After a while, he shook his head and let out a deep sigh. ‘You’ll have to think of something to tell Marjorie,’ he said. ‘She’ll be livid.’

Like many others in the neighbourhood, the villa sat behind an imposing set of iron gates. ‘Villa’ was Manning’s word, and was perhaps a little generous. It was a large but plain-looking bungalow, with mosquito nets on the windows and a jacaranda tree in the drive helping to mask the peeling paint.

Slavin’s house.

We were at the easternmost edge of the city: Ikoyi was the last island. On the way over, Manning had told me that many of the city’s expatriates, himself included, lived here. I could see why. Its houses, even the run-down ones, were spacious, its gardens neatly trimmed and, in comparison to the cacophony of traffic elsewhere in the city, it was eerily quiet: the only sounds I could hear were the mosquitoes buzzing around my ears, the ticking of my watch, and the creaking of leather as Manning shifted his bum in his seat.

A Peugeot 404 was parked in the drive, so it looked as if Slavin was in. However, I had no way of knowing whether he was in there alone. I’d made Manning drive around the neighbouring streets to check for surveillance. I hadn’t found any, but that wasn’t conclusive: they could be watching us from inside the house itself. And so could Slavin. I’d told Manning that surveillance would mean he was already blown, but that wasn’t strictly true. This man was a KGB officer and, if his work was important enough, he could be guarded around the clock as a matter of course.

Manning was also right to worry that this kind of approach might tip off Slavin’s colleagues that he was intending to defect. If they were to get the slightest sniff of that, he would immediately be deported, and probably shot on arrival in the motherland. But that wasn’t my plan: for the time being anyway, I wanted Comrade Slavin to stay alive. I had to find out what he knew, and how he’d discovered it. He had claimed that Anna had loved me, but had she been the source for that, or someone else? I had to get to him, but I had to find a way to do it without the Russians being alerted.

It wasn’t looking promising. We’d been here for twenty minutes and there hadn’t been a flicker of activity from inside the house.

‘It is the cocktail hour,’ Manning said, finally.

I looked at him. ‘You think Slavin might also have a pyjama party on tonight?’

He shrugged. ‘He might even be at the same one.’

‘You socialize with the Russians?’