‘You don’t know anything about me,’ Knox replied. ‘I’ve fought for everything I’ve ever got.’

‘And you got it too, didn’t you? Because you really, really wanted it. Do you want to know about the world I live in? A world where my father decided he didn’t like the family he’d been stuck with and left us with nothing. Where I put myself through school, aced every test, got a job working for the goddamn CIA, beat out a hundred other people for an international posting, and still get told every single day that what I think is wrong and what I do isn’t important.’

‘I haven’t exactly had it easy,’ Knox said, breaking the short but deep silence that had fallen between them. ‘Both my parents died when I was a child.’

‘And I’m sorry for you,’ she said. ‘But don’t try to make this a competition. Because I’ve got plenty more I can tell you about how tough life can be, and you’re the one who lives in a penthouse.’

Knox’s confidence in his ability to read people had taken a battering over the last couple of days, but he couldn’t deny the intensity of Bennett’s emotions. If she was just a bit player in a larger game, drafted in to run interference on him, he was sure she’d have taken her leave by now. There was no reason for her to still be sitting next to him unless she really did believe in the conspiracy she’d sold him and thought he was the only person who could help her prove it was real.

‘We knew about the suspicions you and Holland had about Manning,’ she said quietly, her eyes looking down at her lap. ‘It was obvious you were being hung out to dry. I thought you could help me, that we could help each other. My mistake.’

‘Well, you were right about one thing,’ Knox replied after a moment. ‘This is definitely bigger than a couple of Italians. The dead man who attacked us. I did know him.’

Bennett looked up at Knox. The scarlet had left her cheeks and there was even the hint of a smirk on her lips again. Knox explained that he’d seen the attacker before, standing guard outside Bianchi and Moretti’s flat.

‘So someone in MI5 is behind all this,’ she said, when Knox had finished. ‘And now they have Valera.’

‘It looks like it.’

‘Do you think she’s already on her way back to Russia?’

‘I doubt it. They’ll take her somewhere quiet first. Maybe see what they can get out of her themselves before they hand her over.’

‘Then we still have a chance to find her.’

‘If they’ve taken her back to the UK.’

‘Which, with any luck, they will have.’