Sarah smiled again. ‘Anyway, it’s my turn now. I have a dinner agenda item too.’ She had that day spent thirty minutes with an MI5 desk officer as a result of Michael Dunton’s request to Charles. ‘At desk level MI5 seem more worried about Daniel than Michael suggested to you. She – the woman who came to see me – said he’s left the mosque near where they live and has joined a small breakaway one, every member of which has at some time or other been suspected of plotting or aspiring to do something awful. One of them is a Guantanamo graduate, picked up in Afghanistan doing alleged charity work, apparently, and released a couple of years ago. Since when they believe he’s re-engaged with his dodgy charity work. They don’t have a mosque as such; they meet in each other’s houses or flats, about half a dozen of them. They have a self-appointed imam who has already served time under the Prevention of Terrorism Act on a conspiracy charge. The police wanted to get him for something more serious but that would have meant a lot more surveillance at a time when resources were very stretched and they didn’t want to risk him committing some awful atrocity that they missed. So they went for disruption.

‘Well, it now appears that the imam and my beloved godson are pretty thick with each other and she wanted to know whether I thought Daniel was recruitable as a source on the rest of the group. None of the others is remotely recruitable, apparently. I rather got the impression she’d like us to recruit him for them, though she didn’t actually say so in so many words. I said this was all much more your sort of judgement than mine and I’d talk to you about it, since you know him too. I also said we’d try to get the happy couple round for dinner soon, which we ought to do anyway. Then you can write a report for MI5. I said you’d be very happy to do that. So, diaries, dates.’ She was smiling as she took her phone from her handbag, then took Charles’s pocket diary from the drawer where he kept his wallet and credit cards and put it on the table before him. ‘When will you get round to using electronic diaries? You must drive them mad in your office.’

‘First thing that happens when I get in in the morning is that Jenny grabs my diary and puts any new entries on screen. So both diaries are always up to date. Much more reliable than trusting me to do it.’

‘But why use a paper diary at all when you’ve got your phone and laptop? Such a duplication of effort.’

‘I like my diary.’

‘You just like being awkward and getting attention.’