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how it looks from our point of view,’ his interrogator was saying, as he walked around Marchant in the plain, whitewashed room, chewing gum. Marchant, sitting on the only chair, didn’t recognise the man, who called himself Wylie. Shortly after his father’s forced retirement, Marchant had been interviewed at Thames House by a panel of officers, but it hadn’t included this man. Wylie was in his late forties, flat-footed with thinning red hair, his skin pale and too dry. If he passed you in the street, Marchant thought, you would guess he was an overworked police officer, or an inner-city school-teacher, someone who saw more paperwork than daylight, knew his colleagues better than his wife.
    â€˜Two men, running together, desperate to reach Tower Bridge for maximum publicity. One of them fresh from the subcontinent, strapped up with explosives. The other –’ Wylie paused, as if his disdain for Marchant had suddenly overwhelmed him – ‘the other, a former member of the intelligence services with “issues”, making sure he reaches his target.’
    â€˜Suspended, not former,’ Marchant said calmly. ‘His target was Turner Munroe, the American Ambassador.’ Wylie, Marchant knew, was employing a standard interrogation strategy: push the less plausible of your two main theories (ex-MI6 man with a grudge) as far as you can, and see how much of your more plausible theory (ex-MI6 man saves MI5’s skin) is validated by the interviewee’s answers. He’d learnt it at the Fort, with Leila.
    â€˜When the order was given to slow down, you both kept on running at the same pace in order to reach your target, which was Tower Bridge,’ Wylie continued, getting into his own stride, chewing faster on his gum. He spoke with an enthusiasm that drew Marchant in, until his ear became tuned to the underlying sarcasm. ‘In fact, you helped to keep this man going, at one point holding his arm to support him.’
    Wylie tossed a black-and-white surveillance photo onto the table. It was of Marchant and Pradeep approaching the bridge, taken with a zoom lens. Marchant was shocked at how exhausted he looked: Pradeep seemed to be propping him up. His limbs felt weak again as he shifted his legs under the table.
    â€˜Why didn’t you slow down, as ordered?’ Wylie asked, standing behind Marchant now.
    Marchant picked up the photo and took his time to answer, trying to get a measure of the person behind him as he ordered his thoughts. The exact events of the endgame were still not clear in his mind. Had they fired at Pradeep because he wasn’t slowing down? He had thought the shots rang out afterwards, once they were walking.
    â€˜Pradeep was an unwilling suicide bomber,’ Marchant said, talking over his shoulder. ‘My own feeling is that he was coerced into the operation. When I first approached him, he was happy to be helped. It was a primitive response: “How can I stop myself from being killed?” Once his initial survival instincts had been addressed, he started to think of others, in this case his son, who would be killed if he didn’t see his mission through. As we approached the bridge, this concern became paramount in his mind. He didn’t slow down when I asked him to, and as you can see, I had to intervene to reduce his pace.’
    Marchant dropped the photo back on the table. Both of them watched in silence as it spun around and came to a halt. Marchant wished there was a fan in the room.
    â€˜Did it ever cross your mind that you had no authority to take the actions you did?’ Wylie asked, still behind him. ‘You were suspended, after all.’
    Marchant noted his interrogator’s change of tack. ‘I was behaving like a responsible member of the public.’
    â€˜Responsible?’ Wylie laughed. ‘Everyone knows you’ve gone to seed, Marchant.’
    Marchant stared ahead, his tone even. ‘I saw