I worked through the other scraps of information. Thought upon Guatemala. I knew nothing about the place save for the occasional overheard headline or glimpsed telegraph communication. I knew that the Americans had picked the side most likely to help them hold back the threat of communism but in so doing they had got into bed with a genocidal regime. I had no insider knowledge. I’d assisted with some meat-and-veg stuff in Central America shortly before Walt got the boot and I’d only just started getting to grips with the brief. I hadn’t looked back since. It wasn’t my area. Within forty-eight hours of Operation Prickly Heat being rolled up they’d stuck me in an import/export business in Turkey with a view to bringing a couple of disaffected KGB over to our side. And once I got home I’d barely looked west. I’d been involved in more domestic dramas for the past few months – gathering intelligence on pleasant housewives and lentil-scented hippies at a peaceful protest at Greenham Common.

I gripped the steering wheel tighter. I could feel pain blossoming across my back and shoulder and had to make a conscious effort to unclench my jaw. I leaned over to the glove box and rummaged through the contents. Boiled sweets, a couple of maps, an owner’s manual. Cigarettes in a gold packet. I managed to find the purloined lighter in my pocket and lit up, sucking the smoke into my lungs. It wasn’t my brand; it tasted foul but it offered some kind of comfort and even a little sense of imagined warmth. I played with the lighter for a moment, flicking it open and closed and running through it all again and again in my mind. Why me? Who would want to set me up? Why had Walt come back into my life?

I replayed the conversation. Who was it who had suggested that he take himself to my place in Gilsland? He’d already been on the way when I’d made contact with him from the phone box. But the previous night, shortly after I told him I was going to take his information to Talbot, he’d asked whether or not there were any serviceable safe houses where he could keep his source out of harm’s way. He’d asked that it be outside of London – the further north the better. I’d made the offer of the Gilsland house almost without thinking. Had he planted that seed? He’d already known about the property, that much was clear. But if he just wanted a place to lie low he could have broken in without me ever being involved. Clearly, he wanted me to be a part of whatever it was he was trying to pull off.