Mr Smiley’s arms are not arms, but snake-like protrusions, tentacular and ever-undulating. The fingers are smaller versions of the arms, like little baby garter snakes attached to the tail of each substantial python.

“And here I thought we were closed,” Smiley says, grinning.

“Gorth let me make a late appointment.”

A twinkling fang-laden smile. “Then sit.”

Mookie pulls a chair, reverses it, sits with his battleship chest against the back.

“What can I do for you, Mr Pearl?”

“I need information.”

The smile doesn’t leave, but Smiley’s eyes flash irritation. “Yes. Obviously.”

“I need to know where my–” He’s about to say daughter, but he catches himself. The Blazes make him restless. Foolish. Like he’s tap-dancing on the edge of the abyss. These people don’t know Nora is his daughter. Nobody does. Nobody but Werth. “Where my friend Persephone is.”

“Persephone. Persephone.” He doesn’t blink. He just stares at Mookie as he says the name again and again. “No. I don’t think I know that one.”

Mookie pulls his wallet. He knows how this game goes.

But Smiley stays his hand. An almost imperceptible shake of his head. “No.”

“No?”

“Not this time.”

“Well. What, then?”

“I want information.”

“Like I got anything you don’t already know?”

“Your Boss is weak.”

Mookie feels heat rising off the back of his neck. “He’s got it all together.”

“Your Boss is sick.”

Figures. Of course he knows.

“Don’t know what you mean. That’s a nasty rumor going around.”

“It’s not. And you know it’s not. Metastatic lung cancer.” The snake fingers flick and undulate. An expression of excitement? Happiness? “I want to know more about that. I want to know where he’s vulnerable. I want to know where the chinks in his armor lie.” Smiley laughs. “I always wondered: is that racist? Chinks in armor?”

Mookie wipes away sweat. Sneers. “I can’t answer any of that.”

“Can’t? Or won’t?”

“Ask me something else. Anything else.”

“No.” So petulant. And giddy at the same time.

Mookie stands. Knocks the chair over with a clatter.

“We’re done here,” he says.

Smiley baits him. “Don’t you want to know how I know? About the cancer?”

Mookie’s answer is a hard stare. His eyes like two nails trying to pin Smiley to the wall.

“Besides it being my job to know things,” Mr Smiley says. “Not just my job, actually. But my pleasure, my absolute and unswerving pleasure. I like to categorize the little chips and shards of information – the sweet, sweet secrets – that come in here and, quite honestly, most are worthless. Some have a very narrow edge: a prison shiv meant only for another person, a secret useless to most but powerful to a select few. Other secrets are very powerful, indeed. A hand swept across a table, knocking everything upon it to the floor below. Your Boss’s cancer is just such a secret. It’s a storm that can change a coastline. An earthquake that alters the topography, a bomb that–”

“Just get to it.”