‘Could you stay in your room while he’s here? It won’t be for too long.’

‘All right,’ she said, although she looked unhappy as she went back to her room.

‘Is that his daughter?’ Tibbot asked when I returned.

‘Yes,’ I said.

He paused in thought for a moment, then shook himself out of it. ‘Well, as I was saying, I checked with the man concerned, Comrade Taggan, this morning just after I called you. NatSec hadn’t spoken to him. He claimed that Dr Cawson came for over an hour, conducted his consultation and left. No one else was there.’

I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Nick’s story was true – he hadn’t been with Lorelei and he had had nothing to do with her death. And yet Tibbot looked severe. ‘But that’s good,’ I insisted. ‘It proves it, doesn’t it?’

He hesitated. ‘No, I’m afraid that’s the problem. Because your husband told NatSec exactly the same thing. And they haven’t bothered to check.’ It slowly dawned on me what he was saying. ‘It means that they want him to be found guilty whether or not he actually did it.’

I gasped. Despite the fire, the room was freezing. ‘But why?’

He cleared his throat, uncomfortable with having to bear such news. ‘There could be ten different reasons: they think somehow he did it; or they’re under pressure to find someone – anyone – to blame for it and he’ll do; or just incompetence. But I don’t think it’s any of those. I think it’s because they want him for something else they seem to think he has done. Mrs Cawson, NatSec investigates crimes against the state.’ His voice dropped and his eyes found mine. ‘You know what that means.’

I did. It meant a military court and the rope. I groped for the chair and felt Tibbot’s hand under my shoulder, holding me and leading me to it. I fell on to the seat and wiped the sweat from my brow. ‘I’m sorry,’ I mumbled.

‘You’ll be all right. Do you have anybody you want to contact?’

I thought of my parents, long gone. ‘No.’

I couldn’t understand what was happening. I had hoped, when I rang the station earlier, that he would tell me that Nick was coming home in an hour or that the Secs were dragging their heels and it might even be a day or two before he was back, but that he would come. The idea that Nick might actually be charged, and that NatSec were after him because they believed he and Lorelei were involved in crimes of subversion, was devastating. ‘Maybe he’s innocent,’ I insisted. ‘They must be wrong.’ But there was what I had found at Lorelei’s house.

He sat down and looked at me closely. ‘Mrs Cawson, are you political?’