Paolo looks up from his phone call. They’ve pulled up outside a nondescript semi-detached house on a sloping road. It has a council estate feel to it. The cars don’t look very expensive and the curtains in most of the upstairs windows don’t look thick enough to keep out the light. Number 28 has a handrail by the steps that lead up to the garden path. The garden is neatly tended and through the big front window he can make out patterned wallpaper and an unfeasibly large photograph of two boys holding musical instruments and grinning for the camera.

‘Thanks for your time,’ says Paolo to the good man who’s still talking to him about the untold dead. ‘I’ll call you back.’

Paolo pays on his card, much to the dismay of the driver. Asks for a receipt, just to piss him off. Then he climbs out of the car and lugs his single hold-all behind him.

He stands in the glow of the streetlight. It’s deathly quiet on Berrymoor Road. He feels, for a moment, as if he’s the priest in the movie poster of The Exorcist. Wonders whether he really is on to a story that will make his name, or if he’s come all this way to talk to a mad woman.

The front door opens. Standing on the step is a woman he recognizes from her time as head of MI6. Blue eyes, silver hair; an expensive-looking cashmere cardigan worn with a silky blouse and well-pressed trousers. She’s slim and fit and looks far younger than the age she admits to in Who’s Who.

‘You’ll be Paolo Fergus,’ she says, without offering a handshake. ‘Bloody funny sort of a name. She’ll ask you about it, but don’t get sidetracked. She wanders. I presume your dad was Italian or something, yes? No mystery. Why do people always need a mystery?’

Paolo isn’t sure what to say. Just stands on the doorstep looking feckless. ‘I’m sorry, this is your house, is it?’

‘No, Mr Fergus,’ she says, withering. ‘This is her house, and she won’t leave it because she’s as stubborn as a bloody donkey. Which means muggins here has to move in and play nursemaid while she’s feeling sorry for herself and getting over her latest pretend illness. I, if you must know, have a rather lovely house where she could quite easily live in bloody luxury, but apparently we both need to be here and miserable because she’s too much of a home bird to make a move at her time of life.’