The promise of extra money was tempting, but Yates wasn’t sure if he really wanted to meet Fletcher’s boss. Fletcher had approached him two years earlier as Yates was sitting in a bar round the corner from his bedsit. Yates didn’t like being at home: it felt too much like a prison cell. Six paces long, three paces wide, a single bed, a cheap chest of drawers and a wardrobe with a loose door, a microwave oven on a rickety table and a cramped shower room with a leaking toilet. Looking back, it had been a slow courtship. The occasional drink. A late-night curry. Fletcher listened to his complaints about his ex-wife, his job, his boss. Fletcher had always seemed interested in Mackie, who he was and whom he met. Then one night Fletcher slipped him an envelope containing five hundred pounds. It was a gift, Fletcher had said, just to help him out. Yates had taken it. That night Fletcher had asked some specific questions about Mackie. Where he lived. What car his wife drove. Yates had answered without hesitation. He’d had a few drinks, but it wasn’t the alcohol that had loosened his tongue. It was the resentment. At the way his life had gone down the toilet. At his wife for stealing his children. At Mackie for lording it over him, treating him like shit.

The meetings with Fletcher had become less social: weekly debriefings, then a brown envelope full of cash. After six months Yates had asked for a rise and Fletcher gave him a thousand pounds a week. Pat Neary had started to attend the debriefing sessions. But Fletcher made demands, too. Specific questions about Mackie. Who he met. Where he went. Then, after another year, Fletcher had asked him to take the Rover to a garage in Shepherd’s Bush in west London. It was a tiny place under a railway arch. A mechanic had fitted tiny microphones into the rear of the car and a micro tape deck in the glove compartment. The money went up to two thousand pounds a week and Yates had to hand over a bag of tapes at his weekly debriefings. There were no more late-night curries, no chatty drinking sessions, just a straightforward trade. Information on HODO for money. Lots of money. Yates felt no guilt, no shame. The way he looked at it, if his wife hadn’t dumped him and run off with her fancy-man solicitor, if Mackie had treated him better, maybe he wouldn’t have had to do what he’d done. But he’d made his bed and was quite happy to lie in it. Especially if that bed was a king-size in the Philippines with two beautiful young girls. Maybe three.

The BMW indicated a right turn. Yates indicated, too, even though there was nothing behind him. Yates had never asked what Fletcher and Neary were doing with the tapes and the information he gave them. He hadn’t cared. Fletcher and Neary hadn’t seemed over-bright and Yates had always assumed they were working for someone else. He popped a fresh piece of nicotine gum into his mouth and grimaced at the taste. He’d been meaning to switch to patches but kept forgetting to visit the chemist.