‘I’m familiar with what they are. And you gave them to his sister?’

‘I’m ashamed to say that I did.’ That would do it, Kate thought. ‘You asked,’ he said.

‘I did.’

‘But I don’t think a contretemps over his sister requiring a shameful trip to her GP quite justifies a lifelong revenge tragedy, do you?’

Perhaps not a lifelong one, she thought. But, still, it would explain a splintered friendship. ‘Did he have a weakness?’

‘He was bloody ambitious.’

‘That’s not normally considered a weakness.’

‘It depends how much you want something. When I think of the establishment, or what people mean by it, I bring to mind Alan. He was head of house, his older brother, his father and his uncle were all head of school. They called his older brother Thrasher, because he wielded the cane with a merciless power that shocked even his contemporaries.’

‘What about Sir Alan?’

‘They banned boys beating other boys five years before we got to the school. His older brother had been there at the same time as mine and they hated each other. Look, all I’m saying is that Alan believed in it all.’

‘What, exactly?’

‘Dulce et decorum est. The whole good-men-and-true non-sense. That’s his weakness. If anything had gone wrong and threatened his position at the heart of life’s inner sanctum, if something had challenged his inherent sense of self-worth or his right to occupy the moral high ground, that could have pushed him off the rails, but nothing else.’

Kate glanced at her phone. She’d just received her third text from Julie in as many minutes. Need to speak to you. J.

‘Duty calls?’ he asked, smiling sheepishly at her once more.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What’s going to happen, Kate?’

She stood, still turning over the idea that had occurred to her in the dead of night. Was the risk involved suicidal? And, if so, did she really have any choice now? ‘We’re going to find Dante,’ she said. ‘And we’ll do it in the next few days. This can’t go on any longer for either of us.’

‘If you manage that,’ he said, ‘I’ll make you the bloody Queen.’

She smiled back at him. ‘No, thanks.’ She walked slowly towards the door, but turned as she reached it. They’d got beyond the point of half-measures or hesitation. She had to go all in. ‘I need you to do one more thing.’

‘Anything.’

Kate hesitated only a moment longer. ‘Please ask Shirley Grove to contact Andrew Blake, who is technically our head of Chancery at the embassy in Moscow.’

‘But really our man in the Russian capital?’

‘Yes. Grove needs to make sure she speaks to Andrew himself on a secure line. No one else. Not a secretary or an assistant. She must ask him to call you personally from the secure section of the embassy on a highly sensitive matter that he must not discuss with anyone else, particularly within SIS.’

‘All right. What do I tell him?’