Running my eyes briefly again over the article I’ve previously read, denouncing Vasiliev as a money launderer and supporter of violent regimes in Africa, a thought strikes me and I move the cursor back up to my search history.

Highlighting the name of the company TradeSmart, I open a new window and search for Companies House.

And there it is. As the page opens up before me, I sit forward, adrenaline pumping.

‘Shit.’

My fingers are shaking as I pick up the phone and dial the office.

‘Ben,’ I say, as soon as he answers. ‘I’ve got a story. It’s to do with the murder on the Heath …’

Chapter 78

Gabriela

‘Are you OK?’ Ivan asks when he arrives back at the house a few minutes later, with a bottle of gin. ‘You look nervous.’

‘Me? I’m fine,’ she says, working hard to still her trembling fingers, spotting the pestle and mortar still in view on the counter.

‘Probably just need a drink.’

She lets him pour, while she stirs the beef bourguignon she has defrosted, a hunk of icy flesh thawing in the pan. While he does so, she watches him, imagining, and then trying to block out, the thoughts that must be scurrying around his head. Why didn’t he go to Moscow? Does he know what she is planning?

No, she tells herself, not letting her mind go there. There is no way he could know. Besides, he is not a threat, not directly. There is no evidence to suggest that he is violent, or anything other than the middleman: morally reprehensible, perhaps, but not necessarily dangerous. Not to her, not to their daughter. She has a mental flash of Masha’s face in the photo on Ivan’s mother’s wall and closes her eyes.

‘Can I help?’ Ivan asks, and she jumps.

‘God, you gave me a shock! No, it’s all under control. How about another G and T?’

‘You drank the last one quickly. Good job I’m not counting,’ he replies as he takes the glass she has discreetly emptied into the sink and pours out another double measure for each of them.

‘Drink up,’ she says, watching him down another glass before encouraging him to refill. ‘Otherwise I’ll be drunk on my own.’

He raises his eyebrows and moves into the other room to answer a phone call as she serves up the food, glancing behind her as she reaches into her pocket for the powder she crushed from the sleeping pills in her pocket while Ivan was at the shop buying gin, pouring half into Ivan’s bowl and the other half into Polina’s before stirring quickly with a spoon and carrying them through to the living room.