‘I had savings until earlier today. Are you going to be all right?’

‘I’ve no idea, sir. It’s too depressing to think about.’

‘I can cook omelettes and potatoes for us both. Is that OK with you?’

‘I’d like that,’ Spoder said.

‘We could go to a restaurant, but I don’t want to spend the cash I have, not until I know the exact situation.’

‘The exact situation is that we’re cleaned out.’

‘Let’s eat,’ I said. ‘After that I want to work.’

Twenty minutes later, sitting at the long table in the large kitchen/diner, while we finished what felt at the time was possibly the last meal ever, Spoder suddenly went to his jacket, slung on the seat of one of my chairs. He withdrew a thin sheaf of papers from an inner pocket. He had folded them down the middle, lengthways, to fit his pocket.

‘Sir, I said I had a reason for wanting to tell you what happened to me when I was a teenager. And how as a result I came to be in the police a few years later. At the time I thought I was the only fugitive who moved over into the law, but as I’ve described it turned out to be a common route. It’s not widely known to the public. Although throughout the islands there’s a great deal of sympathy for the young people who escape the war, there is a belief at every level of policing that this is a subject that should not be made widely known. Hundreds of people like me are still being hunted, we are in breach of the laws of those distant countries. And we are the law enforcement in the islands.’

He placed the papers on the surface of the long table, and flattened them with his hands to smooth out the crease.

‘This Enver Jeksid we have been talking about. The former police officer. Sir, he came to visit me yesterday. He turned up at my apartment without warning. At the time he came to my door I was trying to find out what had happened to my money, so I couldn’t have been less ready for him. I had no idea who he was: when he said his name I didn’t connect immediately. He did not look as I expected, because of the things he had said. The insinuations, the sense of a threat against you. He did not frighten or intimidate me. But he said that because the island where he came from, Dearth, was close to the southern continent, he had contacts with the Faiandland forces there. I took that to mean he was threatening to expose me.’

‘Surely the escouades, if they found you, could not arrest you now?’

‘You mean because of my age? That’s right, of course. But they could make life difficult for me, and perhaps for my children.’