They sat at a corner table in the wine bar. The waitress had cleared away their plates and brought them coffee. There was an inch of wine left in the bottom of the bottle, and Hepton poured it into Jilly’s glass. She had sat quietly and attentively all through lunch, while he had continued his story. Now and then she would ask a question, in order to clarify some point, but other than that she was silent. Hepton remembered the day she had ordered him to teach her about satellites. She had been the same then.

Occasionally she jotted a few notes into a clean page of her Filofax, and when Hepton had finished talking, she drew a thick line beneath what she had written so far, then numbered the individual points.

‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Do you think I’m going mad, or is something happening out there?’

She gave her answer some thought. ‘I don’t think you’re mad, no. But at the moment you don’t really know what’s going on, you don’t have any proof that anything’s going on, and you’ll have a hard job convincing anyone that anything’s going on. Despite which, I believe you. But then I’m a reporter, we’ll believe anything.’ She saw that Hepton was looking dispirited and squeezed his hand. ‘You’re safe now, Martin. You’ve got me to look after you.’ He smiled at this, but knew she could see he was tired; more than that, he was drained. He needed rest and sleep and to forget about the past few days for a little while.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll put lunch on expenses, then give the office a ring.’

‘Why?’

‘To tell them I’m not coming in this afternoon. I’m going to be working on something, and you’re going to be resting.’

‘I am?’

‘My flat’s not far from here. You can stay there while I go into town.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Hepton did feel drowsy, but then he’d had the larger share of the wine. He could feel the effort in each word he spoke aloud.

‘I’m going to see what I can find out about this George Villiers character, among other things.’

‘Jilly … ’

‘What?’

‘You’re sure it’s okay for me to go to your place? I mean …’

‘It’s all right, Martin. There’s no other man around just at the moment. Christ, I wish I had time for one.’ She paused, then tapped the Filofax. ‘I want to take a look at this. God knows, it’ll make a nice change for me to do some sleuthing again. Who can say, there may even be a story in it.’