He sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. The old wild lusts and griefs swirled around his head along with the whisky, which he doubted he would ever drink again.

Laure moved around in the next room. He heard the clink of glasses and a shuffle of furniture. A silence fell.

He went over to the door and stepped through, only to bump into Laure coming back into the room. They faced each other.

‘I’m sorry,’ she spoke first. ‘But you hurt me.’

‘I’m sorry too.’

How eagerly love made do with the slivers that were offered.

Various expressions registered in the green eyes, none of which he could quite read. ‘I honour my bargains.’

‘I know Tomas loved me…’ There was just a hint of uncertainty.

So that was it, he thought. The doubt he had planted had rooted. It had taken time but it was there.

Love went with pity? Power went with love? Cheating and shortchanging too.

He swallowed. ‘If I tell you what I know, you must promise to forget it and to live your life?’ Her eyes were now so vexed and troubled that he was being dragged into their shadows. ‘For your sanity.’

She allowed herself to be sat back down on the bed.

The new Czech Republic was not a cheap territory in which to operate and he had paid well for the information that he was about to pass on to Laure. In one sense, he had bought his own discomfort. To live with what he had unearthed was to be faced with the crimes and misdemeanours of the regime he had supported.

‘Tomas was on the watchlist. He was a known dissident. You know he was frequently picked up and questioned. And beaten up. It was thought he and the group were trying to get information out to the West. He was arrested as he boarded a train to Vienna and taken to the Bartolomĕjská.’

She uttered a small sound of distress.

‘Prisoners there were divided into three categories. Minor offenders, repeat offenders and serious offenders, which usually included the political prisoners. It was not a good category to be in.’

He was not about to give the details. In the past, political prisoners were assigned to the uranium mines, which were poisoned, brutal hells, run by thugs and killers. But Laure did not need to know the half of it. That he could do for her.

She folded her arms across her stomach.

‘Do you wish me to continue?’

She looked this way and that. ‘Yes.’

‘Tomas was in the serious offender category. He was interrogated for three days at the end of which he was admitted to the prison hospital. The records show that he had broken arms, a broken leg and a serious head wound.’