‘Can’t win them all, mate,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t be fair on the rest of us. We all like someone to blame. Makes us feel better.’

Brighter by the weekend. Finding a positive even when the chips were down. Palmer’s generous and optimistic nature was the opposite of Holm’s ‘glass half empty’ outlook on life.

‘The Belgian lead you gave me was bogus,’ Holm said as Palmer bought a couple of beers. ‘Without it I wouldn’t have advised Huxtable that an attack on UK soil was imminent.’

‘The bogus Belgian, yes.’ Palmer sipped his pint and made a face. ‘Eighty per cent was as far as I was prepared to go, remember? It was your call.’

‘Yes, but I expect an eighty per cent certainty to mean…’ Holm paused and glanced down at the froth on his beer. Palmer was right. The other side of eighty per cent was twenty. It was his call. ‘Didn’t you lot have an inkling about Tunisia? I mean, you’re head of the North Africa station, there must have been something?’

‘Gossip, but nothing substantial, nothing we could act on. Nothing as good as eighty per cent.’

‘No word on Mohid Latif?’

‘We don’t know where he is but according to the Border Force there’s no record he travelled to Tunisia.’

‘He’s in the bloody picture at the cafe, Harry. Of course he travelled to Tunisia.’

‘I know, but there’s nothing from Tunisian immigration or our contacts on the ground. The only sliver of intelligence is that the Tunisian authorities have identified another one of the attackers as Adnan Kadri, a well-known people trafficker. The bad news is that he’s dead.’

‘The Tunisians killed him?’

‘No. It appears he was taken out by rival traffickers.’ Palmer raised his hands in apology. ‘Sorry I can’t be more helpful.’

Holm didn’t really know what he’d been hoping for. Perhaps some reference to Latif which meant Six could take part of the blame. If not that then a miracle. At least the lunch had been good and Palmer had paid.

Holm slogged over the report for the next ten days and then attached the document to an email, pressed send, uttered a short prayer and waited for a response. It came the following afternoon as he was getting ready to leave for home. He trudged up the stairs to the fifth floor and slunk into Huxtable’s office, head down. When she told him to take a seat he sank into a high-backed chair in a vain attempt to disappear.

‘Right.’ Huxtable tapped a long-nailed finger on the desk, her voice soft but ominous. Silk laced with acid. ‘I thought we needed a talk about your performance. A review.’

‘Ma’am?’ Holm could see a copy of his report open on the desk. ‘I thought this meeting was to discuss my document on the Tunis attack?’