Sir Alan as Dante? Was it truly credible? And if not, what was he hiding from her? ‘Please help me,’ she said. ‘You’ve always looked after me and I have everything on the line here – Stuart, my children, my sanity …’

He didn’t meet her eye. ‘I have helped you, Kate.’

‘What are you not telling me?’

He raised his head, back to that flinty gaze. ‘I’m offering you what I believe, the product of years of steadily unravelling the web that Ian Granger has woven.’

‘Why did you access and edit some of his files?’

‘I didn’t. Any more than you have.’

‘How did you know about that?’

‘Because …’ he gave her a wintry smile ‘… it’s perhaps time for you to acknowledge that, wherever this road takes you, it’s to a place I have been before.’

This glimpse of the intellectual arrogance that had often been gossiped of, but which she had never experienced, was like a slap in the face. Was that what he intended? To put her off her stride? ‘Why did you ask James Ryan’s assistant private secretary at the Foreign Office for his travel plans to Jamaica?’

She appeared to have surprised him. But he recovered quickly. ‘The same reason as you, I should imagine.’

‘And yet your request was made four months after the trip. Why would you have been interested at the time, unless you were planning to use the details to set him up?’

Sir Alan finished his food slowly and carefully and put his knife and fork together. He drained his glass and poured himself more wine. ‘Check,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘If not quite yet checkmate. You’ll need more than circumstantial evidence, as well you know.’

She met his gaze. ‘But the thing is, I just don’t believe it’s you, which leaves me to wonder about the truth you’re protecting.’ She shook her head. ‘Because the only thing I’m absolutely certain of is that you’ve already got to the end of this maze and have the answer.’

‘Perhaps you’re looking at the answer,’ he said. ‘And just don’t want to believe the evidence of your own eyes.’

There was a long silence as she tracked the progress of a bumble bee. How liberating, she thought, to have a life of such simple purpose. ‘Rose said she came down here after that breakfast meeting with Ian to work out how you could both protect me.’

‘She did. And she was right to. You’re his target, his get-out-of-jail-free card. Whitehall wants to hear that you’re Dante. It solves every problem in one go.’

‘So what conclusions did you reach with her?’

‘We agreed to intensify our efforts to prove Ian is the man we seek.’

Kate wasn’t sure she believed this. ‘You and she have been friends for a long time?’

‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘If Alice was a domestic rock, Rose performed the same role in my life at work and I make no secret of it. As head of Finance, there’s little she’s not privy to and I found her advice invaluable. She’s shrewd and loyal, everything that a man like Ian is not, which is why I doubt she’ll survive much longer.’