But her hand stopped short of the phone. Their problems weren’t down to who had been involved in choosing the coffee table or the lamps; they were signs of deeper-set disharmony – of a relationship de-prioritized.

For the sake of work.

Hawkins shook her head, pushing the thought away. Now wasn’t the time for such insecurities; wouldn’t be at least until the case was resolved. And she was hardly getting signs that such a resolution was imminent.

There hadn’t been any point staying at Hendon. After her unproductive visit to see Superintendent Whiting at Scotland Yard, she had gone straight to Becke House, gathered the team and explained her strategy. If her suspicions after the meeting with Counter Terrorism were correct, and this was some kind of spiritual terrorism, despite how crazy that sentence would have sounded a week ago, ideally they needed to crack John Mardell in custody. Except that hadn’t worked so far, and they were going to struggle gaining permission to hold him for longer. So they had little choice but to charge him for the assault and let him go. Which meant releasing someone who might have been involved in the deaths of four people. And she wasn’t suggesting that without keeping a leash on their man.

On her instructions, two detectives followed Mardell away from West End station after he was released, the surveillance team chosen because their paths hadn’t crossed his at any point in the investigation to date. Neither would be familiar to their target. The idea was that, should Mardell be mixed up in anything illegal or violent, he’d soon lead them to whatever it was.

All the better if it turned out to be the reason behind the attacks.

Amala trailed him on foot, her diminutive form arguably less intimidating and worthy of suspicion than her counterpart’s. Aaron left a few minutes later by car, in constant contact with Amala by phone, ready to pick up the chase if Mardell had a vehicle parked somewhere, or took a cab.

In the end Mardell had gone straight to Green Park underground station and taken the Victoria line for the short journey to Highbury and Islington. Once outside the station, still with Amala in tow, he had walked ten minutes west to a terraced property on Bride Street, an address at which he wasn’t registered, but was presumably home, and spent half an hour inside before emerging in overalls.