‘Now, if you turn to page four of the dossier, you will find a photograph of Maleva, given to Chief by Major Dark for the purposes of identification. The photostat hasn’t come out too well, so let’s look at the original.’ I walked over to the projector and placed it in the slot. I dimmed the lights, and the picture appeared on the wall.

The photograph had not aged well in the file. The edges were turning brown, and there were black spots across her forehead and her eyes. It had been taken outside the hospital: she was in her uniform, smoking a cigarette. I had naively thought that Father had simply abandoned me, but he had been keeping an eye on the hospital all along.

I pressed the lever to turn back, and the picture of Anna in Lagos filled the wall again. I flicked it forward and back a couple of times and then stopped. ‘As you can see, it would appear that Maleva was not, in fact, killed in 1945, but is currently working in the Soviet Embassy in Lagos under the name Grigorieva.’

There was silence for a few moments. In my peripheral vision, I could see that Pritchard had his head down and was reading the file. I was taking a huge risk bringing this to the table, because I was revealing a direct link between Slavin’s allegations and my father’s work in Germany. As Pritchard knew what that work had been, and that I had been involved in it, he would naturally now suspect me. But there were no records on that operation - he could suspect me all he wanted, but if he couldn’t prove it I didn’t care. And I was fairly confident that he wouldn’t be overly keen to confess to his part in an assassination squad, even after all these years.

‘She was quite a looker, wasn’t she?’ Godsal was saying. ‘The mouth’s a touch thin, but still . . . she’d probably have got me to sign the Five Year Plan.’ Nobody laughed. Godsal, I should note, has a face like a deranged horse.

‘What would the Russians have had to gain by faking her death?’ asked Farraday.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Perhaps Chief will be able to tell us more about the situation when he gets here.’

As if on cue, there was a knock on the door. All eyes swivelled as Smale entered.

‘Well?’ said Osborne.

‘No sign of him,’ said Smale: he must have been wondering why everyone in the room was staring at him so intently. Osborne nodded for him to carry on. ‘Barnes went over and called me back. Says he seems to have packed his bags and left in the middle of the night. Didn’t cancel his milk or papers.’

‘Packed his bags?’ asked Pritchard, his voice rising. ‘Are you sure of that?’