When Fred wasn’t being gloomy, or pompous, I thought he looked rather nice. I walked upstairs with him and, on the landing, I kissed him goodnight, on the cheek. Perhaps I shouldn’t have done. Maybe that was less than professional, but I didn’t care. I felt a little sorry for him, and a little sorry for myself, so I kissed him on the cheek. He looked at me when I did that. He didn’t try to make anything of it, for which I was grateful. He just said, ‘Thanks,’ very quietly and as if he really meant it.

When I first met Fred and we were still at the stage of calling each other Dr Jones and Ms Harriet I’m-not-quite-sure-how-to-pronounce-your-surname-so-I’ll-just-mumble-it, I think I would rather have kissed a salmon than Fred. Now, I was not so sure. I went to bed wondering what would have happened if I had kissed him properly, on the lips.

The next morning we took a helicopter down to see the fish farm. Fred had told me about this and kept saying, ‘The sheikh will hate it. He’ll hate it.’

But there was nowhere else to get the fish, you see. We needed so many and it seemed as if trying to rear fish from wild stock would meet with so many objections and obstacles that it would take for ever, perhaps never. I couldn’t see the difference-then. Salmon farms breed salmon. We needed salmon, and lots of them. What was the problem?

So Fred gave me a long lecture about genetic integrity, and why wild salmon have it and farmed salmon don’t. I couldn’t see why it mattered. A fish is a fish, isn’t it? I had to pretend to be interested for half an hour. At the end of his speech I told him, ‘If this is the only way to get the salmon we need in the time we’ve got, let’s please just get on with it.’

The sheikh did hate it. I hated it, too. I hated seeing those poor fish crowded together like that in those cages, swimming in their own dirt. I hated the way they leaped into the air all the time as if they were trying to escape from a vast prison camp, which is of course what it was. I know they were only fish. But still.

Peter Maxwell took a few pictures; otherwise he said nothing until we were back in the helicopter. I think he thought that was how salmon always lived because he said how fascinating it was to see wild creatures so close, and what a marvellous tourist attraction they could be. Then he started to muse about whether one couldn’t sell tickets for people to row alongside the cages and hook fish out of them. He took out his Blackberry and wrote a note to himself to talk to the Scottish Executive about it. I saw Fred give him a look of such contempt and loathing it was lucky Peter did not see it.

When we got back to Glen Tulloch the helicopter dropped us off and took Peter Maxwell on to Inverness airport, so he could fly back to Downing Street and tell his boss all about it. He said, ‘The PM will be very impressed by what I have to tell him.’ There was more about being ‘deeply gratified by the progress made’ and ‘how delighted the prime minister will be to share the moment of the launch’. Then he turned to Fred and me and instructed us to keep him posted. He wanted weekly updates by email; he wanted us to keep at our work on the project night and day. I must say I felt like giving him a piece of my mind. Fred was a civil servant, so perhaps that gave Peter the right to give him instructions although I don’t really see why. But he had no right to tell me what to do. I was working as a partner in a private firm, and the sheikh was my client and the sheikh was the only person who could tell me what to do.

Then Peter Maxwell was gone. I saw later that he went straight back to London and gave that interview to the Sunday Telegraph Magazine about what a great salmon fisherman he was going to be.

Interrogator:

Please describe the events which followed Mr Maxwell’s departure.

Harriet Chetwode-Talbot:

Well, Fred was almost incandescent with rage after Peter left. He turned to me as the helicopter headed for the airport and said, ‘That man…’ a little too loudly, because the sheikh overheard him and said, ‘I am so pleased your prime minister is interested enough to send such an important man as Mr Maxwell all the way to my modest home in Scotland to meet me. I am so glad he came. His contribution was very valuable.’

Interrogator:

Describe the alleged incident on the river.

Harriet Chetwode-Talbot:

The sheikh decided that, as we had a few hours before we needed to get back to London, we would go and fish. I was invited to sit on the riverbank and watch. So that was how we came to be on the river that autumn afternoon, with the leaves turning buttery yellow on the rowans, and the clusters of gleaming red berries reminding one that winter was coming. There was enough warmth in the sun for it still to be pleasant to sit on the fine, soft grass. I knew I would be covered in pine needles and leaf mould when I stood up, but I didn’t care.

The dark waters of the Tulloch flowed below me. On each bank were scrubby woodlands of birch, rowan, and Scots pine. A few rhododendrons provided some cover. I heard a pheasant sounding its alarm call, not far away. I watched the two men fishing.

In his waders the sheikh lost some of his majesty. He was just a simple fisherman, at one with the river, his whole being concentrated on his next step and his next cast. I saw him form the double loop of his cast and heard the hiss of the line as, without apparent effort, a great length of it shot out silkily and the fly landed on the water with a kiss. Thirty or forty yards below him was Fred. On land, Fred was a little wooden in his movements at times. In the water he was graceful, moving easily, casting, as the sheikh did, with an economy and skill that were somehow surprising if you were used to seeing him behind a desk. They had both forgotten me, forgotten the project, forgotten everything except the immediate moment and the riddle of the dark waters that hid the fish they sought. Somewhere round a bend in the river was Colin, fishing as well, perhaps as recompense for a trying few days training the sheikh’s Yemeni future corps de Gillies, but I knew that if the sheikh so much as touched a fish with his fly, Colin would appear miraculously at his elbow with a landing net, ready to help bring the fish onto the bank.

It was so peaceful. My eyelids felt heavy. I was tired: shattered from weeks of work, exhausted by weeks of worry about Robert. I could hear the musical sounds of the river, the hiss of the line as it went out, the occasional chirrup of some small dipper or other wading birds balancing somewhere on a stone, its tail going up and down. A sense of deep calm flowed through me, a feeling that everything would be all right: the sheikh would have his salmon river, Robert would ring me from an airport saying he was on his way home, and everything would be fine and I would be happy again. Then I heard the alarm call of the pheasant again. It made me look up.

Coming between the trees towards us was a small, dark man in a kilt and stockings. His top half was encased in a bulky leather jacket. On his head was some kind of beret, perhaps more reminiscent of a French onion-seller than a Highland clansman. I heard his feet scrunching on the first fallen leaves of autumn, and I realised I had been half listening to that noise for a few moments before I saw him. Then I realised that the little man was not fat. He looked very thin, in fact half starved. What had made him look so big was some kind of pistol with a long barrel that he swept from underneath his jacket.

Everything then took on the aspect of an underwater ballet. I had all the time in the world to watch him cock the gun, all the time in the world to scramble to my feet, and all the time in the world to shout a warning to the sheikh. Except my voice froze in my throat, and the first person to speak was the little dark man. ‘Allahu akhbar, ’ he said conversationally, in a clear high voice.