Osborne was stony-faced. ‘Sandy’s been with Five for years,’ he said. ‘And he was appointed Foreign Secretary two weeks ago.’

So. Not just a Mirror hack, then, but one of Cecil King’s men in Five, and these two - along with Pritchard - had been plotting with him from the beginning. It was a repeat of King’s coup attempt from last year, only this time the idea had been to have Wilson assassinated and then exposed as a Russian agent - and this time they had succeeded. Mountbatten was merely the figurehead: these three and a handful of other right-wing crackpots were in power now. No swastikas waving over The Mall - just a few desks moved. I imagined Chief would have been given the option of carrying on under the new regime or being shunted into retirement.

‘You know I didn’t kill Wilson,’ I said. ‘The Grigorieva woman pulled the trigger before I got to her.’

‘We only have your word for that. According to Smale, you were holding the gun when he came in.’

‘And he’s willing to testify to that, is he?’

Montcrieff laughed. ‘I don’t think you fully understand the situation,’ he said. ‘We don’t need to try you. The public are distraught, and crying out for revenge. We could have you hanged in Wembley stadium and sell tickets if we wanted.’ He leaned down and took a rolled-up Standard from a briefcase by his legs. He slapped it onto the table and pointed to the headline: ‘BRITAIN BACKS UNITY GOVERNMENT’. It was the twenty-eighth of April, I noticed - exactly a month since Udi.

‘What do you want?’ I asked, though I had a fair idea.

‘We found Templeton’s body,’ said Osborne, referring to Chief by his surname; presumably he had the title now. ‘Washed up near Limehouse.’ He threw some photographs onto the desk. I picked them up and forced myself to look at them. They were as grim as could be expected.

‘Well?’ I said. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? Henry killed him.’

‘And why would he do something like that?’

‘Because he was Radnya, of course.’

‘We also found this in the clinic in Udi,’ said Osborne, making the recommended sudden leap of subject to disorient me. He placed the Tokarev on the table; it spun for a moment on the surface before coming to a stop. ‘Do you usually favour Soviet weaponry?’

‘That’s not mine,’ I said. ‘It belonged to a man called Akuji.’

‘Yes, we know about him - Henry’s contact with Ojukwu. We received his report a few days ago. He has shown no signs of developing the disease you had, thankfully.’ He nodded at the gun. ‘So what do you normally use, then? Henry told us you shot someone on a golf course.’

‘I didn’t shoot him,’ I said. ‘He took a pill.’

Osborne turned down the corners of his mouth. ‘What weapon do you use?’