Sir John leant back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. Ellen recognised his defensive position. There was nothing he or anyone else could do. The IRA was an insurmountable problem. Even if they were to catch the men behind the latest series of bombings, it would not stop, another active service unit would come to life. The killings would never stop, not until the British pulled out of Northern Ireland. And there was little likelihood of that happening.

‘How long have you been in this country, Mr Nguyen?’ Sir John asked.

‘I have been a British citizen since 1982. Very long time.’ He reached into his duffel coat pocket and took out a passport, the old type, dark-blue with the gold crest on the front. He held it out to the MP but he seemed reluctant to take it and kept his arms folded. Nguyen put it back in his pocket.

‘From Hong Kong?’ Sir John asked. Ellen realised then why he was so defensive. He had been one of the most outspoken critics of the Government’s offer of passports to the colony’s middle classes.

‘Do you not have family back in Hong Kong? Can you not go back there?’

The old man looked surprised. ‘Hong Kong? Why I go back there?’

Sir John appeared equally confused. ‘That’s where you came from,’ he said. ‘Surely you still have family there?’

‘I not Hong Kong Chinese,’ Nguyen explained. ‘I am Vietnamese. From Vietnam.’

Realisation dawned on the MP’s face and he sighed audibly. He was, Ellen knew, even more vehemently against Vietnamese boat people being offered sanctuary in Britain. God, the number of times she’d listened to him address meetings on the difference between political and economic refugees and how Britain couldn’t offer homes to everyone in the world who wanted a better standard of living.

‘North or south?’ asked Sir John.

Nguyen smiled. ‘Today there is no north or south. Only Vietnam.’

‘When you escaped,’ the MP pressed. ‘Where were you from then?’

Nguyen shrugged. ‘Both,’ he said. ‘North and south.’

‘And why did you come to England?’

‘Because I could not live in Vietnam. Because the Communists persecuted me and my family. I helped the Americans in the war. When the Americans go they put me in prison. So we escaped. To Britain.’

‘Why Britain?’

‘Because here we can be free.’

The MP nodded. ‘But do you not see, Mr Nguyen? The reason that you can be free in this country and not your own is because we have laws for everybody here. Nobody is above the law. But equally nobody is denied its protection. That is what makes democracy work. That is why you wanted to come here in the first place, to be free. You cannot now ask for the laws to be changed, to take away the rights of others.’

‘Even if they have killed my family?’

‘You must allow the police to do their job. You must have faith in our system, Mr Nguyen.’ He put his hands on the desk top and pushed himself up. Nguyen tilted his head up and for the first time it gave him a more confident, vaguely arrogant look. Then he stood up and he became once more the stooped old man, alone in the world. Sir John patted him on the back as he guided him through the doorway and into the corridor and then he slipped back into the office.