She shook her head. ‘That wouldn’t have worked.’ She paused, wondering whether or not she could trust me. Then, perhaps realizing she now had little to lose, she shrugged her shoulders and continued. ‘Before I was due to travel to the front last year, an old colleague of my father approached me. He said they were doing everything they could to end the war here, but if I could provide any information on what I saw it might help end it sooner.’ She narrowed her eyes and looked at me straight on. ‘It might save lives, you know?’

I nodded. ‘The usual lie.’

It was too quick for her and she bristled. ‘I forgot - you are British. Of course you say this. Your government arms the Nigerians so they can isolate Biafra and starve innocent women and children. How could you think any differently?’

I smiled tolerantly. ‘I never discuss politics before breakfast.’

She looked at me with all the scorn she could muster. ‘Do you treat all questions you cannot answer this way?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I treat all questions asked by people who have already made up their mind this way.’ She stared blankly at me. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘We’re supplying the Nigerians with arms. So are the Russians, and others. Guns, tanks, planes . . .’

‘That is your justification? That you are not alone?’

‘Your government only started selling arms to the Biafrans last year,’ I went on. ‘Its contribution is still tiny compared to what the Nigerians receive from us and Moscow. And no heavy weapons. At its current level, France’s support isn’t enough to give Biafra even the slimmest chance of victory. That’s because the idea isn’t to help Colonel Ojukwu win the war - it’s to help General de Gaulle win votes. Your government doesn’t give any more of a shit about starving Biafrans than mine, and any information you’ve given your father’s friend has, like the arms he has supplied, merely prolonged the bloodshed. You haven’t saved lives - you’ve helped take more of them.’

I saw the slap coming, and steeled myself for it. Now we were even.

She started crying soon after, so I took the rifle case into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub. I reached for the collapsible rod tip: the bore looked filthy.

She didn’t know anything about Anna, or Slavin, or any of it. She was just an amateur, a hopeless idealist caught in the crossfire.

‘I have to leave soon,’ I called out. ‘Can you get ready?’

I went over to the basin. A dead rat lay face up in it, its eyes staring glassily at me from the darkness. I opened the window and threw it into the street below. Perhaps that’s what I am, I thought: a dead rat flying towards a gutter, where larger creatures wait to devour me.