‘Me too until yesterday, with less excuse than you. Gareth says on file that he has known him since Geneva, which he left six years ago. After that they kept in touch but vaguely, Christmas cards and all that, though Gareth never recorded him as a registered foreign contact as he should have done. Still less did he log him as any sort of source on any subject, conscious or unconscious. This despite the fact that Gareth now gives the impression that they’d seen quite a bit of each other since Geneva, with frequent contacts, at least one family holiday, dinners and so on.’

‘That’s what he told me.’

‘In fact, there’s no record on file of their actually meeting until after the Brexit referendum when Timber Wolf suddenly pops out of the woodwork and they have a couple of lunches in London, where Timber Wolf’s visiting the EU office. Then there’s a long weekend together en famille, with a bit of skiing in France. After the referendum and the lunches, note. Nothing before. During the holiday Timber Wolf begins dropping pearls of high-level EU gossip into Gareth’s lap. After all those years of nothing to report.’

‘Maybe there was nothing to talk about before then, no Brexit, no pearls, no gossip, no big issue.’

‘Possibly. But also no lunches, no family get-togethers, no skiing à deux, no intimate professional revelations until the run-up to Brexit negotiations. So far as the record shows, Timber Wolf doesn’t exist as any sort of source until he leaps fully formed out of the Alpine mist. Though Gareth does do a later note to say that they’ve been in touch all along.’

‘Are you suggesting he doesn’t exist, that Gareth’s invented him?’ Invented sources were not entirely unknown.

‘Not at all. He checks out, he’s real enough, his job is what Gareth says it is. But it’s quite a coincidence, don’t you think, that he’s been in this sensitive EU Commission role ever since he left Geneva without once, we are asked to believe, being in the least indiscreet? Until, following the referendum and in the run-up to negotiations, he’s suddenly Gareth’s big buddy, volunteering secrets.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s also a coincidence that Timber Wolf turns out to be on friendly terms with an FCO friend of mine who runs the UN desk. They too knew each other from Geneva and have kept in touch, I think a little more frequently than Gareth and Timber Wolf. They’ve met for drinks and the odd meal a couple of times since the referendum and not only has Timber Wolf dropped him no pearls but he has specifically said he can’t discuss work now that their masters are on opposite sides of the negotiating table. And nor has he.’