‘Tell them the truth. If they start taking liberties, leave it to me.’ Tony reaches across the desk and gives my hand a squeeze. ‘Happy with that?’

The second interview is very different from the first. In charge is the nameless suit who came late to my flat this morning and asked for my passports and all the other stuff. With him is a younger woman with a face that would grace any cover of a certain kind of magazine. Tatler, perhaps. Or Country Life. She carries an air of perfectly honed entitlement that’s impossible to miss, but I quickly sense that this masks a vivid intelligence. She doesn’t smile much.

The suit at last introduces himself. He says his name is Deneuve and way back I suspect he might have been French. Tony has already told me these people are MI5, tasked to man the nation’s ramparts, not police at all. The woman also offers a name. Lucy Cavendish.

From the start, the tone is conversational, not a hint of aggression or disbelief, and after the earlier session with Bullivant, this comes as a relief. Deneuve wants to know about what he calls my ‘relationship’ with McFaul. How long have I known him? How long have we been friends?

I trouble them with the facts. My knowledge of Evelyn’s neighbour extends to barely a week and a half. Christianne, I like to think, quickly became a friend. McFaul, her partner, I hardly knew.

‘But you’d have talked, surely …?’

‘When?’

‘After she disappeared. A situation like that, you’d need support, perhaps a listening ear. Am I wrong?’

‘Of course. And you’re right, we did talk.’

‘About?’

‘All kinds of things – Christianne mainly, and Africa, too. The pair of them were working out there. That’s how they met.’

‘And the minefields? He talked about the work he was doing out there?’

‘Yes.’

‘And your impression?’

‘I don’t understand what you’re getting at. Impression?’

Deneuve doesn’t answer. Cavendish clears her throat and stops playing with her fountain pen.

‘We believe McFaul … how can I put this … was an angry man. Would that be accurate?’

I give the question some thought. Then I nod.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Angry would be right. You’d see it from time to time. He’d flare up. He’s not an easy man at all. Not on others and not on himself.’

‘Easy, meaning …?’

‘Companionable, relaxed, laid-back.’

‘Tense, then? Is that the picture we’re getting?’

‘Yes.’

‘And why would that be? Might you hazard a guess?’

I’m tempted to laugh. Where do I start?

‘He spent years in the minefields,’ I say carefully. ‘He saw what these things can do to an arm, a leg, a child, a mother. He lost half a leg himself, and that would have hurt his professional pride, but he never stopped trying to clean the place up, even though he knew it was impossible.’