‘And he invited you to join him on the island?’

‘I sat opposite him at a dinner party held by a Party donor. I mentioned in passing I was about to head off to Jamaica. He said why didn’t I come and stay on his paradise island. There would be some interesting people that weekend. He’d fly me over and back. I couldn’t see any reason to refuse. I only told my office I was taking a few days off, but I didn’t say where I was going or with whom.’

‘Who was there?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Mostly business people. A couple of American billionaires. An actor from some big American TV series. I didn’t know any of them.’

‘And what did you see?’

‘Nothing!’ The PM turned to face the garden again. ‘Nothing at all! It was quite a boring weekend, to be frank. I should never have gone. Glass was starting to give me the creeps anyway.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. He was all over you like a rash.’

‘Did you see any young girls?’

‘Of course I didn’t. It was a big place. You had your own bungalow and then there was a big airy central hallway where you could talk to a kind of receptionist and book into all kinds of activity from sailing to kite-surfing. No one mentioned anything about massages.’

He was still facing the garden and Kate was as sure as she reasonably could be that he was lying. Not for the first time, she questioned the wisdom of the path on which she had now embarked. Was there some special place in hell for those who defended the reprehensible and the guilty?

But she told herself she wasn’t there for him, for his government, her country or anything at all, in fact, but the health and wellbeing of her family. ‘Give me a week and I’ll clear you,’ she heard herself saying.

He turned to her. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But you’d better be bloody right, Mrs Henderson, or I warn you there’ll be hell to pay.’

17

CALLUM KEPT PACE with Kate as she hurried along Downing Street. ‘Are you sure that was a wise promise to make?’ he said.

‘Did it seem like we had a choice?’

Kate accelerated to try to kill the conversation, but she fairly quickly discovered the obvious flaw in this tactic: Callum’s legs were so long that he needed only a single stride for two of her own. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he asked, as they swung on to Whitehall.

Kate waited until they’d woven through the tourists loitering in the sunshine outside the gate before she answered. ‘Why am I doing what?’

‘No one has explained to me why you left SIS, though I guess being lured into Agent Dante’s web had something to do with it. So why are you doing this?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘It would help me to know. It might explain why you just made an undeliverable promise.’