Hennessy sighed and took a gold fountain pen from his inside pocket.

‘You’re a hard taskmaster, Beth, that you are.’ She stood in front of the desk, her arms folded across her ample bosom, as Hennessy scanned each letter and signed his name. When he’d finished she scooped them up with a flourish and rewarded him with a smile. She was hellish pretty, thought Hennessy, as he did at least a dozen times a day. If he was younger, and single, and if she wasn’t the proud mother of twins, and if he hadn’t been married to a woman who made his heart ache. God, there were so many ‘ifs’ that it was laughable. He smiled and her lime-green eyes twinkled as if reading his thoughts.

‘Anything else?’ he asked, replacing the top on his pen.

‘Mr Armytage would like you to call him about his case, and you have a four o’clock appointment with Mr Kershaw. And there’s a man trying to get hold of you.’

‘A man?’

‘A foreigner. Calling from London.’ She saw Hennessy smile and she held up her hand. ‘No, I don’t mean he was a foreigner just because he was phoning from England. He sounded foreign, Oriental. Chinese, maybe.’

‘And what did he want, this Chinaman?’

‘He wouldn’t say. Said he had to speak to you. If he calls again, do you want to speak to him?’

‘I don’t see why not. Right, can you get me Tom Armytage’s file? He must be getting nervous about tomorrow.’

Beth nodded and left his office. Hennessy watched her hips swing as she went, then caught sight of his wife’s smiling face in the brass frame on the right-hand corner of his desk, her arms around their two teenage children. Hennessy grinned at the picture. ‘I was only looking, darling Mary, only looking. You know that.’

The phone on the desk rang, making him jump. It was Beth, telling him that The Chinaman was calling again.

‘Put him on,’ said Hennessy, his curiosity aroused.

Nguyen introduced himself and explained what he wanted, speaking softly and slowly, sometimes so quietly that Hennessy had to ask him to repeat himself. When Hennessy finally realised what the caller was requesting he was stunned, unable to believe that the man could be so naïve.

‘What on earth makes you think that I know the men who killed your wife and daughter?’

Nguyen was insistent. Polite but insistent. There was a rustle of paper on the line as if he was reading something. ‘Because you are a political adviser to Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA.’ The phrase came out so confidently and smoothly that the contrast with his earlier carefully controlled speech and ungainly vocabulary convinced Hennessy that The Chinaman had indeed read it, from a newspaper cutting perhaps.

‘I do offer advice to politicians, that is true. But I condemn, as do they, violent acts against innocent members of the public, both in England and here in Northern Ireland.’ Hennessy realised he had shifted into the standard speech he gave journalists or visiting MPs, the words slipping off his tongue as easily as The Chinaman’s when he was reading from the cutting. ‘You have the wrong man.’