LITMIR.BIZ

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enjoy working with others. But equally you’re comfortable operating on your own when you need to. This is a role that depends on effective networking, building relationships, but you will also really have to work in isolation. Not many people are comfortable with both.’

      ‘No, I can see that.’ She squinted more closely at the paper. ‘What about these ones? Those look more extreme.’

      Winsor leaned forwards, reading the form upside down. ‘Ah, now, that’s quite interesting. Those traits show how you deal with your emotions. Would you consider yourself an emotional person?’

      She found herself slightly taken aback by the direct question. ‘I don’t know. Not particularly, I suppose. I suppose I’d see myself as – I don’t know – pragmatic. I just get on with things.’

      It was difficult for her to answer the question. None of her colleagues would see her as emotional, she thought. But that was a point of principle. Whatever they might say publicly, some of her colleagues still held largely unreconstructed views of female officers. When she’d first joined, she’d been determined not to allow her femininity to be perceived, however unfairly, as a weakness. Whatever crap had been thrown at her – and there’d been plenty in those early days – she’d been determined just to take it. If she had a bad day she never let it show. That was nothing more than simple professionalism. It was what you did. Whatever might be going on outside of work, you didn’t bring it through the office door. It was a philosophy that many of her colleagues, male and female, failed to apply. She’d had a bellyful of supposedly macho senior officers who came in and simply unloaded the garbage that happened to be filling their own domestic lives.

      But Marie found it hard to distinguish between this work persona and whatever reality might lie beneath. She never showed any strong emotions and, to be frank, she rarely seemed to feel them. Of course, like anyone else, she went through cycles of joy or gloom, she had good days and bad days. But these were variations around a relatively placid norm. When real adversity came around – when she and Liam had being going through a tough time, or when her parents had died, not entirely unexpectedly, within a few months of one another – she simply buckled down and got on with life. In other circumstances, she reflected, a psychologist like Winsor might see that as unhealthy. Now, he seemed positively enthused by the assessment.

      ‘If we look at these scales, you see, you come across as someone who keeps their emotions carefully in check. You’re very conscious of the image you project to others. Your inclination is to subordinate your own feelings to the job at hand.’

      He was beginning to sound like a tabloid horoscope, she thought. ‘Those don’t necessarily sound like positive qualities.’

      ‘Well, again, it depends on the context. And if your responses were at the very extreme end of the scale, I’d have a concern. It might suggest an inability to cope with emotional issues. But this indicates simply a preference for control. Which in this role is important. It’s a very isolating job. If you’re faced with emotional issues, you have to be able to cope with them yourself. Of course, we keep an eye on agents out in the field, assess their well-being periodically. But we can’t provide too much support from the centre without risking compromising the operation.’

      ‘And you think I’d be up to it?’ She gestured towards the assessment form. ‘On the basis of that, I mean?’

      ‘Well, it’s impossible to be sure.’ He reached across and picked up the file. ‘It’s a fairly blunt instrument, this. And it can’t give us a definitive insight into the “real” Marie Donovan, whoever that might be. What it really tells us is how you see yourself and how you think others see you. But, for all that, I think, yes, that overall it does indicate that you’re likely to be suited to the job.’

      Well, that was something, she thought. A fairly lukewarm endorsement, but an endorsement nonetheless. One hurdle climbed.

      Winsor was still leafing aimlessly through her file. Finally, he paused and ran his finger carefully down one of the documents.

      ‘You’re unmarried?’

      She nodded. ‘So far.’ This had been typical of Winsor’s style. Off-the-cuff, apparently random questions, but each one with a little hidden barb.

      ‘But you have a partner?’

      She knew he already had the answer. When she’d joined the Agency, Liam’s background had been checked out as thoroughly as hers. A clause in her employment contract obliged her to inform her superiors if her domestic circumstances were to change. The way things were going with Liam, that clause might become relevant before long.

      ‘I live with my boyfriend,’ she said, ‘if that’s what you mean.’

      ‘And how does he feel about you applying for this role?’

      That was the question, of course. How did Liam feel?

      ‘Well, he’s got concerns, of course. But he’s fully behind my career. If it’s what I want to do, he’ll support it.’ Which was all true as far as it went.

      ‘And your boyfriend,’ Winsor said conversationally, ‘what does he do? His job, I mean.’

      ‘He paints. He’s an artist.’

      ‘Ah.’ Winsor managed to invest a wealth of meaning into the single syllable. ‘Would I recognize his name?’

      She smiled. ‘I don’t think so. Not yet.’

      ‘Well, perhaps one day.’ Winsor looked at his watch, as if he were already losing interest. ‘And what about you?’

      ‘Me?’ She wondered momentarily whether he was enquiring about her own artistic prospects.

      ‘Yes.’ Winsor was beginning to pack up his papers. ‘Why do you want the job? What made you apply for it?’

      Another good question. She’d had an answer all prepared – opportunity for career development, new challenges, a desire to step outside her own comfort zone, all that kind of nonsense. But Winsor’s nonchalant query had, presumably as intended, caught her off guard and she found herself blurting out something closer to the truth.

      ‘I don’t know. I suppose I feel in a bit of a rut. A bit passive. Time’s getting on. The big three-oh next year. I just want something new. I want to take more control.’

      He was barely looking at her, struggling to fit the stack of files into his briefcase. ‘At work or at home? The rut, I mean?’

      She paused, aware now that she was saying more than she’d intended. ‘Work, I suppose. I’ve spent the last year doing intelligence analysis. Crunching data. Spotting patterns. It’s important work and I’m pretty good at it, though I say so myself. But I don’t think it’s making the most of my talents. I want a bit more control over what’s going on. I want to make things happen.’

      He finally snapped shut his briefcase and looked up, his expression suggesting that he’d taken in nothing of what she’d been saying.

      ‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘Always good to take control. That’s very interesting. As I said at the start, this session isn’t really part of the formal interview process. I just like to have an informal discussion with candidates before I put together the detailed feedback on the psychometrics. Gives me a bit of context.’

      And if you believe that, you’ll believe anything, Marie told herself. Winsor had protested just a little too much about the unimportance of their conversation. She hoped she’d struck the right balance – alert enough not to let anything slip, but not so tense that she seemed phony.

      The whole thing had been like that. Two days of interviews and exercises. A traditional selection panel with four stern-faced senior officers asking a series of apparently random questions. A series of role-playing exercises, supposedly with other candidates, that had left her feeling slightly wrong-footed. She’d suspected from the start that not all the participants were genuine candidates. Some of them would be plants, there to observe or to throw additional spokes into the wheel. Or perhaps

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