I screwed up my eyes for a second, trying to regain control of myself. Skimmed my mental notes and looked for something that might make sense. Nothing came. It was clear to me that somebody was trying to make it seem that I was, if not actively betraying queen and country, at least in the market for it. So who might have that level of venom towards me? Nobody sprung instantly to mind. I’d made my share of enemies over the years but they were more petty rivalries or the consequence of rejected advances and not worth staging anything so elaborate over. I’d been involved in operations that had severe repercussions for those who were caught out in their lies, but I was only ever a part of a larger team and nobody had ever vowed to make sure that I spend my days in the misery of a jail cell with my reputation in tatters. Try as I might I couldn’t work out why anybody would want to make it look like I was on the verge of defecting, or at the very least open to some light subversion. I thought again of Cranham’s voice on the recording. He’d sounded so withering, so utterly bereft of affection, compassion, for the woman who had been his wife for twenty years. Of course the marriage was a sham and had served as nothing more than a camouflage jacket that permitted us both to live the lives that suited us best, but I had kept his secrets and he’d kept mine. Was that it? Was it Cranham? Did I know something about my husband that meant I had to be discredited? Surely the de facto father of my children wouldn’t do something so vulgar as to set the security services on his wife. For all his faults, there was a strange form of old-fashioned decency running through him.

I chewed at my lip. Twisted the steering wheel with my damp palms. Could it be that somebody was trying to discredit Cranham? He was a very senior figure, cheek-by-jowl with all the serious power brokers and able to wield significant resources and make the kind of decisions that give power-mad public schoolboys funny feelings under their pyjamas. Had he made an enemy who wanted to inconvenience him through the implication that his wife was ripe for defection, or worse, actively working counter to the interests of the Crown. A chap would need to resign over such a scandal, that much was clear. But any Fleet Street hack could ruin Cranham with a little light digging. He’d been involved in a succession of gay relationships throughout our marriage and none of his partners would be above selling their story for the right price. But there was something ungentlemanly, something inelegant, about that kind of scandal. This felt as though it had someone more sophisticated pulling the strings.