I hold my breath as he straightens his already perfect tie. I know she’s right. He’s got something, but is it going to be what I need?141

‘It’s starting to look like Jaqlin’s after the Ministry of Defence. Their original big fish – that perverted captain – was nowhere near the tip of the shitty iceberg. The line is it would have compromised active intelligence if Operation Andromeda had gone any further back then. It wouldn’t have been in the national interest, apparently – like the national interest is always the same as the public interest. So they are protecting someone, or something, and they are doing it deliberately. And it doesn’t take much to work out what they were all still obsessing over at the time.’

Jemima whistles as he nods. The general’s eyes flash sharp on the monitor.

‘Exactly. Cold War nukes. The Brits could hardly take their eye off Russia’s balls with the Americans breathing down everyone’s necks. That intelligence operation was literally untouchable, it had to be. And it involved practically every unit in the country. Nothing was more important at the time, even as the government was busily shredding the rest of the military. Those spending cuts went the whole way through the nineties. Talk to anyone even remotely connected to defence and they describe that spending review as being like a nuclear bomb—’

‘And that’s where the case against Minchin comes in?’ Jemima interrupts.

‘Correct again, Jonas,’ he says, reaching for the keyboard behind her, wiping out the general with the click of a mouse. ‘But I have to prove it. It’s all been too easy. Wait till you see this…’ His hands flash across the keyboard as he pulls up a new file. ‘I need a second source, even though this leak is iron-clad. You wouldn’t believe it even if I told you. Madame Commissioner’s got an agenda, for sure. It can’t just be about all the money flooding back to defence instead of into her coffers, once they’d realised no one had the goods to have another go in the Gulf.’

A picture swims into focus on the screen, fuzzy and faded yet as unmistakable as the blood thundering in my ears. Time slows as I float, suspended, somewhere peripheral, somewhere even 142beyond the distance, pricks of light popping in my eyes with every shallow breath.

I think I hear myself cry out.

And then everything goes black.

143

Carly ~ Warchester ~ 1997

‘I’m afraid I can’t do that.’ Doctor Twena stares up at Rach, who towers over him. She looks like an actual clown under the hospital strip lights, like she’s painted her face with nail polish. It can’t be proper makeup.

‘I’m her sister, aren’t I? I can take her home whenever I like.’