‘Never heard from after he got off the plane. He was the real hero of it all, if you ask me. Joined the Kaibiles, endured all the horrors of training to be one of them, just so he could feed information back to Walt’s network. He was the one who filmed the carnage at the village. Kaapo, that was his name. Got himself out and his sister out and put all of his trust in a man who used a Belizean brothel as his base of operations. He joined up with another man. Alejandro something-or-other. Bit of a mix-up there. Foreign Office spivs got their wires crossed and had our poor boys hand him back to the very lads he’d just betrayed. Rather impressive work, other than the occasional hiccup. Got the pair of them all the way to a little village on Hadrian’s Wall. Went home, and carried on. Last we heard a man fitting his description was claiming asylum in the US, though whether that’s true or not I couldn’t say.’

Fergus sits still for a moment. Looks around him at the cosy little room. Hears a thud from upstairs and looks to the ceiling.

‘Don’t worry, she won’t come through,’ says Cordelia with a smile. ‘She’ll be needing her bandages changing. Count down from ten in your head and before you hit three she’ll be asking for a cup of tea, I promise you.’

Fergus enjoys the look of warmth and friendship that fills Baroness Hemlock’s face as she talks about her friend. ‘You’ve been through a lot together,’ he says. ‘It’s a strange friendship – a spy and a housewife.’

Cordelia’s face turns to stone. ‘Nowt wrong with being a housewife, young man. Nowt wrong with being a mam or a home-maker. But she’s a damn sight more than any one of those things. She’s the bravest woman I know. Best of all of us.’

Fergus makes his apologies. Stands up. Hears the thin, gravelly voice of the lady from the recordings, shouting down the stairs and wondering whether the kettle’s boiled yet.

‘See,’ mutters Cordelia, appearing at his side. She stands a little too close to him. Where the collar of her dress slides down her shoulder he can make out a puckering of the skin; a ragged circle of white lines.

‘I don’t know what I’ll do with all of this,’ says Fergus. ‘It’s not the story I set out to write.’

‘Life’s like that,’ she says, without emotion. ‘You think it’s going one way and then it shoots off in another. You never really know where you are. All you can do is try your best to not make the world any worse for anybody else.’

‘And do you believe you’ve achieved that?’