‘They’ve sacked everyone, it’s like a Potemkin village. Five underpaid students do everything, overseen by a few overpaid kapos – editors demeritus, essentially, not one of whom would have been given a sub’s job on the old paper – who pander to the whims of the absentee playboy owner, and prowl about on seven-figure bonuses feverishly seeking ways to further slash costs. We don’t print scoops, we print handouts.’ It had become the kind of job that you turned your telephone off for.

‘I’m sorry, Nat Royter left us over a year ago,’ says a young woman’s voice. She is unable to tell Dyer where he might be contacted.

He asks to speak to someone in the same department, but they’re busy. He asks to leave a message. Could someone on the foreign desk call him?

‘Can you say what it’s about?’ sounding no older than twenty.

‘Iran.’

She has not heard of Dyer.

When no one calls, he rings again and is connected to a harassed male voice. This man also is young; he doesn’t have a lot of time, he’s putting three stories to bed.

Dyer feels sickened as he starts to explain himself. An image forms of the person at the other end, a face like Hissop’s. Half-listening, half-prepared, hankering to be somewhere else.

‘Nat Royter would vouch for me.’

‘Ah, Nat,’ with the edginess of a successor. ‘Friend of his, were we?’

Quickly, Dyer explains his history with the newspaper, his two decades as its Latin American correspondent. He is ringing to ask about the situation in Tehran, one journo to another. ‘Is it plausible that the Revolutionary Guard would imprison and rape the wife of an Iranian nuclear scientist based in the UK who may have defected?’

‘Does a fish swim?’ relenting a little. ‘If she’s a dual national, like that jailed mum, she might get away with not being raped. If she’s Iranian, all bets are off. Why do you ask?’ Dyer can hear him tapping away at the keyboard, mouth open, unshaven. ‘Do you have someone in mind?’ in the voice of someone who doesn’t get out of Pimlico much, who hasn’t yet visited Tehran, Rio. Possibly not even Malvern.

‘Not really,’ said Dyer.

‘If your chap has defected, I hope for his sake it’s not to us – unless he fancies spending the rest of his life in Langley. The UK is pretending to go along with the EU in helping out Iran to circumvent US sanctions. Don’t believe it. I was at a briefing yesterday at the FO. This new extradition treaty the Foreign Secretary has signed – I’ll be putting it online later. Basically, anyone the Americans slap in a request for, we fly them to Virginia.’