‘She once told me that Miles and her grandfather had had some kind of falling out.’ Charlie furrowed his brow. ‘But why would Miles want to get me out of a job, too? He’s been sucking up to me since I got into the seat.’

‘Look at what I’ve just given you.’ Tom paused, allowing Charlie to look again at the piece of paper in his hand.

Although it was blurred, being a fax transmission, he could just about make out a series of figures.

‘These are payments that Miles made to your predecessor Hugo Fitzgerald when he was alive and in office,’ Tom said. ‘Don’t ask me where I got hold of them; I can’t tell you or someone in the Town Hall will lose their job. They show that Miles was paying Hugo off to give his blessing for planning permission for the bakery extension, even though that building was ineligible for a hot food licence. And still is.’

‘So Miles was greasing Hugo’s palm to get the licence approved, using his clout, in return for quite a substantial cut of the projected profits.’

‘Exactly. Of course, all that went out the window when Holly came into her inheritance and gazumped Miles in the sale. She probably didn’t even know she’d done it. She gets the building, and he ends up out of pocket, having paid off Hugo for nothing.’

‘As a result, he’s trying to discredit Holly, ruin her reputation and take me down because I’m connected to her and, thankfully unbribeable.’ The irony of that statement, given his own career ambitions, was not lost on either of them.

‘Exactly. Miles has been keeping tabs on you and Holly, the odd photo here, the odd exchange there. After you two split, it was easy for him to pretend to be a "concerned friend", feed the story about you taking advantage of a local business owner sexually to AllFeed, who, unlike a lot of the more reputable online news sites, don’t tend to look too closely at what they publish, and make it look like you’re a sleazebag and unfit for office. People already think most of Willowbury is absolutely insane; it wouldn’t be so great a leap to paint Holly as a vulnerable, misguided woman.’ Tom raised an eyebrow. ‘Unless they’d actually met her, of course.’

‘That bastard!’ Charlie brought his fist down on the desk. ‘I’ll bloody kill him.’