Eventually, after much calling in of favours, I heard from a source in journalism that the word was that Corley had gone underground and had established a relationship with a former security operative who was going to sing like a canary about various covert operations, about renditions and tortures, and that it was all going to be posted on the Web.

Although I can’t be certain, I think he might have tried contacting me by phone – a couple of late-night calls that I didn’t take because the number was withheld. A phone that I now assume is being tapped.

But he has eventually succeeded in coming back into my life – not in person, but with the package that arrived a few days ago in the post and now sits on my desk. In it is a DVD and a note that says, ‘Mikey, thought you’d be interested in this. Stay with it to the end, your friend Corley.’

There isn’t even a postal or email address included and, as I hold it in my hands, at first I imagine that I am being given something to admire, something that is to redress a real or imagined deficit that has accrued from the past, the way occasionally you encounter rather nondescript former acquaintances who want to let you know that, despite your supposed, never actually declared judgement of them, they have subsequently made good and offer the evidence to prove it. I haven’t rushed into watching whatever is on it because what feels like an invitation to resurrect our shared past isn’t entirely welcome and the uncertainty of where it might lead has seen me set it to one side, wanting to postpone this unexpected reunion.

But now, as the squall blusters about the house – feeling more like an expression of bravado rather than real threat – I finally take the DVD out of the envelope and sit down once more with Corley, Corley, Tell a Story Rodgers. And as the screen flickers into life, it seems to my surprise that what is unfolding in front of me isn’t about our past or about whatever covert enterprises he is currently involved in. Isn’t about the world we once knew. Not at the start.

A man sits at a kitchen table. His face is kept angled in shadow but what is visible is weather-beaten and lined with the imprint of a hard life. He might be in his early or mid-forties. He wears a denim shirt with little metal tips on the point of his collar that lend him the air of a cowboy, someone who has worked the land under the harsh scrutiny of the sun and wind. He is smoking, from time to time flicking the ash into a glass ashtray. His thick fingers have two rings. One appears to be a plain gold band, the other a topaz in a fancy filigreed setting. Behind him on the kitchen worktops are pots – one is cooking with skinny wisps of steam emerging. Beside the stove sit what looks like tortillas, a packet of cigarettes, a newspaper and a container of what might be cooking oil. The camera lingers over everything in a way that invites the viewer to invest meaning in the images. He is not a cowboy. He works as a mechanic, troubleshooting for haulage and construction companies. Always on call, day or night, skilled at getting broken-down machinery working again.