‘Anyone probably won’t. But you used your credit card when you booked into the Lamb, which was careless. We lifted the particulars from your phone. Lucky for you it’s in our hands rather than Nishizaki’s.’

‘What is it that you want to talk to me about, Driscoll-san?’

‘The past, the present … and the near future.’

‘My future? Or yours?’

‘Both, Wada. They’re inextricably linked now, I’m afraid. For better … or worse.’

They sat on the same bench Wada had sat on for a while the previous day. The morning was bright but cool, the air clear, their words distinct.

Driscoll squinted up at the central tower of the cathedral. ‘Ah,’ he purred, ‘the Lantern of the Fens. I used to come up here on the train from Cambridge when I was a student. Just to be somewhere that wasn’t … part of the university world.’

‘Is that the past you want to talk to me about?’

‘No. We don’t need to go back quite that far. Our raid on Nancekuke, in June of seventy-seven. That’s where it begins. You know all about it from Marty, I imagine. I can’t believe you spent two days immured with him at Stórí-Asgarbær without hearing the whole story. He never could move on from that night. The night Alison died.’

‘How did she die? He did not reveal what you told him about that.’

Driscoll sighed. ‘There were more guards than we anticipated. I think they were expecting us. Maybe Noy had let something slip. He could be loose-lipped when he was drunk. And he was often drunk. We didn’t know him well enough to trust him. And yet we did trust him. I suppose Alison and I were so eager to believe him we never stopped to consider whether we were wise to. But then wisdom and youth don’t generally go together, do they?’

‘Did you shoot one of the guards?’