He smiled, although the memory of William’s trial still haunted him, particularly the last walk out of court. After they had escorted William away, Priest had walked out into the sunshine to a sea of cameras and microphones, but that didn’t bother him. What bothered him was the bereaved; the families of the dead. He could deal with the angry ones, the ones who shouted abuse, cursed him. They were fine, understandable. What drove him to the brink were the quiet ones; the ones who didn’t say anything, just looked at him with wide, questioning eyes. Ghosts’ eyes. ‘It’s OK. To be honest, it’s Sarah who disallows any mention of Wills. I kind of like the guy, apart from the killing and the madness.’

By the look on her face, he surmised that Georgie wasn’t quite sure whether she was supposed to laugh or not.

‘So,’ she prompted instead, ‘Simeon.’

‘Ah. So, eventually, I got to the bottom of what The Real Byte’s defence was. Now, as you know, there are only a limited number of defences to libel.’ Priest paused, waiting for her to fill in the gaps.

‘Justification, fair comment, qualified or actual privilege.’

‘Spoken like a true legal nerd. Here, the only plausible defence is to establish that what was said was actually true, meaning that it’s necessary to demonstrate that Alexia actually not only knew about her organisation’s links with terrorism but also received bribes to keep quiet about it. This is what we call justification, as you know. What I quickly identified, however, was that Simeon Ali rather regretted his little whistle-blowing expedition, so he was reluctant to come forward and reveal himself as the source of The Real Byte’s article when called upon.’

‘So you got him a safe house as part of the deal?’

‘Essentially.’

‘Are we allowed to do that?’

‘Technically, we’re not doing anything wrong, but it would give Hagworth the opportunity to attack Simeon’s credibility if he found out that we were safe-harbouring him, at our cost. That said, Simeon genuinely feared for his life – what else were we supposed to do?’

They slowed as Priest glanced at the building numbers. This was definitely Bristol Road but exactly where the flat was, he was infuriatingly unsure about. Indeed, he wasn’t sure exactly where any examples of the Priest portfolio were – that was Sarah’s domain. He checked his watch. The trial would have started and Okoro would be on his feet. Hopefully, Peters would allow him to put Tomas Jansen up first, but she was an awkward old bird, so there was no guarantee of any indulgence from her. They carried on. Behind them, Priest heard a car slowing down.

Georgie continued, ‘In what way do you mean his life was in danger?’