‘It’s something London-based entrepreneurs talk about after a few beers. It’s kept at the highest levels. You know, those used to risking millions are the only businessmen mad enough to believe things like that. I got interested, found out about the auction, and, like I told you when you visited me at the mews flat, bought the scrying glass as an alternative to using the electronic methods of covert news gathering. It worked a treat. I’d sit up here, connecting my mind to a celebrity here, a politician there, finding out all their secrets while they slept and then tipping off my editors as to how they could credibly find stories they could print. Watch – what you do is this.’ He went over, and, carefully holding onto the panic button, took the scrying glass from Quill’s hands, then set it back on his desk. He sat down in front of it. ‘You concentrate on a particular location, perhaps a building, and the glass sort of tells you if anyone’s asleep in that vicinity. You can’t see anything, so you can’t use it as a spy camera, worse luck; you just get a sense of who each sleeping person is. You pick the one whose brain you want to leaf through and you get your mind connected directly to theirs. It’s like suddenly having loads more memories. You can’t keep them all, but, like you were trying to recall something you yourself knew, you can reach for whatever you’re after. With you lot, I usually just felt around for whatever you’d been up to the previous day.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘That US presidential visit was so frustrating: I could never pin down exactly where he spent the night.’ He got up again to retrieve his whisky. ‘As you may have guessed, I also used the glass to further my political agenda. I’m mounting a sort of coup, Quill. I’m tired of politicians who court public opinion. What this country needs is a few who’ll make opinion, who’ll tell the masses what to think. That’s what the British really like. I should know. I’ve been telling them what to think for decades.’

Quill, with his generally low opinion of the general public, allowed himself a grunt of recognition.

‘So I used the glass to make good things happen for the MPs I liked, bad things for those I didn’t, and I gradually let the idea seep into Westminster that this would keep happening, that I had everyone’s secrets, that I was starting to be in control. It was especially ironic, considering that I’d become the “clean” newspaperman. They couldn’t understand how I was doing it.’

Quill found he was interested in something. ‘Did you notice that you couldn’t spy on MPs when they were in Parliament?’