His face was marked with scuffs and bruising where he had fought for his life. There was a red mark around his neck, as vivid as a lynching, and I pulled the zip down to his chest so that I could see the four numbers tattooed above his heart for the first time and the last time. It still looked like him. It is the elderly that appear changed by death, and it is the sick that seem changed by death. The young dead – the dead robbed of the fifty more years of existence that they are owed – look unchanged, as if they have not yet finished with life.

There was a single knife wound just under the tattoo of his warrant number. He fought them with everything, but death, when it came, would have come quickly.

I gently patted his face twice and zipped up the HRP.

When I stood, DCI Whitestone and Edie were there. Beyond the heads of Whitestone and Edie, I could see the traffic slowing down to look at Billy.

‘They knew,’ I said. ‘They let him bring in another load, but they knew he was a cop. And they knew from the moment they first looked at him. The moment he drove into that camp. The moment they looked in his eye.’

‘We don’t know what happened to Billy,’ Whitestone said, for once in her life sounding uncertain.

‘I know he was nowhere near ready,’ I said, the sadness stronger than the anger now. ‘He had basic training to drive that lorry. He had no training at all at working undercover. Billy had never even worked as a Surveillance Officer.’

‘He was our best bet,’ Whitestone said.

‘It was a suicide mission,’ I said. ‘But you can replace him, right? We can get another TDC in from Hendon. All these young kids are good with computers. No problem replacing Billy, right?’

‘You’re angry with me. I understand.’

‘You don’t understand a damn thing,’ I said. ‘Ma’am. I’m angry with myself. I should have told him to walk away. From West End Central. From this madness.’ I lifted my chin at DCI Whitestone. ‘From you.’

‘Billy would have ignored you,’ she said.

‘You should have sent me,’ I said.

She exploded. ‘Now you’re talking like a child! They know you in that camp!’

She got a grip on herself and looked at the sergeant from the Port of Dover Police. ‘Did they give him a phone? Did he have a burner on him?’

‘If they did, they must have taken it with them on this side,’ he said. He gestured at the fields beyond the motorway. A long dark line of officers from the Specialist Search Team were making their time-consuming way across the field, on their hands and knees on the frozen earth. ‘But if your man ditched a burner before they took him, we’ll find it.’

‘Nothing in the back of the lorry?’ Whitestone said.