you preserved good conscience through being detached, but at the same time, when your job was following the various strings being pulled in all directions, morality came to seem a question of when you chose to turn away. It was an attempt at simplifying, and could start to seem like a form of defence, if only against the unknown. These were just some of the attempts at self-justification I’d made over the years.

Without getting too close to the windows I checked sightlines: nearby apartments with a view, somewhere you might stick a camera. The same black Renault SUV was on the street below – one man sitting in it. Yussopova came back with tea. Then she noticed the music.

‘Did you turn the radio on?’

‘I usually do. We’ve had some serious issues with intelligence companies.’

She nodded.

‘Please, sit down.’

I moved papers to sit on a sagging sofa, balancing my tea.

‘Who exactly did Vanessa meet?’ I asked.

‘She met a lot of people.’ Yussopova assumed I knew most: fellow activists, lawyers, even some oil-company reps.

‘If she had run into trouble with authorities, where might she be held?’

Yussopova shrugged. She listed police stations and prisons. She had no idea where Vanessa would be.

‘But there is a precedent for individuals being held in secret, without due procedure?’

‘Yes, but usually word gets out after twenty-four hours or so.’

‘Did she have a car?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Can I see exactly what she was working on?’

We looked through recent campaign material. It covered disappearances, deaths in detention. There were names and organisations familiar to me from campaigns against labour conditions in the Persian Gulf. The biggest file was marked simply ‘Saracen’. Saracen Oil and Gas Exploration was a UK-registered energy company. The file contained FOI requests, diagrams of governmental connections, lists of UK figures on the board.