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harridan Frieda will be clicking her tongue in the office. I’ve enjoyed our lunch. I hope you have?’
    â€˜Very much,’ Davina said, and realized that she meant it.
    Twelve days. It seemed like years to Peter Harrington. He tried to dismiss his fears by remembering how much red tape was involved in an investigation. Of course Davina wouldn’t come back to him quickly. He imagined the conferences taking place, the consultation with the Home Secretary to get the permission to visit him regularly, maybe to bring Kidson with her; that old death’s head Grant muttering away to the brigadier, wanting everything cleared and filed in triplicate. He made all the excuses he could think of and none of them satisfied his clamouring nerves. Which was what the bitch wanted, he said to himself savagely. She was sweating him, and he had fallen into the trap.
    He began pacing up and down his cell, something he hadn’t done for the last four years of his imprisonment. He felt caged again, restless, unable to sleep; his mind ranged around the possibilities, and came up against her damnable silence. He tortured himself with the idea that the investigation itself had been shelved, and he would never hear from Davina again. The twenty-four years stretched ahead of him, and he came close to hysteria one night. He stood in the middle of the cell, sweat drenching his body, and shook his clenched fists at the wall. He had reached a stage of acceptance, a kind of weary limbo where his spirit stayed torpid, waiting but not hoping. Davina had given him hope, woken him to the possibility of freedom. The agony was unbearable when nothing more happened; the routine of waking up, working, reading, watching television during the recreation period, became a nerve-racking ordeal. Every time his cell door opened, he started up, thinking it might be a summons to the governor’s office. There was a prison visitor who hadn’t been to see him either.
    By the thirteenth day he couldn’t stop his hands from shaking. It was five o’clock in the afternoon, an hour before dinner, when the key scraped in the lock and the officer on duty said, ‘You’re wanted upstairs.’ There were tears in Peter Harrington’s eyes when he came into the governor’s office and saw Davina sitting there. He blinked them away and assumed a little swagger as he settled into the chair opposite. His relief was so intense that he could have laughed out loud. But whatever happened, she mustn’t see how near to breaking point he’d come.
    â€˜Cigarette?’ she offered. He resisted the urge to grab one and inhale down to his feet. He couldn’t trust his trembling hands. Not for a little while.
    Davina didn’t waste time. ‘I’ve got news for you,’ she said. ‘Not very good news, I’m afraid.’
    He couldn’t control his colour; it turned a sickly grey. ‘Oh – come to deliver the body blow in person, have you, Davy? Nice of you.’
    â€˜This whole investigation is hanging by a thread,’ she said baldly. ‘I believe in it, so does someone else in the office. I believe we’ve got a top-level traitor and so do they. But there’s a strong move to shut the whole case up.’
    â€˜There would be,’ he spat out. ‘There bloody well would be, if the mole knows you’re on to something! Who wants it shelved – that’ll be a pointer!’
    â€˜The Foreign Office,’ she said. ‘They don’t want any scandal leaking out. Who’s behind it is anybody’s guess. Nobody’s owning up, but there’s been heavy pressure on us to drop the whole thing.’
    He sank his head into his hands. ‘That’s it, then. I know what heavy pressure means. I worked in the bloody place for twenty years. They’ll have their way.’
    â€˜Not necessarily,’ Davina said quietly. ‘I’m not going to give up without a