She raised her glass. ‘Thank you so much,’ she said, before taking a sip. She put down her glass. ‘Let’s talk about your career path,’ she said. ‘I know that joining the police from the SAS was a big step. Because of your late wife.’

‘She wanted a quiet life, she was fed up with me risking everything for Queen and country. I don’t think she realised it was going to be out of the frying pan into the fire.’ He smiled at the memory of his wife, Sue, who’d died in a senseless car accident when Liam was just seven years old.

‘But when you moved from the police to SOCA, it had more to do with Charlie than anything?’

Shepherd shook his head. ‘I hadn’t met her before I joined SOCA,’ he said. ‘I was with a police undercover unit that got absorbed by SOCA, and she was in charge.’

‘Why did you leave the police?’

‘I wasn’t given a choice,’ said Shepherd. ‘SOCA took over the undercover unit and I was told I could start working with them or start pounding a beat in a uniform. SOCA was threatening to cherry-pick all the big cases so there wouldn’t have been much to do as a regular cop. I have to say that it didn’t work out that way, though.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘SOCA has been a bit of a failure,’ said Shepherd. ‘Too many pencil-pushers and too many box-tickers, too many chiefs and not enough Indians. Can you name any major SOCA successes over the past couple of years?’

Stockmann nodded. ‘I’d be struggling,’ she said.

‘Don’t get me wrong, some of the work was challenging but at the end of the day all the investigations were cost-led. If it looked as if a target was going to be too expensive, we’d let it slide. The powers-that-be only wanted us to chase the cases that they knew we’d win, which basically meant that we never went near the top villains.’

‘That must have been frustrating,’ said Stockmann.

‘I put up three drug barons based in Amsterdam who between them are responsible for half the cannabis and probably ten per cent of the cocaine that reaches the north of England, but I was told that there weren’t the resources to go after them. So that was that. If we don’t go for them and the Dutch aren’t bothered, they effectively have a free pass. And the thing is, they know it. So what’s the point of having a law enforcement organisation if it doesn’t uphold the law?’

‘I assume that’s rhetorical,’ said Stockmann. ‘But I understand what you’re saying. Is that why you were happy to move to MI5 with Charlie?’

‘It was one of the reasons. Better the devil you know . . .’

‘And how are you finding the Secret Service?’

‘It’s not that secret, these days,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’s like every man and his dog knows what we do.’

‘And the work’s challenging?’