I remembered coming straight to see Arthur the morning after Gelignite had broken into my house, and he ran her through Wotan backwards, forwards and inside out, cross-referencing three generations back, and every living relative we could find. She was clean Roedean, finishing school in Montreux, Lucy Clayton secretarial, and a personal bank account that would have made Croesius sit on the ground and beat the floor with his fists in a jealous rage. Great-great-grandpa had been transported to Botany Bay for rape – a trait that had evidently not entirely left the family’s genes. Out there, he had founded the family empire in sheep farming. Great grandpa had expanded it into property and mining, and on his death it was divided between his two sons. One son lost his half on the baccarat tables of Monte Carlo; the other son trebled the size of his, and handed it down to his son. His son produced Gelignite.

‘Don’t mess this one about,’ said Arthur, then, ‘Marry her.’

‘I’m not the marrying kind.’

‘With a face like that, and a father rich enough to give her five million quid for her twenty-first birthday and not feel it missing out of the petty cash tin, what more do you want? With a pedigree like hers, if she were a dog, she’d clean up at Crufts.’

That summed up Arthur’s romantic vision of life: he looks at a super bird, and immediately conjures up visions of dogs winning prizes. I grinned at him. In spite of being surrounded by the most up-to-date technology in the world, and spending all his working hours in this weird, stark complex, without daylight and without natural fresh air, in the cold white light of neon strip bulbs, amid the constant distant hum of the air-conditioning units and the sound of tapping on keyboards of word processors and computers and push-button telephone dials, he retained a simple, almost rural outlook on life. His stout leather brogues and his car seats thick with the hair of his wife’s hounds gave away his private life best: he was a man who relaxed away from work by walking across moors, not by wining and dining dusky mistresses.

‘So what’s new in British Intelligence?’ I asked him. Arthur loved to gossip, not that he ever gave away state secrets, but he did pass on little snippets of personal information about my superiors.

‘One little goodie for you,’ said Arthur. ‘The Home Secretary – you probably read that he’s in hospital for a few days for medical tests?’

I nodded.