Terence Gready could have added to it that no one ever got rich by defending clients on legal aid. But he seemed to make a decent-enough living from it. A nice four-bedroomed house in a des-res area of Hove, with a welltended garden – mainly due to his wife’s green fingers – and a holiday timeshare in Devon. They always had nice cars, recent models, although never anything remotely showy. The only thing about him that could in any way be called flashy was his proudest possession, his vintage Rolex Submariner watch. But, at over sixty years old, it did not look anything special to anyone other than real watch collectors.

His wife, Barbara, had sold her small orchid nursery and was much in demand as an orchid competition judge, which frequently took her abroad. Any free time she had, she spent choreographing for the local amateur dramatics society. They had privately educated their three children, who were all doing well on their chosen career paths, the eldest of whom, their son, Dean, was a successful accountant with a firm in the City of London and married to a colleague, who was soon to produce their first grandchild. Their two daughters were both working more locally, one as a mortgage broker and the other for a domestic abuse charity.

After her husband’s arrest, Barbara Gready would tell everyone that she had absolutely no idea, none at all, about all the offences he was accused of, and simply would not – could not – believe it. There’d been a big mistake, they had the wrong man. Completely. They must have.

11

Thursday 29 November

‘The French Connection, yeah?’ DI Glenn Branson said into the phone, seated at his workstation in the empty Major Incident Room at Sussex Police HQ.

‘French Connection?’ Roy Grace replied, mildly irritated by the early-morning phone call interrupting his routine of stretches. He was standing in the field next to his cottage, at the end of his five-mile run. Humphrey, his rescue Labrador-cross, was running around sniffing the ground hard, on the scent of something – probably a rabbit, he guessed.

Grace was taking a rare weekday off, because he would be at work most of the weekend, overseeing a major stop-and-search operation in South East London on Friday and Saturday night. He was happy to enjoy this unusual time at home with no commitments whatsoever.

Glenn Branson and some of the team from Major Crime were working with the Regional Serious and Organized Crime Unit on the investigation of a Ferrari busted for drugs at Newhaven earlier that week. Glenn had been appointed SIO, heading up a multi-agency team as the RSOCU had a number of high-profile jobs running simultaneously.

‘I’m not with you, Glenn – you mean because the Ferrari came in from Dieppe?’

‘Duh! Surely you remember that movie? It was about your vintage!’

‘It’s ringing a faint bell.’