Bannerman could not bring himself to believe the implications. He dropped his head into his hands and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. He looked up. ‘I find it difficult to accept what you are saying,’ he said. ‘I know that in one sense it seems logical. I agree that the British government stood to lose much more than Jansen and Lapointe. With a general election at the end of the month they would have been annihilated if it had leaked out that the understudy to their Foreign Minister was selling arms to apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia’s Ian Smith. But there’s nothing to suggest that they ever knew. And even if they had, I just can’t accept that they would have had him murdered. I know that governments do questionable things, but to assassinate a Minister of State, and a journalist . . . All they needed to do was remove Gryffe from office, pressure him to resign his seat, even the party. Why kill him?’

Du Maurier looked at him solemnly. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I wonder if perhaps I am too old and too cynical. Your reasoning is sound, but I am not convinced. Maybe if it was my own government I would see it your way, be prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. But was it not my own government that forced me to close this case when it was clear two men had been murdered? Why? To protect diplomatic relations? Because of pressure from your government in London? Your people moved too quickly not to have known.’ He paused to consider his next words. ‘For me the only real doubt arises from the fact that they did not kill you in Flanders. That they never meant to. And then, of course, there is the man shot dead at the airport. There appears to be no connection.’

‘Who was he?’

‘An Englishman. William Francis Kale. That, of course, was not the name on his passport. We put out a fingerprint check through Interpol, who tracked him down through his British army record. He served in the armed forces for three years in the early nineteen sixties. Then did nine months in a military prison for assaulting an officer. He had no police record, but he was known to police in England. Suspected of a number of contract killings. Though nothing was ever proved.’