“Comfy?”

“Not remotely.” He scowled.

“That’s what it feels like to be seven months pregnant.”

“Jeez, Mags. How are you going to carry this lump round?”

Jack put his hands in the small of his back and pushed his hips forward, arching. He puffed out his cheeks and then blew, making his lips ripple in a silent raspberry. He started to walk around the room. He bent his knees, widened his feet and waddled.

“Look, Mags, I’m you!”

As Jack moved with more and more exaggerated waddles, Maggie ran at him, laughing, calling him a cheeky bastard. He dodged her a couple of times, but the weight of the vest became too much and eventually he collapsed onto a yoga mat, exhausted. Maggie sat astride him and strained to lean down over his padded belly to kiss him. She couldn’t get anywhere near his mouth, which made them both laugh.

Sitting astride Jack, looking down at him in his pregnancy vest, with his two black eyes and swollen nose, Maggie had never felt so happy.

“I love you, Jack Warr. I can’t wait to be Maggie Warr.” Then her hormones took over and she started to cry. “Me and you know so much about pain, Jack. Promise me we’ll protect our baby from it.”

As Maggie wept, Jack unzipped the vest and sat up. He wrapped his arms tight around her body, let her gibber on about silly things and tried not to make it obvious that he was laughing at her.

“Promise me we’ll teach it only about happiness. Promise me we’ll play sleeping lions, and hide and seek, and at Easter we’ll hide eggs and play the hot and cold game.”

“I promise you all those things,” Jack whispered.

And in this tenderest of impromptu moments, he found himself thinking about Dougie Marshall’s grotty little office.

Hot and cold, he said to himself. I put the painting back over the safe and I walked round the room, looking at his forging paraphernalia. I passed his filing cabinets—not a flinch. Then his drinks cabinet. I even spotted an old £5 printing plate under a bottle of single malt, and that didn’t worry him. Where was I heading that made him jumpy? What made him call for backup?

Jack visualized the layout of the room, and all he could see in front of him, in the moment Dougie panicked, was the worn old chair.

That’s what was “hot.”

That’s what Dougie didn’t want him to look at.

Jack decided, there and then, that Dougie was the man they were after. A “wily fox” Rachel had called him. Jack would go back tonight and discover exactly what Dougie Marshall was hiding in his armchair.

Maggie pulled away from Jack and wiped her tears on his T-shirt.

“Put it in the wash when you get home. It’ll be nice for you to have an evening in with your parents, just the three of you. Get a takeaway.”

She stood up, picked up the vest and went to hang it back in the wardrobe. Jack sat on the floor, trying to work out whether chicken fried rice with Charlie was more important than breaking into Dougie’s office and finding proof that he’d helped the women escape the UK.