Christopher seldom raised his voice. He did so now. ‘I don’t know, Matt. I don’t know. I can’t just sweep all that time, and everything that’s happened, under the carpet. I need to work out what I think. To consider whether it really would work out again. Can you see that?’

His son shook his head as though the person he were trying to communicate with was being deliberately obtuse.

Christopher opened his mouth to speak, but Matt beat him to it.

‘I’ll be back in a while, then. I’m going into town. I need a couple of shirts.’

He turned on his heels and walked back across the lawn and down the garden path. Christopher opened his mouth to shout after him, but he thought the better of it and just watched his son go.

Gary did not enjoy the debriefing. He did not enjoy being involved in an operation which resulted in anybody’s death. In cases like this one there was always a risk of attempted suicide, and he was angry that one of his colleagues had been too slow to prevent Mr Tan from slipping a cyanide capsule into his mouth. It was unjust anger, he knew. His colleague was pretty devastated, too.

He pulled off his tie and slipped off his jacket then sat down at his desk and leaned forward with his head in his hands. The operation had been successful in terms of stopping Mr Tan, but it would have been more fruitful had he still been alive.

Sarah came back into the office with two mugs of coffee. ‘Do you want anything in this?’

Gary looked up. ‘No thanks, it’ll be fine as it is. Want to keep a clear head.’

‘Don’t blame yourself,’ she said. ‘You know it’s counter productive.’

‘That sounds very matter of fact. Very calculating.’

‘Hey!’

He looked at her apologetically. ‘Sorry. Just a bit pissed off. Thought we’d got it all sorted and then…’

‘Well, you’ve got the two guys downstairs.’

Gary took a sip of his coffee and said, ‘Yes, there is that. Do you want to come and have a look?’

‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

The two men were being interrogated in a dimly lit room. Gary and Sarah walked into the room next door which was on a higher level. They looked down on the scene through one-way glass. They could see the men, but were themselves invisible to the room. They could hear the conversation through speakers.

Two MI5 agents were questioning them and didn’t seem to be getting very far.

One of them was leaning on the far wall and saying, ‘We saw Mr Tan give you the envelope full of money. We know that you took it willingly. What was it for?’

Neither of the two men spoke.

Sarah whispered, ‘That fat one…wasn’t he in the Red Dragon that night?’