‘You were right about doing it.’ Charles was still looking out of the window. The security guard who had supposedly been shot was smoking a cigarette and chatting to the policeman who had fallen over. The policeman was pointing out where his bullets would have gone had his gun not been loaded with blanks. The exercise had been Gareth’s idea, to test how Head Office might respond to a marauding attack. No one had tried it before; there had been hostage exercises, aircraft hijack exercises, tube train exercises, even ship seizure exercises, but no one had staged a marauding attack against an undefended government office. The head of security had opposed it, partly on the grounds that security staff were not trained or equipped to deal with such an event and partly, perhaps, because Gareth had proposed it. Charles had been in two minds but agreed when soundings indicated that there would be no shortage of volunteers to staff the reserve office on a Saturday and be part of the fun, as they saw it; partly, also, because anyone planning such an attack on an MI6 building was unlikely to wait for it to prepare itself. The head of security, MI5’s head of physical security, people from the Home Office, senior police officers and the Special Forces liaison officer were all observing in different parts of the building. ‘Wash-up at six?’ Charles asked. ‘Time for a quick chat about your report afterwards or would you rather do it in Head Office tomorrow?’

‘Tonight would be better, if you don’t mind. Headlines only. I need to get my notes into my safe and Suzanne’s not expecting me back until later anyway. Big lunch do tomorrow and she’ll take a gun to me if I spend another Sunday in the office. It won’t be blanks, either.’

That suited Charles. Sarah had said she wanted to do a couple of hours’ work that evening on an insurance case and they had agreed they would drive down to their Cotswold house late that night to spend Sunday there. Each had promised the other there would be no work.

Sarah was already working on her case when he got home, papers spread across the kitchen table. ‘Good idea,’ she said when he told her he was going into the office for an hour. ‘I get more done when you’re not here.’

‘You got away from the wedding unscathed?’

‘Only after prolonged farewells to Deborah. She’s putting a very brave face on it all. Not just the marriage but Daniel’s future. She’s desperate to see him properly settled.’

‘I got the impression he thinks he is, since his conversion.’

‘Not in his mother’s eyes, he isn’t. She means a partnership in Deloitte or KPMG or something. She never wanted to be the carpenter’s mum.’

‘His sister-in-law looked a more likely prospect for that sort of thing.’

‘That makes it worse.’