‘I don’t know, Prime Minister.’

‘Well, can’t you give me a progress report!?’

‘All I can say is that we’re working through things methodically, as you would expect.’

‘So who is Agent Dante?’

‘If he exists,’ Kate said, but she regretted it. She could tell she was on the verge of pushing him too far. ‘We have a suspect,’ she reassured him. ‘And I think we may be closing in on him.’

‘Who is it?’

‘I can’t say just yet, I’m afraid. I don’t think that would be fair.’

‘How long until you can?’

She shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t want to put a timescale on it.’

The PM glanced at Grove and the sallow, slim man next to her, who Kate vaguely remembered was Downing Street’s head of communications. ‘We’re going to have to leak it,’ the PM said sombrely.

Grove sucked in her cheeks. The sallow man nodded sagely. Kate sensed his career depended on nodding a lot at what his boss had to say, but perhaps they were all like that. ‘Leak what?’ Kate asked.

‘We have to get on the front foot,’ the sallow man said. ‘And we have to do it now. If the public knew about Dante, they’d be more inclined to view this as what it is: another plot to undermine the PM.’

Kate stared at him, dumbfounded. ‘You absolutely cannot leak it,’ she said. No one answered her. ‘If you do that, whoever it is will cover his tracks and we’ll never be able to prove what he’s done to you.’

‘If we wait any longer, it won’t matter,’ the PM shot back.

‘Give me another week,’ Kate said. She’d blurted out the timescale on instinct, with no forethought.

‘I haven’t got a week.’

‘I’ll get you a result by the night before the no-confidence vote, if it happens.’

‘Are you sure about that, Kate?’ It was Callum, who was leaning in close to her. ‘I mean, I’m only an ingénu in these matters, I accept, but it seems a pretty complex inquiry to me.’

‘If that’s what it takes to keep it out of the public domain,’ she said, ‘then that is all I’ve got. Right?’

Callum didn’t argue with her and neither did anyone else.

‘Why did you go to the island?’ Kate asked the PM.

‘What island?’ he asked.

Even Grove seemed startled by this protestation of ignorance.

‘The one Malcolm Glass owned,’ Kate said.

‘Paedophile Island,’ the sallow man chipped in. The PM glared at him. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets again, as if he was going to find an answer there.

‘I can’t remember. It was years ago, for God’s sake.’

‘Three years,’ Kate said. Now he stared at her. ‘It would help to have some sense of how well you knew Glass and how he lured you into his web.’

‘I don’t bloody know,’ the PM snapped. ‘He was a friend of a friend. I met him in London originally. He seemed well connected, hanging out with fashion designers, actors, rock stars and even royalty. I just sort of bumped into him regularly. He seemed to know everyone.’