“He would appear to be a Major Richard Dunne—in 1916, at any rate, on the evidence of his Jermyn Street tailor, as Thoday will tell you—and we’re awaiting confirmation and information from his regiment. And the sergeant has gone yet further. He has a possible identity for the man Dunne met in Aunty’s tea shop, the man Dunne was trying to establish contact with. The man’s wife, who was also present at the altercation, declares him to be Lieutenant—or perhaps Captain—Abel Hardy. It seems likely that the two were in the same regiment.”

“Right then, lads, off you go. Tell me all!”

MacFarlane listened with attention to all they had to say, shooting the occasional pointed question to one or the other, filling in, seeing connections, planning ahead. A day in the fresh air of Norfolk seemed to have sharpened his wits, Redfyre thought.

“Rank of major, are we thinking? Humph! Demobbed, we assume. Bit old for the army. Shall we say ‘retired’? And taken to the roads. Wouldn’t be the first time. And the higher they are, the harder they fall. Probably done something he doesn’t want his family to know about. Some awfulness he wants to atone for? A mental breakdown is probably what we’ll find is behind all this. They’ve got a word for it nowadays, which we can quote in evidence in the reports. No one’s going to argue with ‘battle-induced neurasthenia,’ because no one knows what the hell it is. These days it can’t be shell shock, nervous breakdown, or even memory loss that afflicts a man. It has to be something with a Greek root: dementia praecox, psychosis, amnesia. Something along those lines, and the higher your rank, the more difficult it is to pronounce your condition.”