Edric Talbot was my section chief, head of the division that most of us referred to as the bran tub. It was a mixed bag of different specialisms: covert surveillance, information analysts, intelligence assessors and archivists. Talbot wasn’t quite top-table but he was well on the way. He’d been Royal Navy before he drifted across to intelligence work, reaching us by way of Special Branch and GCHQ. He hadn’t had a great deal to do with me, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know every last indiscretion in my file. He was very much an arm’s length kind of a boss but he was an absolute stickler for chain of command and if I wanted what Walt had shown to me to be of any use at all, Talbot would have to give the nod.