‘You got everything you need?’ Eddie asked. He was giving nothing away. Was that suggestive of a man who had information that he did not wish to give away? Or was I being paranoid?

‘Yeah, more or less,’ I said. I was committed, then. De Chauncey had added me as a contact on Tamesis, I remembered. He had not cut me off. It wasn’t much, but it was grounds for hope. I could make more calls, fix up another meeting. But my reply had been suspiciously ambivalent, so I added, ‘I’m doing follow-ups.’ That was always a good line.

‘And Wednesday? Get much done?’

I shrugged. ‘Transcribing. Yes. Absolutely.’

‘Can we see?’

He wasn’t going to take my word. ‘Well, it’s not quite done.’

Eddie cut me off with a sharp exhalation, and pushed his fingers into his hair, exposing a lined forehead. ‘I thought you were going to have something for us to see,’ he said, with distinct tetch in his tone.

Polly had not said anything yet. Her demeanour was, to my surprise, far less hostile than Eddie’s. She was not staring me down, turning me into a wall shadow with her death ray. And she was not obviously gloating at my discomfort. Her clipboard was held lightly in one hand, its top resting against the table, tilted towards her so I could not see what was displayed there. Was that why she had sat opposite, so I could not see her notes? What was it? A typed and indexed dossier on me? And on that thought, I twigged why she wasn’t joining Eddie in his cross-examination, why she looked sympathetic, even kindly. Her work was done. She had given all the facts to Eddie, built the case against me, poisoned his mind. Now she could relax, and it would serve her to appear neutral rather than vindictive.

‘Jack?’

A thick, caustic substance was in my mouth, coating the interior of the cheeks, filling my throat. My hands felt unbearably hot and dirty.

‘There’s a lot to do,’ I said. ‘Two interviews. You know.’

Absurdly, I found myself riling up on the back of my own falsehood, indignant at the thought that I could have typed up two interviews in one day. I’m not a machine! That I had failed to attend one interview and had lost the recordings of the other did nothing to dim my righteousness. This was unreasonable! They were holding me to an unrealistically high standard! The fictional me that had coalesced for the purpose of this meeting was filled with thunder. I swallowed, trying to clear the bitter glue from the back of my mouth, and tasted blood. It was hot in the aquarium, too hot. The air was foul. How did they expect me to defend myself if I couldn’t breathe?

‘Uh, sorry,’ I said. ‘I was … trying to do both. I wanted to have both, for now. And I ended up not quite finishing either.’