THE WAREHOUSE WAS A LARGE three-storey space in Vauxhall, situated close to the train lines. It used to be a sweet factory and was now officially a ‘storage facility’ for the Security Services. Unofficially it was an off-the-radar location for informants we wanted to hide, hostiles we wanted to interrogate or training events we wanted to hold. On the ground floor what used to be the factory floor was now just a vast empty room. It had hosted mental health initiatives like: ‘Fire then feel fine: How to cope with killing for your country’ and ‘Who are you? How to remember you when playing them’, as well as workshops such as: ‘Creative control: Killing using everyday objects’.

Access to the Warehouse was usually in through one of the several back doors under the cover of darkness. As this was the first time non-Security Services personnel would be attending, an effort had been made to tidy up the front entrance. There were two drooping pot plants either side of the front door, where a suited Six employee I didn’t recognise ticked me off a list and handed me my ‘Alexis Tyler, Liaison Officer’ badge. I looked up at the sign announcing ‘We are Family!’– with the arrow pointing towards the factory floor, or the ‘conference room’ as we were now calling it.

I opened the conference room’s double doors and took in the room packed with Sheep. A hundred or so innocent members of the public, mostly women. Apart from the three Pigs, Duggers had chosen certain other Six analysts and their partners to take part in the ‘We are Family’ initiative. He had clearly pulled out all the stops to get everything up and running, with enlarged posters of stock photos of happy families and a banqueting table set up with biscuits and tea and coffee cups laid out. A nice, no-frills conference where, according to the Liaison Officer ‘We are Family’ crib sheet, we should lead discussions with points such as: ‘They don’t tell you everything but they are giving you everything’ and ‘Their mouths may be sealed but their hearts are open’.

I looked around the room and spotted a few familiar faces from Six. Junior analysts that had been drafted in to act as Liaison Officers. I clocked my name on the table plan and my assigned table number. Eight. Good to see Duggers still had a semblance of a sense of humour.

‘Hello, everyone, and welcome!’ came a loud, booming voice over the PA system. I glanced over my shoulder to see an elderly woman at the front of the large room holding a hand-held microphone.

‘I am Mrs Moulage,’ the woman announced.

I swivelled round to look at her.

Mrs Moulage was an Eight legend and, as the first female Rat to ever walk the hallowed halls of Platform Eight, a hero I had always wanted to meet.