And he didn’t think he could do that with Janulis still zipped up inside the black hood, let alone chained to someone else. Luke turned to Lina, and whispered in her ear. She listened, concentrating, then nodded. She spoke rapidly in Lithuanian and a minute later Luke was alone on the sofa with the in-house lawyer from Matulis ChemExport, now unmasked. It was time to get to work.

‘I heard about you in prison,’ Janulis said, with a wry smile. His thin hair was plastered to his scalp with sweat from the hood.

Luke didn’t trust him for one second, but he was going to try very hard not to show it. ‘It wasn’t prison exactly,’ he replied, ‘it was a police cell, but, yes, not fun.’

Janulis smiled again, although it was more of a smirk, Luke thought, as if he were laughing at some private joke. ‘You know it was my boss, Mr Kadunov, who arranged for you to be arrested?’

‘So I hear. And why?’

‘Why?’ Janulis repeated Luke’s question in a mocking tone and spread his hands wide. ‘Why do you think? You were asking much too many questions, that’s why. He wanted to keep you out of things he didn’t want you to see.’

‘Such as?’ Here we go, nice and gentle, just a little probe to find out what he knows.

But Janulis was on to him. He tapped his nose knowingly. ‘Not so fast, my friend. We will talk money later.’

Now it was Luke’s turn to smile. He didn’t mind that Janulis seemed to be almost entirely motivated by money: that kept things a lot simpler. Everything has its price. It was just a question of how much the Service was prepared to fork out. And the Service wasn’t infallible in that department. Like in 2010, before his time, when the newspapers broke the story of how MI6 had paid tens of thousands of dollars to an impostor who pretended he was a top-level Taliban commander. He had turned out to be a very canny Pakistani shopkeeper from Quetta.

‘Is there a reason,’ Luke asked gently, ‘why we needed to meet all the way out here in this, um …’ he gestured around him ‘… this venue of yours?’ He was relieved to see that people were no longer looking at him.

Janulis took a deep breath before answering. ‘Are you a racist, Mr Carlton?’

‘No. Why do you ask?’

‘Do you hate gay people?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Do you have a problem with Jewish people?’

‘No. I’m none of these things,’ Luke replied. ‘Come on, Janulis, where are you going with this?’