A DA notice. Sam stretched out and picked up the document. He read the front page again.

‘So that’s what they did.’

‘Sure,’ Clare told him. ‘That’s what they did. With bells on. I don’t know how much you know about DA notices, Sam. The MOD uses them to suppress information that might compromise national security. It’s a voluntary code, not the sort of thing they can actually enforce. Not legally, anyway. But my editor would never print something that had been suppressed under a DA notice. It’s just the way it works.’

Sam dropped the document back down on the table.

Clare closed her eyes and pinched her forehead. ‘It happened about a week ago. I sent my article to the Home Office for them to comment on it first thing in the morning. About four hours later there was a knock on my door.’ She smiled faintly. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘a ring on my bell, I suppose. But you know what I mean. I answered it. There were two men there. They said they were from the Government and asked if they could come in.’

She paused before continuing weakly. ‘I should have asked them for identification,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t. I don’t know why. Suppose I thought I was probably on to something. I let them in and we came back in here. That’s when I realised something was wrong.’

‘Why?’

‘Because there was another man standing by the back door. They didn’t seem surprised to see him, so he was obviously one of them. The damn door was locked when I answered the bell, I’m sure of it. So I don’t know how he got in.’

Any number of ways, Sam thought, but he kept that to himself.

‘There was one man who was older than the others,’ Clare carried on. ‘He wore a big black raincoat, even though it was a fine day outside. Looked like someone’s granddad. Well…’ She hesitated. ‘Not my granddad, anyway, but someone’s. Sort of posh. Polite. I didn’t like it. He sat down where you’re sitting now. The other two just stood by the doors. The old man didn’t tell me his name. None of them did. But he sure as hell knew mine. He told me that they were going to search my house, take away my computer, any notes I had. And then he told me to forget everything I had heard about this…’ She raised her fingers in the air to indicate quotation marks. ‘This “red-light runner nonsense”.’

Clare’s words were tumbling from her mouth now. Sam had the impression that she felt somehow relieved to be unloading them.

‘I’m afraid I didn’t really take it lying down. Occupational hazard, I suppose. If it was such nonsense, I asked him, why was he coming to my house to intimidate me? He didn’t say anything, not at first. He just handed me a picture.’

Clare passed her hand across her face. The memory of that picture, whatever it was, was clearly traumatic.

‘It was Bill,’ she whispered. ‘Although I could only just recognise him. He was lying on the ground. He was dead. His legs were pointing in different directions and one side of his face was all mashed up. There was blood all around.’

She sobbed suddenly, loudly. ‘It was awful.’

Sam let the woman take her time.

‘The old man held the picture in front of me for a long time,’ Clare continued. ‘A minute at least, maybe two, before he spoke. I’ll never forget what he said, not as long as I live. “A terrible accident, Clare. It could happen to anyone, and it would be a dreadful shame if it happened to you. Do you understand what I’m saying?” Then he told me again to forget everything about what I’d written. And he told me that if I ever saw him again, it would mean I was in a whole load of trouble.’

A silence fell on the room, and a coldness. Clare pulled her cardigan more tightly around her shoulders.

‘I’ve barely left the flat since it happened. Only to buy food. I keep seeing things from the corner of my eye. I keep imagining I’m being followed. And now you turn up on my doorstep. Holy Mother, are you surprised I’m so frightened?’

Sam looked steadily at her. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m not surprised at all.’ He glanced beyond Clare to the kitchen door. ‘You said you keep seeing things from the corner of your eye. Is that you, or do you think they’re really there? Do you think you’re really being watched?’

Clare shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’

Sam considered that for a moment. Then, without a word, he stood up and headed out of the kitchen.

‘Don’t go!’ Clare shouted. He turned to look at her. ‘Don’t leave me alone,’ she added weakly.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Sam told her. ‘Just wait there.’

He explored the flat in the darkness. Towards the front, off the main corridor, there was a lounge. This was the room he’d seen from outside with wooden blinds. He edged towards them, lifting a gap in them with one finger, and peered out. All was quiet on the street. No movement. No people. He let the blind fall closed again and allowed himself a moment in the darkness.

Who the hell had posted this article through his letterbox? And was Clare telling him the truth? The only way he could be sure was by forcing it out of her, but the woman seemed so brittle she could snap. In any case, forcing things out of frightened women wasn’t what he’d signed up for. And whatever the truth, Clare was certainly frightened. She certainly believed at least some of what she was saying. He decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. At least for now.

Sam walked back down the corridor, passing Clare’s bedroom on the right-hand side. Even in the gloom he could see the unmade bed that had been left in a hurry, the nightclothes strewn on the floor. Back in the kitchen, Clare was weeping again, her head buried in her hands. Sam walked round her, checked through the blinds of the back door, then spoke again.

‘Who else knows about this?’

It took a moment for Clare to stop sobbing. ‘No one.’

‘I mean it, Clare. Friends. Family. Boyfriend. Someone you called because you were scared.’

She shook her head. ‘On my mother’s life. I didn’t want anyone else to be in danger. Jesus, I wish I’d never started any of this. They weren’t messing with me, Sam. You know how you can tell, when someone’s stringing you along. That old man, he’ll have me killed if he thinks I’ve told anyone about this. I know he will. You’ve got to keep it a secret – you can’t let anyone know you’ve been here.’

Sam walked up to her. He perched himself on the table and put a hand on her slim shoulder. ‘Remember what I told you?’ he asked. ‘That if I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead. Well the same goes for them. If they wanted you out of the way, they wouldn’t bother playing with you first.’ And then, quietly, ‘Look at your friend Bill.’

She looked up at him with wide, scared eyes. ‘Do you know who they were?’

Sam paused before answering. ‘I think they were MI5.’

A silence.

‘Think about it,’ Sam continued. ‘Your man was on the run. You alerted the security services to his whereabouts and a few hours later he was dead.’

‘But…’ Clare looked shocked. ‘I never told them. I never once said where he was.’

‘You didn’t need to.’ He walked to the table and pointed at the telephone number scrawled on the document. ‘Did you speak to him on that phone number?’

She nodded mutely.

‘Five would have had your phone records up in about ten seconds flat,’ Sam told him. ‘As soon as they narrowed down the possible numbers for your man, they’d have kept tabs on them. The minute he made a call, his phone became a tracking device. All he had to do was dial out for a pizza and the spooks would have had his location. Easiest thing in the world.’ He didn’t add that he’d done it himself before now.

Clare was shaking her head. ‘You mean… you mean it’s my fault.’

‘You didn’t kill the guy,’ Sam said.

‘But I…’ She became breathless. ‘I…’

‘You didn’t know.’

‘But… you’re really telling me that the British government murdered Bill?’