Lucy frowned as they approached the roundabout at the interchange for the M25 and the cargo terminals: the other car gathered speed again, flashed its lights, swung alongside very close to them. A passenger rolled down the window. Simon braked hard, turning the off-road vehicle on to the pavement. The passenger shouted an obscenity out of the window, then the car swerved across them and disappeared out of sight.

All were silent, aware of what Simon was doing. He bounced the car back on the road and continued toward the M25. “Was that necessary?” Alex’s voice was quiet and, accepting that his romantic weekend was very much at an end, he started to experience that same sinking feeling that had come over him while talking to Calvin two nights before.

“I may have provoked a case of road rage, and nothing more sinister,” Simon suggested. But his nervous state was a surprise to Lucy. “So Alex, M3 and A303, isn’t it?”

“Against the Sunday traffic it won’t take long, Simon. We’ll be there by six. Could I use your phone to ring my father and tell him we’re on our way?”

“If they’re talking to you on yours, don’t use it at all.” Simon passed Alex his cell phone, and when the call was complete, he took a deep breath. He had a long story he knew Alex and Lucy would have difficulty with. It was irrational, and yet so simple it frightened even him.

In the steadiest tones he could command, that nevertheless couldn’t disguise his anger, he communicated what he had extracted in the heated confrontation with Calvin the day before. In his years as a journalist he had run up against all kinds of people. In his view his job was to observe others and let the public draw their own conclusions about what he presented. Get the facts right, then the truth was what you made it. What he saw confronting Lucy and Alex was a group of people who believed in the rightness of their position so staunchly that they felt they were above the law.

“Dictators, presidents, religious leaders—I’ve met them. You know, Alex, that whenever Will was available we went together; I was the wordsmith, his pictures told the story. At day’s end we often sat at a bar in some international hotel, some faraway capital city, asking each other how the hell these guys got away with it. Sometimes we were so outraged by the rubbish they’d tell us, it would leave us lost for words. Our conclusions varied, but mostly we raised a glass to freedom, democracy, and the Western way of life—‘Long may it live.’” He was unusually emotional.