‘They must have been monitoring his phone.’

‘Rav was surely much too experienced and capable to have communicated with anyone in a manner that was less than secure.’

‘He called the Guardian journalist.’

‘True. I saw that. But he was unlikely to have told him what he was really up to.’

Kate thought about this. On Rav – perhaps – Suzy might have a point. And now that she had brought it up, Kate wasn’t sure this doubt hadn’t been nagging at her ever since Rav’s murder. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’ She debated telling her of the way in which someone in the Russian hierarchy had started the Night Wolves retreat from Estonia at nine the previous evening, but thought better of it.

The circle of knowledge had been the same small group: C, Ian, Julie, Danny and Kate. The betrayal of one or another was unthinkable.

‘I’m not trying to be difficult, Kate.’

‘I understand that.’ She nodded. ‘I do. You make valid points. I don’t know how profitable it’s likely to be to reopen this right now, but I will give it some thought.’

Suzy slipped out and Kate closed her eyes. ‘Fucking hell,’ she whispered to herself.

8

KATE TOOK THE opportunity to leave Vauxhall early that afternoon. She chose one of the six aliases common to officers at her level and asked Travel to book her on to the first flight to Berlin on Monday morning. She warned Operations to put Danny, her favoured team leader, on standby to manage the surveillance on the ground in the city, pending the foreign secretary’s approval. And then she walked up to Victoria to catch the Circle line to Paddington.

The train journey to Bodmin Parkway should theoretically have been a time of relative peace and relaxation, but the temporary relief she had felt after her appointment with Dr Wiseman was overtaken by a tidal wave of further anxiety. If she had heard ‘We have a solution’ as she left his office, all she could hear now was ‘You have a problem.’ The questions crowded in: was she going to have to take drugs? Would she become addicted? Would they affect her ability to do her job? Why did she think like this anyway? When was she going to feel better? How would she feel better? What would happen if she got worse, if she lost control, if things began to spiral? Would she lose her job, her children? Who would look after them then?

The questions clattered in her mind. And that was before she had even got around to turning over whether she might really have been wrong about Stuart being Viper. Suzy had a point. But if not Stuart, then who?

She hoped to see Rose at the station, but instead she got only the cheery face of her husband, Simon. Perhaps it was a relief. She just about managed to make small-talk on the short journey up to the coast. Simon looked as if he had been in Cornwall for a month already, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts despite the season, his curly white hair as wild as the wind, which was blowing in hard from the west.