Gus looked up. His face had been transformed. ‘You have a plan.’

Kate was reminded that teenage boys wanted to know only that things were going to work out all right. Unlike his sister, he had no desire to probe for the details. ‘Yes, we have a plan.’

‘Will it work?’ Fiona asked, as her mother reminded herself for the umpteenth time that her daughter’s episodic bouts of aggression were really just concealed anxiety.

‘Yes,’ Kate said. ‘It will.’

‘Are you sure?’ Gus probed.

‘Yes, I am.’

Then Kate deliberately changed tack, asking Gus how his rugby team was shaping up. As she had predicted, Fiona grew bored very quickly and hauled Jay off to her room. He looked as if he was expecting punishment, and Kate found herself praying that Fiona would take the plunge and send him packing. It might allow a little peace to descend.

Shortly afterwards Gus ran out of steam discussing the ins and outs of Compton House rugby. Kate had just enough time to wash up (though she was slightly unclear why she was doing it) and pour herself another large glass of wine before Julie and Callum turned up for the discussion she’d not had time for in the office.

Like Callum, Julie was more than a little surprised at the promise Kate had made to the prime minister. But she said she’d come via SIS to check Eva Svobodova’s file again and established that Ian had edited it six years before. Kate filled Callum in on the context.

The three sat in silence as Kate and Callum absorbed that information. ‘But why would Ian do something so unsubtle and so certain to be traced back to him if he really was Dante?’ Callum asked.

‘Because there was something in it that would have incriminated him,’ Julie said.

‘But he wrote it up,’ Callum said. ‘At least, I assume he must have done if you said he was the station chief in Santiago at the same time she was there.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Kate clarified. ‘They only overlapped for six months. Maybe the report on her was written up by his successor.’

‘But why would he have waited so long to edit it?’ Callum asked.

‘Maybe he didn’t know what was in it until then,’ Julie said. ‘Perhaps he just wanted to wait until long after his time in Santiago before he would risk covering his tracks.’

‘Or he might have wanted to clean up before he was made C,’ Kate added. ‘Who was his successor?’ she asked Julie.

‘Pete Whaley.’ They shook their heads sadly.

‘Where is he now?’ Callum asked.

‘He was killed in Tora Bora,’ Julie said.

‘So what do you want to do?’ Callum asked. ‘How do we move beyond supposition to evidence? We have a decent circumstantial case against Ian Granger, I understand that, but how do we get to actual evidence?’

Kate swigged her wine and tried to suppress the desire to ask for a cigarette. Julie and Callum had already made one quick trip to the patio at the back of the house, where Kate knew Fiona also sneaked for illicit fags. Sometimes it was a pain in the neck having to be the grown-up in the room. ‘I think we should go to Prague,’ she said.