He stood alone halfway along the concrete pier. Patrick recognised him from the coat – the same brown corduroy jacket, fraying at the edges like the man wearing it. But as they neared him, there was nothing changed about the glint in the eye, illuminated against a dull blanket of grey cloud stretching down to a muddied, churning sea.

‘No one’s arrived yet,’ said J, not bothering with a greeting. A man, thought Sara, who’d decided to act but not to prolong the action.

‘Hello J,’ said Patrick. ‘Who are we expecting?’

‘There won’t be more than two of them, they won’t have had time.’

‘We can go inside somewhere. Less visible.’

‘They’ll know by now you’re coming for a chat. No point in hiding that. At least with this infernal racket,’ he gestured at the swell booming into the pier’s supports, ‘their recorders should be stuffed.’

‘How are you so sure?’

‘Don’t be an arse, Patrick. Sylvia’s phone, my phone, bugs in the office, you two in their sights…’ He checked himself and turned to Sara. ‘You’re the new lawyer.’

‘Yes, hello.’

‘Well, hang on tight to that bloody scarf of yours, it gets windy out here. Right, what do you want?’

‘We need to make a huddle—’

‘For fuck’s sake—’

‘Against the wind. We’ve something to show you.’

Patrick fished the Blackburn files out of his case. J looked at them briefly. ‘Where d’you get these?’

Patrick nodded to Sara to answer. ‘They were delivered anonymously to Sir Francis Morahan. He passed them on to me. It appears he’d hired me so that a proper investigation could be done within the relevant Muslim communities, by someone they might trust.’

‘Where did he get ’em?’ J was gruff and curt; she took it as brevity, not discourtesy.

‘He told me the source had identified himself only as Sayyid.’

‘Male or female?’

‘Sayyid?’

‘It’s only a name.’

‘He didn’t say.’

‘Sara’s initial investigations have added to the picture,’ said Patrick. He described her encounter with Samir and the story of his incarceration and appearance before the Adviser. ‘We’ve assumed both from that, and from your and my encounter in 2005, that this so-called Adviser was Kareem.’

‘Correct,’ said J.

‘We need you to tell us what exactly Kareem was doing,’ said Sara.

J looked over their shoulders to the shoreline and the white frontage of Deal with its strikingly asymmetrical roof lines. ‘Christ, you don’t ask much, do you?’ A splutter turned into a hacking cough.

‘Are you OK, J?’ asked Patrick, seeing his cheeks go purple.

‘None of your fucking business. Now where were we?’ He conjured up a limpid smile and directed it towards Sara.

‘What exactly was Kareem doing?’ she asked.

J had a further glance around. ‘Pay attention. You go first, Patrick. I’m only going to do this once. Wind back to our other modern terrorist enemy.’