“I’m thrilled Papa’s brought you in. He’s been under so much strain, which he really doesn’t need with everything we’ve got on now, but you and Strike will sort it out, won’t you? Winn’s a horrible little man,” said Izzy, reaching for a leather folder. “Inadequate, you know. How long have you worked with Strike?”

“A couple of years,” said Robin, as she undid the package Izzy had given her.

“I’ve met him, did he tell you? Yah—I was at school with his ex, Charlie Campbell. Gorgeous but trouble, Charlie. D’you know her?”

“No,” said Robin. A long-ago near-collision outside Strike’s office had been her only contact with Charlotte.

“I always quite fancied Strike,” said Izzy.

Robin glanced around, surprised, but Izzy was matter-of-factly inserting papers into the folder.

“Yah, people couldn’t see it, but I could. He was so butch and so… well… unapologetic.”

“Unapologetic?” Robin repeated.

“Yah. He never took any crap from anyone. Didn’t give a toss that people thought he wasn’t, you know—”

“Good enough for her?”

As soon as the words escaped her, Robin felt embarrassed. She had felt suddenly strangely protective of Strike. It was absurd, of course: if anybody could look after themselves, it was he.

“S’pose so,” said Izzy, still waiting for her papers to print. “It’s been ghastly for Papa, these past couple of months. And it isn’t as though what he did was wrong!” she said fiercely. “One minute it’s legal, the next it isn’t. That’s not Papa’s fault.”

“What wasn’t legal?” asked Robin innocently.

“Sorry,” Izzy replied, pleasantly but firmly. “Papa says, the fewer people know, the better.”

She peeked through the net curtains at the sky. “I won’t need a jacket, will I? No… sorry to dash, but Papa needs these and he’s off to meet Olympic sponsors at ten. Good luck.”

And in a rush of flowered fabric and tousled hair, she was gone, leaving Robin curious but strangely reassured. If Izzy could take this robust view of her father’s misdemeanor, it surely could not be anything dreadful—always assuming, of course, that Chiswell had told his daughter the truth.

Robin ripped the last piece of wrapping from the small parcel Izzy had given her. It contained, as she had known it would, the half-dozen listening devices that Strike had given to Jasper Chiswell over the weekend. As a Minister of the Crown, Chiswell was not required to pass through the security scanner every morning, as Robin was. She examined the bugs carefully. They had the appearance of normal plastic power points, and were designed to be fitted over genuine plug sockets, allowing the latter to function as normal. They would begin to record only when somebody spoke in their vicinity. She could hear her own heartbeat in the silence left by Izzy’s departure. The difficulty of her task was only just beginning to sink in.

She took off her coat, hung it up, then removed from her shoulder bag a large box of Tampax, which she had brought for the purpose of concealing the listening devices she wasn’t using. After hiding all but one of the bugs inside it, she placed the box in the bottom drawer of her desk. Next, she searched the cluttered shelves until she found an empty box file, in which she hid the remaining device beneath a handful of letters with typos that she took out of a pile labeled “for shredding.” Thus armed, Robin took a deep breath and left the room.

Winn’s door had opened since she had arrived. As Robin walked past, she saw a tall young Asian man wearing thick-lensed glasses and carrying a kettle.

“Hi!” said Robin at once, imitating Izzy’s bold, cheery approach. “I’m Venetia Hall, we’re neighbors! Who are you?”

“Aamir,” muttered the other, in a working-class London accent. “Mallik.”

“Do you work for Della Winn?” asked Robin.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, she’s so inspirational,” gushed Robin. “One of my heroines, actually.”

Aamir did not reply, but radiated a desire to be left alone. Robin felt like a terrier trying to harass a racehorse.

“Have you worked here long?”

“Six months.”

“Are you going to the café?”

“No,” said Aamir, as though she had propositioned him, and he turned sharply away towards the bathroom.

Robin walked on, holding her box file, wondering whether she had imagined animosity rather than shyness in the young man’s demeanor. It would have been helpful to make a friend in Winn’s office. Having to pretend to be an Izzy-esque goddaughter of Jasper Chiswell was hampering her. She couldn’t help but feel that Robin Ellacott from Yorkshire might have befriended Aamir more easily.

Having set off with fake purpose, she decided to explore for a while before returning to Izzy’s office.

Chiswell’s and Winn’s offices were in the Palace of Westminster itself, which, with its vaulted ceilings, libraries, tearooms and air of comfortable grandeur, might have been an old university college.

A half-covered passageway, watched over by large stone statues of a unicorn and lion, led to an escalator to Portcullis House. This was a modern crystal palace, with a folded glass roof, triangular panes held in place by thick black struts. Beneath was a wide, open-plan area including a café, where MPs and civil servants mingled. Flanked by full-grown trees, large water features consisting of long blocks of covered-in shallow pools became dazzling strips of quicksilver in the June sunshine.

There was a shiver of ambition in the thrumming air, and the sense of being part of a vital world. Beneath the ceiling of artfully fragmented glass, Robin passed political journalists perched on leather benches, all of whom were checking or talking on their mobiles, typing onto laptops or intercepting politicians for comment. Robin wondered whether she might have enjoyed working here if she had never been sent to Strike.

Her explorations ended in the third, dingiest and least interesting of the buildings that housed MPs’ offices, which resembled nothing so much as a three-star hotel, with worn carpets and cream walls and row upon row of identical doors. Robin doubled back, still clutching her file, and passed Winn’s door again fifty minutes after she had last seen it. Quickly checking that the corridor was deserted, she pressed her ear against the thick oak and thought she heard movement within.

“How’s it going?” asked Izzy, when Robin re-entered her office a couple of minutes later.

“I haven’t seen Winn yet.”

“He might be over at DCMS. He goes to see Della on any excuse,” said Izzy. “Fancy a coffee?”

But before she could leave her desk, her telephone rang.

While Izzy fielded a call from an irate constituent who had been unable to secure tickets for the Olympic diving—“yes, I like Tom Daley, too,” she said, rolling her eyes at Robin, “but it’s a lottery, madam”—Robin spooned out instant coffee and poured UHT milk, wondering how many times she had done this in offices she hated, and feeling suddenly extraordinarily grateful that she had escaped that life forever.

“Hung up,” said Izzy indifferently, setting down the receiver. “What were we talking about? Oh, Geraint, yah. He’s furious Della didn’t make him a SPAD.”