‘Maybe he recruited the shooter.’

‘Maybe. You’re clutching at straws.’

‘Straws are sometimes all we have.’ Woolf leaned forward, propping his head on the tips of his fingers, as if fending off a headache. ‘Look, you’ve just spent some time with him. Isn’t there anything about him, about Invicta, that gave you pause for thought?’

Tom stared at him for several moments. The claims were outrageous, bordering on the deranged. Rolt was unusual, eccentric, even. But he had shown Tom respect and confidence, which was more than he could say for his former paymasters. ‘My first impressions are that Invicta’s doing a good job for soldiers who’ve been fucked over or abandoned by the system. Without his commitment and dedication most of them would have been lost, ending up a danger to themselves and a menace to society.’ He stood up. ‘I think we’re done here.’

Woolf held up his hands in surrender. ‘Please, Tom. We need someone on the inside, no disrespect to Phoebe, who can get closer—’

‘One question. Why didn’t you go through the normal channels to try and recruit me? Was that such a crazy idea?’

Woolf shook his head. ‘If we’d gone through the normal channels, at least ten people in the MoD would have had to know. There’d have been emails, forms, countersignatures. Just getting it signed off by your CO, you’d have been blown before we even got airborne. Apart from the DG and a couple of my counterparts, no one knows about this. It’s completely off grid. I couldn’t risk anyone inside the MoD apparatus knowing.’

‘In case they tipped Rolf off?’

‘As Phoebe says, he’s that well connected. He gets one whisper of this, I’m out – and my boss will probably have to fall on his sword too.’

For all Woolf’s pleading, it was still clear to Tom he had been played. Woolf had used him as the Service always used people, like avatars, in a game they thought they could control.

Tom took out his phone. Woolf opened his mouth, closed it again and sighed. ‘Look, I apologize. It was bad judgement. If you make the call to Rolt, I’m history. Invicta will become even more impenetrable and we’ll never know. We won’t even know if we were wrong.’

Tom looked at Phoebe. Her eyes were glistening. ‘This what you signed up for – to fuck over members of the armed forces?’

She didn’t speak but her eyes said it all. Keep this to yourself, please, for my sake as well as yours.

Tom looked at them both. ‘Okay, I’ve heard what you’ve got to say, now piss off.’

Woolf got to his feet. ‘So – will you help us?’

‘I haven’t decided yet. Right now I need a holiday.’

Woolf buttoned his jacket. He looked like a man who could have done with a week’s sleep.