The Director-General’s suite, which Charlie had never entered, was a contrast to that of the service’s old headquarters in Westminster Bridge Road, to which he had quite regularly been admitted, usually at the very beginning or the very end of a disciplinary enquiry.

The outer custodian was male – another difference from the past – a sharp-featured, flop haired man who didn’t stop writing at Charlie’s arrival, to remain distanced from ordinary mortals. The determination didn’t quite work, because Charlie caught the quick eye-flicker of identification at his entry. Henry Bates, read the nameplate proudly displayed on the desk. Charlie stood, accustomed to waiting for acknowledgment: it often took supermarket check-out operators several minutes to realize he was standing in front of them. The attention, when it finally came, was expressionless. ‘They’re waiting.’

‘They.’ So he was meeting more than just the Director-General. And they, whoever ‘they’ were, had already assembled, even though he was still ten minutes early. Insufficient straw from which to make a single brick. But, adjusting the metaphor, enough for a drowning man to clutch, before going under for the last time.

There were five men in a half circle around the conference table, but apart from Rupert Dean, the Director-General whose identity had been publicly disclosed upon his appointment, Charlie could identify only one other by name.

Gerald Williams was the department’s chief accountant who had transferred from the old headquarters and in front of whom Charlie had appeared more times than he could remember to explain particularly high reimbursement claims. Which Charlie had incontestably defended on every single occasion until it had become a challenge between the two of them, in Williams’ case amounting to a personal vendetta.