‘Bring you in?’ He takes the first exit onto the M30, heading clockwise towards Valencia, looking at the road ahead as if I am delusional. ‘Alec, that was all a long, long time ago. Water under the bridge. You haven’t made any waves, you haven’t been a problem. You kept your end of the bargain, we kept ours.’

‘You mean you had Kate Allardyce murdered?’

There is a moment of silence as he weighs up his options. He must know about Kate, unless they covered it up. It occurs to me that our conversation is almost certainly being recorded.

‘You were wrong about that,’ he says finally. His voice is very quiet, very firm. ‘Quite wrong. John Lithiby wanted me to make it clear. What happened to your girlfriend was an accident, end of story. The driver was drunk. The Office, the Cousins, neither one of us had anything to do with it.’

‘Total bullshit.’ I stare outside as an endless sequence of concrete apartment blocks, road bridges and trees flick past. Someone has hung a banner over the motorway scrawled with the black slogan ‘ETA – Non!’. ‘You don’t know the full story. They don’t want you to know the full story. The Yanks had her killed and Elworthy was told to cover it up.’

‘Peter Elworthy is dead.’

‘Dead? How?’

‘Liver cancer. Two years ago.’

I have been away so long.

‘Then ask Chris Sinclair. He knows what really went on.’

‘I don’t need to. I have the proof.’ Kitson’s response here is quick and well rehearsed. He moves into a slower lane of traffic as if to emphasize the seriousness of what he is about to tell me. ‘When we have the opportunity I can show you the accident report. There were people at the party who urged Kate not to get into the car. Her friend – William, was it? – had done a lot of Colombian marching powder and drunk his way through the best part of two bottles of wine. He was a 23-year-old idiot, pure and simple, and he got the girl killed.’

‘Don’t talk about Kate like that, OK? Don’t even begin. If there was alcohol or drugs in Will’s bloodstream, they were put there by the CIA. It was a standard cover-up operation to protect the special fucking relationship. They tampered with the brakes and a car drove Kate and Will off the road. End of story.’

Kitson remains silent for a long time. He knows that what he has said has both angered and upset me. He probably knows, too, that I want to believe him. Alec Milius was once a patriot who thought that his government didn’t kill people for political convenience. Alec Milius wants to be brought back in.

‘So why are you interested in Sellini?’ We are south of Las Ventas by now, the sky beginning to darken and headlights coming on all around us. I don’t want the conversation to founder on Kate’s death. Not yet. ‘What’s this about him selling drugs and weapons?’

‘Abel Sellini doesn’t exist.’ Kitson takes a cigarette from a packet of Lucky Strike on the dashboard and invites me to help myself, lighting his own as I decline. ‘It’s a nom de guerre. Sellini’s real name is Luis Felipe Buscon. He was a former fighter for the Portuguese Secret Service, served in Angola, now an international hired hand with more pies than fingers. Mr Big of no fixed address, operates as a middleman for any criminal or terrorist organization that can afford to put him up in nice hotels like the Villa Carta. We’ve been tracking him ever since we were tipped off about a consignment of illegal arms he’d purchased from an organized crime group operating out of Croatia.’

For Six to be involved, that consignment must be on its way to the British Isles. But how does Rosalía fit in?

‘Tipped off by whom?’

Kitson glances across at me and says, ‘That information was brought to us by a protected source. Now, what’s your interest in him?’

‘Not yet. I need to know more. I need to know why I was being followed and why you’ve pulled me in.’

It is hard to tell if Kitson is impressed by this show of stubbornness, but he answers the question with a candour which would suggest that he trusts me and knows that I’m instinctively on the side of the angels.

‘I’m here as part of an undeclared SIS op tracking Buscon. Local liaison knows nothing about it, so if they find out, I’ll know who to blame.’ I get a scolding, smoke-exhaling stare with this remark, a switch in Kitson’s demeanour which is actually frightening. ‘The Mick and the Croat get along like a house on fire. Always have. Call it a shared antipathy towards their neighbours. For the Irish, the bloody Brits, for the Croats, the murdering Serbs. So they have lots in common, lots to talk about over a pint of Guinness. We had a tip-off that Buscon had become involved in what was euphemistically described as a humanitarian project in Split. Only Luis wasn’t interested in feeding the poor. What he was interested in was the consignment of weapons sitting in a hayshed in the ultra-nationalist hinterland that wasn’t being put to suitably romantic use. So, on behalf of the Real IRA, he ordered a takeaway.’

‘And now the weapons are here in Spain? In Madrid? They’ve gone missing?’

‘Again, I’m not at liberty to discuss that. All I can say is that Buscon has contacts in organized crime groups with structures all over Europe. These weapons could be on their way to the Albanian mafia, the Turks in London, the Russians, the Chinese. Worst case scenario, we’re talking about an Islamist cell with enough high explosive to blow the door of 10 Downing Street into Berkshire.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Quite. Which is why we need to know what you were doing listening in on Mr Buscon’s conversation with Rosalía Dieste at the Irish Rover last Friday.’

‘You were there?’

‘We were there. Had command of Buscon and couldn’t tell if you were liaison or just a lonely tourist who liked Bon Jovi.’

‘Where were you sitting?’

‘Not too far away. We had ears at the table, hours of prep, but the mike failed at the last minute. I was actually rather jealous of your proximity. Not to mention anxious to find out who the hell you were.’

‘And the two guys outside in the green Seat Ibiza? They were A4?’

Kitson accidentally swerves the car here and has to check his steering. ‘Very good, Alec,’ he says. ‘Very good. You’ve done this before.’

‘And the older man who took the second cab at the hotel? Grey hair, pin-striped suit. He was tailing me at the Prado last weekend.’

‘Quite possibly. Quite possibly.’

Kitson likes me. I can sense it. He hadn’t expected such a level of expertise. My file is most probably wretched, Shayleresque, but this is pedigree.

‘So what were you doing there? What’s your relationship with the girl?’

‘I think she might be involved in the murder of a politician from the Basque country. Mikel Arenaza. A member of Herri Batasuna.’

‘The political wing of ETA?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Never heard of him.’ Kitson’s reply is blunt, but you can tell the brain is already running through the implications. ETA. Real IRA. Weapons that have gone missing.

‘Arenaza disappeared on 6 March, a little over three weeks ago.’ Without asking, I help myself to one of the dashboard cigarettes and push the lighter. ‘You didn’t read about it in the papers?’

‘Well, we’ve all been rather busy…’

‘Rosalía was Arenaza’s mistress. As far as I can tell, nobody else knows that piece of information. He was married and didn’t want his wife finding out.’

‘Understandable in the circumstances. So why did he tell you?’

‘Why does anybody tell anyone anything? Booze. Camaraderie. Mine’s bigger than yours.’ The lighter pops and I take the first delicious draw on the cigarette. ‘Mikel and I were supposed to meet for a drink when he was in Madrid visiting Rosalía. Only he never showed up. I found out where she worked, followed her to the Irish Rover and witnessed the conversation with Buscon. It looked important, so I followed him back to the hotel.’