He gives me that smile of his – the one that says this is all jolly good fun and a little bit silly but he’s happy to play along with it if it means he gets to continue thinking of himself as someone who’s considerably more interesting than he looks. He pulls a little cigar from an inside pocket and lights it with a match from a damp box, sucking on the foot of his smoke like a baby with a teat. He looks at me as he does it, though it’s more out of a sense of good manners than anything suggestive. He’s a funny little man but he’s not a lech. I think he’s probably sexless, though that hasn’t harmed his marriage or his relationship with his kids. Walt’s a man of duty.

‘You hear it?’ he asks, when his cigar is lit and the air between us is full of greasy grey smoke. He moves to the back of the tomb where what remains of a fresco has turned into a dull swirl and smear of misshapen nymphs and deformed cherubs. He puts the torch on top of an alabaster casket and steps into the circle of light as if walking onto a stage to deliver a reading. ‘I heard it. Straight from the cowboy’s mouth. Stood there beside him at the podium and looked out at the world and said it straight out. “A man of integrity. Of unimpeachable moral character. Standing proud against a sea of Reds”.’

I found a more comfortable spot on a coffin. Pressed my back to the cold stone. Gave him the nod that he took as permission to keep talking. Neither of us checked the other for a wire or a weapon. To do so would have been the ultimate in poor manners.

‘I see you haven’t changed your attitude towards our chums in Washington,’ I said, suppressing a shiver. I looked again at his complexion and thought that there might be a whisper of a white line around the arm of his spectacles. He’d been abroad recently. Had let some sun upon his skin then brought it back to London in December.

He lets the smile leave his eyes. It stays on his lips but he doesn’t make the effort to keep the jollity in his voice. ‘You have to ask yourself how bad the real enemy must be if our allies are Reagan and the bloodthirsty monsters he feeds by hand. You know he’s going back to Congress to ask for more money for his brave comrades-in-arms, yes?’

‘He probably wouldn’t use the word “comrade”?’ I say, if only because I know Walt of old and it unnerves me to see that there is a tension vibrating inside the ridiculous, relentlessly chipper demeanour.