Rougetel would make sense of it if anyone could. He was a free spirit, he had no dependants, no allegiances save to what his instinct told him was true. Marvar’s breakthrough wouldn’t be lost. It would be considered, assimilated, added to the synthesis of Rougetel’s worldly knowledge. And if his algorithm was everything that Marvar claimed, Rougetel, out of all the talented people Dyer had met in his life, could be trusted to make an objective decision about who to give it to in order for it to be exploited for good.

Dyer turns his head, checking again.

A further factor in Rougetel’s favour: he doesn’t possess a phone or a laptop, so no GPS will be able to track him. Beyond everything, there had to be no risk to his person; no one must know what Dyer is about to do.

Not a thing moves in the street, in the windows.

A light breeze blew up as Dyer approached the entrance to St Mary’s. Leaves from the trees overlooking the cemetery whirled across the paving stones. The porch lay in shadow. Dyer thought it was empty. Then his eyes readjusted to the shadows, and he made out a figure stretched on the bench.

In silence, Dyer stepped up to him. Rougetel lay on his back, asleep with a slight smile. His head rested on his rolled-up blue sleeping bag. He had wrapped himself in his Inca blanket, and his pigeon toes protruded from under it with their socks still on. In these surroundings, his hat like a sombrero, his white rod, his backpack seem excessive luxuries. The dawn light makes him Christ-like, but it gives to him other faces as well. A boy who lies on a riverbank with his eyes half-closed. A voyager from another world who will rise in a short while on the strand of a new continent.

Careful to make no noise, Dyer took the envelope from his coat pocket. It was the brown envelope that he had posted to Miranda, containing his detailed account of all that Marvar had told him on Port Meadow. Dyer had stuck Marvar’s post-it note to the first page, with an explanatory letter.

Rougetel scratches his ankle in sleep. As vulnerable and exposed as the corner of a book.

Dyer unfastens the rucksack, slips in the envelope, and does up the buckle.

He stands for a moment in a kind of benison. Then he takes a step back and turns and quietly leaves.

His earlier panic has left him. He feels reinvigorated, as if he has let a great fish go free. Walking home, the sound of birds, a roseate glow in the sky, suddenly all the irritations of Oxford seem precious.

Chapter Forty-three

ON SATURDAY MORNING, MR TANNER hoisted up the flagpole a square of yellow cloth stitched with the blue emblem of a phoenix.