As I washed, I turned to the more practical idea that I had had last night that perhaps there was someone who could help – one of Nick’s contacts in the American CIA, if I could just find them. All I had, though, was that telephone number from her book.

The operator put me through. I knew how long the silence lasted – four seconds – and how many clicks there were – five – before it connected. Then the metallic ringing, like an idiot playing a distant instrument. ‘Hello?’ someone said. It was the female voice I had heard the previous day.

‘Hello. I’m here.’ I mentally begged her not to end the call as she had before.

‘All right.’

‘I called yesterday.’

‘I can’t … I’m hanging up.’

‘No. Please. Just please.’ I clutched desperately for a way to persuade her. She was the only chance, the only number in Lorelei’s book that worked. I tried a wild lie. ‘Are you married?’

There was a long pause. ‘Yes.’

‘I, I found this number in my husband’s diary. I think he’s having an affair, please, please, put my mind at rest.’

‘That’s nothing to do with –’

‘Children?’

‘Yes, please don’t –’ she began.

‘I’ve got three. I just need to know that he’s not going to abandon us. I don’t know what I would do.’ I put such tension in my voice I hoped she would break whatever rule she had been instructed to follow.

Her voice lowered, became more intimate. ‘I don’t know about your husband. This is a government number. I’m just the receptionist.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘It’s for’ – I plucked a name from the air – ‘Comrade Williams?’

‘No,’ she said, puzzled. ‘Honeysette.’

Tim Honeysette. He was Nick’s patient who had tried to introduce Nick to Ian Fellowman that night. The night when I had lost our child. Whatever this was, he was involved.

So maybe he could help.

‘May’ – my voice shook – ‘may I speak to him? It’s very important.’

‘He won’t be in until later.’

‘When?’

She paused again. ‘You said it was about your husband.’

‘It is. It’s urgent that I speak to him. It’s government business.’

‘So it’s not about your husband.’ I heard the suspicion rising.

‘It’s about him, but –’

‘What’s your name?’ she demanded.

I hung up. I hoped she would be too worried about the consequences of having said too much to report it.

Up in Nick’s study, I found a big red volume filled with his expansive looping hand. His handwriting was often hard to read, but with a bit of effort I managed to make out Honeysette’s address in Brixton, the commuter edge of London. Victorian clerks living there had taken trains to their jobs in the City, but it was better known now for its prison, where low-level political criminals sat out their sentences.