She said, “It’s not the first time I’ve green-lit an operation I’m not overwhelmingly proud of. It won’t be the last. But look at the bigger picture. The Service hasn’t enjoyed many favours from the present government. Any smile we can bring to its face, we’ll be glad about when our budget’s next considered. You of all people should think of that as good news.”

“And democracy, anyway,” Nash said, “isn’t the PM’s favourite institution.” He dropped the paper. “He’ll be glad to have this disappear from the news stands. Not exactly an admirer of his antics.”

Diana said, “That paper bought the story from a known thief and blackmailer. Who, in turn, claims to have discovered those photographs, and the audio recordings, on a laptop stolen from a house belonging to an associate of a billionaire paedophile, an associate who does not in fact exist. The property our thief and blackmailer burgled is currently vacant, and has been for some time. And the evidence itself—the audio, the photographs—while extremely convincing, are fakes. And we can prove this because we have video footage of their being faked. Footage which everyone in the country will have seen a hundred times over by bedtime. On the BBC to start with, and then YouTube or whatever.” She steepled her fingers. “After which, all further rumours about H.R.H.’s involvement with a convicted sex trafficker will be stomped on by every newspaper proprietor in the country, not to mention every editor of every TV and radio news show in the land. Goodbye nudge-nudge headlines, goodbye sniggering comments on Radio Four panel shows.”

“And the attack on the journalist?”

“She was on a drunken spree with Manors. Probably planning how they’d spend the loot.”

“So our version is, she was involved from the start?”

“I think that’s tidiest, don’t you?”

Nash said, “Manors will know he was set up. The carpet cleaner he met in the pub, who pointed him at the target house. Obviously one of us. And John Bachelor, of course. Someone he actually recognised as a spook.”

“He can know all he wants. Nobody will touch him with a bargepole. As for Bachelor, he didn’t have a clue what was going on. He’d have found a way to mess it up if he did. But he owed the Service rent, and all he had to do was show his face, so Manors would think we were trying to shut his story down. Which, in turn, would corroborate the whole thing as far as the press was concerned. Job done.”

“And yet, and yet,” said Nash. He tapped the photograph of a leering H.R.H., or someone very like him, on the nearest front page. “Some mud’ll stick.”