‘None of this needs to go any further.’ Casey didn’t meet his eyes. ‘This is all just between us, at the moment. But we do need to understand a few things, my colleague and I.’

And it might be their secret, partly because Ross would have wanted the minister, not the nameless girls in some faraway country.

‘What do you mean?’ Casey glanced up and Bantham’s eyes were sharp in the mirror. Almost hopeful. He turned around.

‘I want to clarify exactly what happened,’ Casey said smoothly, ‘in Bangladesh.’

‘I don’t know anything about Bangladesh.’ Bantham shook his head. ‘You’re fucking mad.’

‘Tell us.’ Casey made it an order. ‘Right now.’

Bantham was scuffing his shoe against the floorboards.

‘I can’t imagine why you’ve targeted me like this.’ It was almost a plea.

‘You do.’ It was Hessa now. ‘You know exactly why we came for you.’

She pressed a button on the tablet again.

It doesn’t take much, I assure you.

You make it sound so easy.

It is.

Hessa stopped the recording. ‘That’s why.’

‘We just want to clarify a few things,’ Casey’s words floated across the room. ‘You’d be a source on our story. And we look after our sources, Gabriel.’

They let the silence run, and quite suddenly, Bantham disintegrated.

‘Do you mean it? That it’s just to help you clarify things.’

Casey tilted her head, in what might have been assent.

‘I may have organised a few meetings.’ Here was the desperation, so familiar. ‘Meetings that helped out a few companies, once or twice. I can see – now – how that might have been misinterpreted. Maybe. But nothing . . . Nothing . . .’

‘And the weeks away?’

Bantham’s eyes widened.

‘There was a weekend here and there, maybe,’ he said. ‘Ten days in Koh Samui, once. But you’re absolutely right, I shouldn’t have done it.’

The admissions were coming easily, thought Casey. Too easily.

‘And did you think no one would ever find out?’ she asked.

‘They were just research visits, really,’ he floundered. ‘Just to meet people, build contacts. You know how it is.’

The political cartoons sneered down from their cherrywood frames, the ignominy looming so close.

‘It was helpful for everyone,’ he finished lamely. Casey thought of the MPs, trundling out to DC for a quiet word. It happened everywhere.

‘Who was paying you?’ Hessa asked.

Bantham reeled off three companies busy building empires in the east.

‘I’ll never do it again,’ he promised, blindly. ‘And I suppose you’re recording this too, now . . . Oh God. I should never . . .’

He was almost in tears, the sophistication ravaged.

‘My parents,’ he begged. ‘There’s only me . . . They couldn’t bear . . .’

For a split second, Casey thought of an old lady, shamed by her son. The silver head bowing, everything lost. But he is still my son.