Sir Steven (Nick’s handler) ‘What we’re witnessing is the distillation of the American ethos. We had hoped that previous government had diluted it. Added a drop of tonic water or two. But what we’ve got is USA on the bloody rocks…’

​

​

(Nick’s son) Hugh, ‘If I’m correct, the US has committed an act of war against us. A Rage-bait attack on an enormous scale. Much of it generated by AI, establishing massive follower networks, feed algorithms, and sharing mechanisms flooding society with low-quality but appealing content. What we’re witnessing is the stripping naked of the human character, and our flaws are being exploited by those who seek to influence our opinions in a way that is turning out to be surprising vile and ugly.’

​

(Separate quote) ‘The driver, as you put it, is purely one of disinformation. Its goal is to divide public opinion and polarise government. And it’s successful, look at the recent events surrounding the murder of Natasha Binski and the Holland Park massacre. The people of Britain, it’s police force, and its government have seldom been so destabilized. One does not normally see such dissent in countries like Russia and China.’

​

Dinner: DI Monica Ceres and Nick Barclay:

​

Nick: 'How do you spend your spare time?’

‘I don’t get much. Don’t need much. But if I do manage a weekend to myself, I jump a train down into the countryside, and I find a cheap hotel near a decent Chinese restaurant. My idea of heaven. Sweet and sour prawn balls and no washing the dishes.’

‘I see the appeal.’

She thinks he’s being sarcastic, and it makes her irrationally angry. She’d hoped to have dinner with Nicholas Barclay. Instead, she’d found herself behaving like a gangster’s moll, fawning up to the infamous boss.

‘Look, this is all bollox. I’m a strictly jeans and jumper gal. I’m forcing myself to do this because I wanted to discover the real Barclay. Not the guy with the gangster reputation. I’m sorry, but there’s the truth. I’ve never even eaten lobster. It’s a kind of big shrimp, innit?’ She uses the term to express her frustration and her irritation. And her lack of sophistication.

Barclay’s eyes crease with concern. He regards her for some time. He’s just about to say something when the main course arrives.

Lobster.

‘Fuck…’ Monica breathes as she regards the elaborate plate before her, ‘I should probably go.’

‘I agree.’ Barclay says, simply. He smiles at her, and he slowly folds the white napkin he’s holding, and he carefully places it by the side of his plate.

Monica looks one more time into his austere features, searching for a crack in his superior demeanour. There is none. The man’s face may as well have been carved from marble.

She pushes her chair away from the table. ‘Thanks for the crab. It was divine,’ she tells him.

She turns and starts to walk across the room, conscious of the fact that absolutely everyone is staring at her.

She stops when Barclay calls her name. She looks back at his table, expecting to see him tucking into his Lobster a la Isle of Mull, about to throw a final insult her way. Embarrass her in front of his peers.

Instead, he’s standing. He regards her with a look of genuine amusement, and he says, ‘You’re dead right. Danny told me about this great Chinese place in Soho. Let’s go and get some sweet and sour prawn balls.’

​

Nick - reciting a memory from his time in Bosnia:

​

‘I became unhinged…’ he admits with a slow nod of his head, ‘I had orders to identify war criminals and document their acts, but who was a criminal? Who was a simple soldier following orders? On one occasion, on Danny’s advice, we followed two excavators that had been transported to a remote location. We recorded them digging a long, deep ditch for a mass grave. We waited until three truck-loads of prisoners were brought to the site. Men and boys. Fathers and their sons. All of them already so physically and mentally abused that they simply had no fight left in them. They knew what was about to happen to them. They saw their graves. They saw the excavators. But the fight had been tortured out of them.’

‘You don’t have to do this,’ Monica breathes, softly.

‘Yes I do…’ he tells her, ‘they lined them up along the edge of the ditch. There were just under a hundred prisoners and only twenty armed guards. Nobody tried to flee. They shot the men and the older boys once in the back. It may or may not have killed them, but it propelled them into the ditch. The younger children, they didn’t even waste a bullet on. They used the butts of their rifles to strike the backs of the heads, forcing them into the ditch with the rest of their families. Then the excavators covered the entire mess with the dirt they’d removed and spent at least an hour after the soldiers had left the scene, flattening the grave, sealing the dead and dying, the fathers, the sons, and their brothers in the ground.’

​

 

​