My poker face is better than his, and I continue steadily, ‘I just wondered whether you might know more than most about what happens around here and, well, if you were to help me I might be able to return the favour …’

Tariq’s expression slips momentarily. It is conversations like this that remind me that he is certainly not the mastermind of this operation. Whatever its extent, he is little more than a frontman; it is his job to know exactly what is going on out there and to report back to whoever is truly in charge.

Fortunately for me, though, he also clearly enjoys the idea that I believe him to be higher up the echelons of power than he really is, and as a consequence has freely given up information over the years, in return for something he can feed back to his paymasters. A heads-up on a planned raid, perhaps, or a police operation that is in the pipeline. Information that is a combination of titbits prised from Oscar – before the recent breakdown of relations – press briefings and the whims of my imagination.

If enough of my information turns out to be correct, even if it is the soft stuff – the stuff that if he’d really thought about it, Tariq would realise was not that much use to him at all in isolation – then it doesn’t really matter that the rest of it has been fathomed out of nowhere. It doesn’t matter that the raid I’d warned him about had never happened.

Must have been pulled, I’d shrug the next time I saw him. But wouldn’t you rather be safe than sorry?

‘What have you got?’ he concedes after a moment.

I shake my head. ‘That’s not how it works, Tariq, you know that. You tell me what you know then I tell you what I know.’

I watch his hands tense, one of his eyebrows cocked. ‘Oh, really?’ he says, his eyes narrowing. ‘That’s strange as it seems to me that you’re the one who needs my help.’

There is silence, and then Tariq speaks again, without meeting my eye. ‘I’ll make a few calls. Anything else I can help you with while you’re here?’

‘Just a quarter.’ I smile at him coolly.

Reaching into the drawer beneath his desk, Tariq pulls out a small block of hash, dismissing the note in my hand.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says, turning away from me. ‘Next time.’

Chapter 36

Gabriela

She was waiting in the kitchen when Tom arrived back at the house, the sound of the kids bursting out of the car warning her they were home well before she heard the rattle of the key in the lock.