I climbed up and over the crumbling wall, slipping over the top, and down into long weeds, fighting the urge to laugh, as I so often had during my childhood games with Peter, in the face of all the terrors—vampire bats, marsh monsters, enemy agents—we had conjured. Of course, this was real, but then my games with Peter had always felt real. The laughter was a fountain, coming from somewhere deep, and for a moment I gave into it, with my back against a crooked headstone, one hand over my mouth. Through my clothes, I felt the scratch of lichen, the chisel cuts upon the stone. Everything would be absurd to those safe within the ground. Then the laughing fit abated, like a bell that had ceased to chime, and I crept forward, over the dead, avoiding the path, until I reached the darker shadows of the yew trees on the east side of the church.

Not a soul about! When I was sure, I checked my phone, hiding the screen under my jumper and peering down the neck hole to obscure the light. It was time. The vestry door was unlocked and I pushed it open a crack and made my way in. To the left were the choir stalls and the altar, to the right the aisle and pews, leading to the font. At the pulpit I waited, inhaling the familiar smells, enveloped by a hush accumulated over a thousand years. A pew creaked.

“That you, Peter?” I tiptoed forward, ready to flee if I was wrong.

“Here.” He spoke barely above a whisper. I moved closer, but it was so dark I couldn’t make him out, could only shuffle forward with my arms outstretched, until a hand caught my wrist. Peter drew me down until I was sitting beside him on the hard pew, knees pressed against the tapestry cushion hanging from the back of the row in front. I put out my hand and found Peter’s cheek, giddy with relief, with victory.

“Found you.” Peter’s cheek was cold. When he didn’t reply, I said, “Not in the States then? Not having a spiritual crisis with the lay brothers?”

“Forgive her. I think she heard about them on Radio Four.”

“They know you’re here then?”

“I shouldn’t have come, but I wanted to see them. To explain.” He sounded tired, like someone at the end of a long, hard-fought race they hadn’t won.

“What’s going on, Peter? What is it you have to explain? What have you done?”

What Peter—tight-lipped Peter—had done was talk. Or more accurately, he had downloaded files, financial statements, client information, and internal memos from the company he worked for, from the corporate service provider with the half-foreign name. Like me, Peter had been playing detective. In his case, he’d been matching offshore accounts with shell corporations, detailing transactions, logging the money as it flowed upstream and downstream, from the Gulf and China, from Russia and Mexico, from the hands of politicians, public officials, and oligarchs into shell corporations in tax havens. Corruption. Bribery. Tax evasion. Money laundering. Money siphoned from aid projects, environmental protection projects, public services. Profits from illegal deals, from violated trade sanctions, the vast sums of the arms and drug trades. Then he’d leaked it, drip by drip and then finally in a gushing flood, to a pair of journalists from the Guardian.