She demands, and instantly receives, a full curriculum vitae of Oliver Smith and a proper introduction to the role and governance of the Turnpike Trust. As soon as she starts to review the documents, she realises that they are enormous and rejects them, requiring the Witness to present her with a working précis. Smith has all the best qualifications, which she doesn’t care about, and all the usual connections, habits, personal life and quirks, which she also doesn’t care about. He has been working in his current position for an average number of years, has been promoted rapidly (she tells the Witness to establish by whom and for what, and prepare a summary) and is seen as the coming man. The Turnpike Trust is one of those deceptively boring backwaters of government where power begins as the consequence of a willingness to take on jobs that are necessary but unglamorous, and thereafter accumulates because they’re already doing so much and doing it tolerably well. It is not technically part of the state, but is a chartered and contracted non-governmental actor, CCNGAs having replaced the infamous QUANGOs and PPPs of long ago and far away. In fact, the Trust is not new but very old, having been formed to provide highway infrastructure before the Victorian era and never entirely gone away. Like the Worshipful Company of Fan Makers, who took to their bosom the engineers of jet engines, they have adapted and evolved from upstart to powerhouse and now are infrastructure, no more noticed and no less vital to the apparatus of administration than electricity, or indeed than the fibre-optic cable they maintain.