Because their stories had collided in the past. Or brushed against each other, rather, the way a pass might be made at a railway station: information delivered, received, in the briefest of exchanges: an envelope swapped, a password muttered. So he knew this much: that Richard’s name was Richard Pynne, inevitably demoticised to Dick the Prick. And how he knew him was, Dick the Prick had stolen what should have been the crowning jewel of John’s career.

For once, just once, he’d had a glimpse of the limelight. After the death of one of his older clients, a list had come into John’s possession, a list of supposed sleeper agents. The details were probably written down somewhere, but the upshot was that John himself—John Bachelor, milkman—recruited an agent, Hannah Weiss. Not a high-flying operative, no Red Sparrow, no Modesty Blaise, but a mole of sorts, allowing the Service a glimpse into the workings of its German counterpart: not a bad day’s work, if he said so himself. And he did say so himself, but to little avail; Hannah was taken away from him and placed in the care of one Richard Pynne, Lady Di’s favourite and a noted high-flyer, who for some reason was thought a better choice to run a minor domestic op than clapped-out John Bachelor, who’d never done anything more complicated than carry bags and tell bedtime stories to ancient spooks.

Funny thing was, he’d heard rumours since that the whole operation, small beans as it was, had gone tits up, with young Hannah turning out not to be a double at all, but a triple; not so much allowing the Service a glimpse of the workings of its German counterpart, but the precise inverse. Which meant Richard had in fact done him a favour, even if it hadn’t felt like that at the time. London Rules: always be a fair distance from a fuck-up. And if it had been a rumour when he’d first heard it, it had obviously calcified into fact since, for here was Richard, so far from the seat of power that he was manning the door while someone bigger and crustier than he was put the screws on that clapped-out milkman.

You could call it karma. Or just one of life’s fuck yous.

The brandy was gone. He contemplated a second glass, but experience suggested that a second had a way of becoming a fifth, so instead booted up his cranky Service laptop and accessed his client files. There Benny was, in all his muted glory: the history of his brief career in the Service, the slightly longer history of his previous known activities, the address in Wandsworth which was clearly no longer current, his bank details . . . bank details? The man was out there with a bank account, money going in, money coming out, and those clowns couldn’t find him with the whole of the Hub at their disposal? Unless it wasn’t. That possibility had been nagging at him from the start, when they took him to a vacant safe house instead of the Park. Unless this pair were on a frolic of their own. So he considered that for a while, and came to the alarming conclusion that it made little difference. Even if they were off-reservation, that didn’t render their threats harmless. They knew about the flat. They knew enough to screw him up badly.