Flanker leaned back in his chair. He looked at the man with the twitch, who nodded in return.

“Academic, Miss Next.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hades is dead. SO-14 are not complete losers despite a certain trigger-happiness. They pursued him up the M4 that night until he crashed his car by junction twelve. It rolled down an embankment and burst into flames. We didn’t want to tell you until we’d heard your evidence.”

The news hit me squarely and hard. Revenge had been a prime emotion keeping me together over the past two weeks. Without a burning desire to see Hades punished, I might not even have made it at all. Without Acheron all my testimony would be left unproven. I hadn’t expected it all to be believed, but at least I could look forward to being vindicated when others came across him.

“Sorry?” I asked suddenly.

“I said that Hades was dead.”

“No he isn’t,” I said without thinking.

Flanker supposed that my reaction was the effect of traumatic shock.

“It might be difficult to come to terms with, but he is. Burned almost beyond recognition. We had to identify him by dental records. He still had Snood’s pistol with him.”

“The Chuzzlewit manuscript?”

“No sign—we think destroyed as well.”

I looked down. The whole operation had been a fiasco.

“Miss Next,” said Flanker, standing up and laying a hand on my shoulder, “you will be pleased to hear that none of this will be published below SO-8. You can return to your unit without a blemish on your record. There were errors, but none of us have any idea how anything might have turned out given a different set of circumstances. As for us, you won’t be seeing us again.’

He turned off the cassette recorder, wished me good health and walked out of the room. The other officers joined him, except for the man with the twitch. He waited until his colleagues were out of earshot then whispered to me:

“I think your testimony is bullshit, Miss Next. The service can ill afford to lose the likes of Fillip Tamworth.”

“Thank you.”

“What for?”

“For telling me his first name.”

The man moved to say something, thought the better of it and then left.

I got up from the table in the impromptu interview room and stared out of the window. It was warm and sunny outside and the trees swayed gently in the breeze; the world looked as though it had little room for people like Hades. I allowed the thoughts of the night to come back again. The part I hadn’t told them was about Snood. Acheron had talked some more that night. He had indicated the tired and worn body of Snood and said:

“Filbert asked me to say he was sorry.”

“That’s Filbert’s father!—” I corrected him.

“No,” he chuckled. “That was Filbert.”

I looked at Snood again. He was lying on his back with his eyes open and the likeness was unmistakable, despite the sixty-year age gap.