So I had been right after all. He must have dealt only with Lorelei, and that was why Nick had been so desperate to be introduced to him when relations between her and Nick soured.

‘What was it? I can get it too.’

‘You think so?’

‘I’m certain of it.’

He drew in a mouthful of smoke and let it drift from his mouth. ‘Well, I suppose we’ll see if your self-confidence is misplaced. I was tired of going through middlemen. I wanted to buy straight from the source.’

‘Why?’

His eyes bore into mine as he considered. ‘Because I don’t like having weak links in the chain.’

I could see his reasoning. Weak links can break; they can even get caught and talk to the police.

But there was more to it, I guessed. I glanced back at the room we had left. Yes. This way he could help out his friends in the Party’s upper echelons, those with whom he had just been playing cards, perhaps. A favour granted, a favour returned.

‘I can give you the contact,’ I said, trying to control my nerves. ‘What do I get in return?’

‘What do you want?’

‘What were you giving Lorelei?’

He cocked his head to one side in a look of curiosity. ‘I don’t see that it matters.’ I waited. ‘Well, it’s nothing now. She wanted a marriage exit visa.’

A marriage exit visa. So Lorelei was engaged to a foreigner, someone who could take her to a new life outside the RGB. She wasn’t just selling out Nick; she was also leaving the country.

‘Who was she marrying?’

‘I have no idea and no interest,’ he replied. ‘All that she told me was that she wanted the visa. I said I could arrange it in return for an introduction to her supplier in America.’ He looked down towards the dark lake in the grounds. There was silence as we both lost ourselves in our private thoughts. ‘No, no one listened to Churchill,’ he said after a while. ‘Instead we had the War and all that followed. Men chewed up by bullets and machines. Those camps. And people still ask us why we need Socialism. We need it to prevent men turning once more into savages. I don’t want to see that again.’ He threw the glowing cigarette butt into the night. ‘Call our friend Adam when you’re able to see this through.’ He pushed back into the room.

I stared out. There were others like him in every street in every city now, squabbling over the scraps of a nation that could barely muster eighteen million people. Lorelei’s death wasn’t the result of jealousy or anger. Not really. It was the result of small men scrabbling over tiny possessions. Such a grubby little country we had become. Socialism meant a minister and the wife of a GP haggling over the price of a box of medicines.

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