Oliver Nash was there when Di Taverner made that phone call. Head of the Limitations Committee, he was a frequent presence at the Park, above and beyond the regular meetings his role demanded; was so much in evidence that one or two voices had been heard wondering if he were nursing romantic feelings for Lady Di herself. When these musings reached Taverner’s ears, which they did with an immediacy suggesting the use of either advanced surveillance technology or the supernatural, she made it be known that random executions were her preferred means of dealing with gossipmongers. She was famous for many things, Diana Taverner, but not her sense of humour. The wonderings ceased.

And anyway, Nash’s romantic yearnings were directed less at her than at the workings of the Park—a career bureaucrat, he could still find hidden within himself the super-spy of his adolescent daydreams. And who was to say that hero wasn’t still in there? There was certainly space for him, with room left over for an astronaut and an engine driver, Nash’s ongoing diet having proved dogged rather than successful, like an English tennis player.

“So Bachelor came to you in person,” he now said. “Something of a surprise?”

“Yes and no.”

“That’s how mediums and other charlatans work. Providing answers with maximum bandwidth.”

She said, “We’d expected Pynne to be the one pointing him in the right direction. But Bachelor had other ideas, and doorstepped me instead.”

“Resourceful type?”

“More the cowardly lion. It was a damage limitation exercise. He seems to think I was unaware of his living arrangements. But we always allow for a degree of improvisation.”

Nash nodded, as if he knew full well the way operations were handled, but it didn’t seem as if his heart were in it.

“Don’t worry, Oliver. We’ll get the desired result.”

“It depends on what you class as desirable.”

“Now now. Queen and country.”

“I suppose so,” he said. As always, he had his smartphone in his hand; as always, he couldn’t conduct a conversation without it attracting his attention. At present, a morning headline filled his screen. The dead American sex trafficker. He shook his head. “Filthy business.”

“That’s often the way, I’m afraid.”

“I have nieces,” he said. “Teenagers. Young teens.”

“Sometimes you have to focus on the bigger picture,” she explained.

Seven Dials. He seemed to recall an Agatha Christie with that in the title, which suggested he might encounter the usual suspects in the usual places: spinsters in the kitchen, colonels in the bar. Maybe a vicar or two in the library. As it was, Monmouth Street was just another London thoroughfare, cheerful in the sunshine and grubby round the edges, and peopled by the usual young, the usual old, the former acting like they owned the place while the latter actually did. He’d made a list of the places where Benny Manors had paid bills, frequently enough that it could be assumed that this was his, well, manor. John Bachelor recognised the territorial instinct. With all the freedoms London offered, its natives tended to stick to their own warrens: local haunts, local habits. If Manors had drunk here last night, the night before, he’d drink here tonight, too.