Under the hammer-beam roof, the thousand-year-old hall teemed with life – guides and tourist groups, journalists and lobbyists, MPs and their constituents. I walked quickly past them all and up the stairs at the far end, where a security guard stopped me under the great medieval window that spilled winter light into the hall. I showed him my warrant card too and told him that I was here to see the MP for Hillingdon North.

‘And is Mr King expecting you, sir?’

‘Probably.’

He hesitated for just a moment.

‘Central Lobby, sir.’

I turned left and walked down to the Central Lobby, where great Prime Ministers get full-sized statues and mediocre Prime Ministers get life-sized busts. I spoke to the doorkeeper and he went off to find the MP for Hillingdon North.

He came back with a cool blonde in glasses and a business suit.

‘DC Wolfe? I’m Siri Voss, Mr King’s PA.’ Just the hint of a Scandinavian accent. She was the woman who had called King in when we spoke out on the terrace. We shook hands. ‘As you can appreciate, this is not a good day.’

And then I saw him. Coming out of the corridors that led to the House of Commons.

Ben King looked at me, white-faced and shaken.

‘Detective Wolfe,’ he said. ‘I thought it was over.’

‘It’s just getting started,’ I said. ‘What did you do twenty years ago?’

He kept walking, trying to shake me off the way he shook off the world. I fell into step beside him. I could feel the light touch of his blonde PA on my arm. People were staring at us. Everyone was staring at us.

‘What happened to Anya Bauer?’ I said. ‘What was Salman Khan going to tell me? What happened at that school?’

He stopped, a powerful man in his prime, accustomed to being in control but suddenly badly rattled by events.

‘Can we do this some other time?’ he said.

‘How about when your brother comes back?’

‘My brother? You want to talk to my brother?’ His eyes blazed with something I could not read. ‘I don’t think that will be possible.’

Then he was walking away, and I was suddenly aware of Siri Voss standing right in front of me.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘Oh, please leave him.’

And I saw the two coppers she had brought with her, holding their assault rifles and looking at me with embarrassment more than anything else.

‘It’s not over!’ I shouted at King’s back. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

But there was something in the face of Siri Voss that made me let him go.

I was at home making scrambled omelette for Scout’s tea when DCS Swire called.

‘You’re suspended and under investigation by the police Professional Standards Department pending an IPPC inquiry,’ the chief super told me.

‘Charges?’ I said, stirring the eggs.