‘They brought her in for Minchin, I’m told. It didn’t last long, but it definitely happened, probably in the gap between you turning yourself in and her being properly taken into care. It was all planned from the inside, from the word go. The abuse ring had been operating for years, long before you were brought in. I never knew about you specifically, but I’ve got two sources confirming the captain’s link to Baby Girl … sorry, to Kayleigh, and confirming that her mother was an ex of his, and that’s how he managed to source her. Which means you’re right. You were the other link in the chain. They set you up from the start, he was never really dead. You wouldn’t believe what you can cover up in the name of intelligence…’

He stops again as I bang my forehead against my knees. Of course I can believe it. We’re living proof of it. We’re probably the only ones who will ever really believe it. It’s unthinkable otherwise. Incomprehensible to anyone other than people like Dominic, who go looking for it.

‘The allegation is it’s been buried from the top down, because, at the time, Minchin and others were too involved in active intelligence operations. Parish also worked in those units. Were you 228ever told where your dad was deployed before he died? My bet is some off-grid Troubles operation infiltrating a nationalist community…’

I lose him as I remember how it was all Jason ever talked about. Intelligence. Like he was the only one who ever had any, or could possibly understand what it meant. Now it turns out neither of us could have even imagined it.

‘… nothing can ever compromise defensive capability, especially not then, when the world was still obsessing over how many nuclear weapons the Russians really had. But now someone’s inside operation has turned, and the Met has finally got enough to win it. The Andromeda failings are such an old score to settle – the CPS only managed eleven convictions in the first place by listing some of the victims as accomplices on the charge sheet just because of their age at the end—’

I think I say her name, but now Dominic’s started, it’s as if he’ll never stop. Rachel, the closest thing to a mother I ever had. She was only ever a victim too.

‘…I just haven’t been sure, until now, that I wasn’t being played – especially after our last story. And I’ve still got nothing to show that the state has been covering for Minchin all this time. I think that’s been my problem: I haven’t wanted to believe that the Met isn’t covered in shit like it always is, always fucking has been…’