Updark stood up and rammed his fist into his palm. His cheekbones were livid, as if they had been slapped and weren’t suffering from the mysterious allergy that he had contracted immediately on his return to England, as he explained to Dyer in the car, and for which he was having to undergo patch-testing. Three days, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. A plastic sheet on his wrist, with aluminium chambers containing allergens for ‘suspect agents’. Updark was relieved to speak about it, sharing the details as they came up the stairs, once Dyer’s person had been thoroughly searched – Updark’s interrogation by two top dermatologists in Milton Keynes, their prognosis. Had he been bitten? Had he used another shampoo, soap, shaving cream? What had he done differently, where had he been? They were speculating, really. There was no diagnosis for it – Granuloma faciale was the best they could do. ‘They don’t know, that’s the point. Sometimes it just disappears.’ They weren’t ruling out stress, he had told Dyer optimistically.

Not much optimism in his face now.

‘You’re pulling my pisser, Basil.’

Reverted to a nickname, Dyer could have been back in Upper One.

Updark reached up and smoothed his hair. He liked people who had been at the Phoenix to remind him of himself when he was at the Phoenix, with the world laid out before him. Dyer did not. ‘I don’t think you appreciate how high the stakes are. The numbers, damn you. Look at them.’

Dyer pushed away the napkin. ‘If you recall, I was never good at numbers.’

‘He didn’t give anything to you?’ Updark persisted. He was still standing. With his blotched red face. Yanking a disobedient creature by the leash.

‘Why would he? As I told you, I hardly know him.’

But Dyer’s mind was racing. His account of their conversation, which he had devoted much of Sunday to writing out – was it downstairs in his shoulder bag? On the kitchen table? He had a memory of moving the pages to one side on Sunday evening as he helped Leandro plot the disposition of the British and French fleets at Trafalgar.

Updark was rapping his notebook against his leg.

Just then, Lorna interrupted to say that Updark was wanted upstairs.

‘I’ll be back pronto,’ he promised in a detached voice. His glance flickered again to the paper napkin on the tray. Then he closed his notebook and slipped it into his jacket pocket and left.

Hissop said: ‘I think we need another coffee. Lorna!’ and to Dyer: ‘She’s my secretary.’

‘I’m not really his secretary.’

‘Well, whatever you are, please get us some more coffee.’

To Dyer, taking his white mug from him: ‘Black still OK for you?’

He nodded, and suddenly recognised what was familiar in her voice – as unmistakeable as the sound of the curlew – and in the gingery taste of her flapjacks. ‘Where up north are you from?’