Driving back to his cottage, they’d said little of consequence, making small talk about life in a small town. The cottage itself was much as Carol had expected. Whatever this woman meant to Tony, she hadn’t stamped her identity over his space. She recognized most of the furniture, the pictures on the wall, the books lined up on shelves along the study wall. Even the answering machine, she thought with a faint shudder, ambushed by memory.

‘Looks like you’ve settled in,’ was all she said.

He shrugged. ‘I’m not much of a homemaker. I went through it with a bucket of white paint then moved all the old stuff in. Luckily most of it fitted.’

Once they were settled in the study with mugs of coffee, present constraints somehow slipped away and the old ease that had existed between them reasserted itself. So while Tony read the brief that Morgan had couriered to Carol that morning, she curled up in a battered armchair and browsed an eclectic pile of magazines ranging from New Scientist to Marie Claire. He’d always read a strange assortment of publications, she remembered fondly. She’d never been stuck for something to read in his house.

As he read, Tony made occasional notes on a pad propped on the arm of his chair. His eyebrows furrowed from time to time, and occasionally his mouth quirked in a question that he never enunciated. It wasn’t a long brief, but he read it slowly and meticulously, flipping back to the beginning and skimming it again after he’d first reached the end. Finally, he looked up. ‘I must admit, I’m puzzled,’ he said.

‘By what, in particular?’

‘By the fact that they’re asking you to do something like this. It’s so far outside your field of experience.’

‘That’s what I thought. I have to assume there’s some aspect of my experience or my skills that overrides my lack of direct undercover work.’

Tony pushed his hair back from his forehead in a familiar gesture. ‘That would be my guess. The brief itself is more or less straightforward. Pick up the drugs from your source, exchange the parcel of drugs for cash and return it to your first contact. Of course, I’m assuming they’ll throw spanners in the works along the way. There wouldn’t be any point in it otherwise.’

‘It’s supposed to be a test of my abilities, so I think it’s fair to expect the unexpected.’ Carol dropped the magazine she was reading and tucked her legs underneath her. ‘So how do I do it?’

Tony glanced at his notes. ‘There’s two aspects to this – the practical and the psychological. What are your thoughts?’