Apart from real ale, his other passion was classic cars, and he was a regular attendee at as many gatherings of these around the country as he could get to. He never missed the Goodwood events, in particular the Festival of Speed and the Revival, and he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of pretty much every car built between 1930 and 1990, from its engine capacity to performance figures and kerb weight. There was a serious beaut arriving off this ferry, one he could not wait to see. Bust or no bust, it would at least be the highlight of his week.

One problem for the officers was in the definition of ‘high value’ vehicle. The source of the report was unable to be any more specific. Dozens of cars came under that category. They’d been pulling over and searching many vehicles that might match the description, including a rare Corvette, to date without any success. All they’d found so far was a tiny amount of recreational cannabis and a Volvo estate with a cheeky number of cigarettes on board – several thousand – all for his personal consumption, the driver had said. On further questioning he’d turned out to be a pub landlord, making his weekly run, turning a nice profit and depriving HMRC and thus the British Exchequer of relatively small but worthwhile amounts of cash. They’d impounded the Volvo and its cargo, but it was small fry, not what they were really interested in. Not what they were all waiting for.

As the week had worn on, faith in the intel was fading along with their morale. If tonight came up goose egg too, Clive would be losing most of his back-up.

The first vehicle off the ferry to enter the Customs shed was a camper van with an elderly, tired-looking couple up front. Clive spoke into his radio, giving instructions to the two officers down on the floor. ‘Stop the camper, ask them where they’ve been, then let them on their way.’

Body language was one of Clive Johnson’s skills. He could always spot a nervous driver. These people were just plain tired, they weren’t concealing anything. Nor was the equally weary-looking businessman in an Audi A6 with German plates who followed. All the same, to deliberately make his target nervous if he was behind in the queue of cars, he ordered two officers to pull the Audi driver over and question him, too. The same applied to another elderly couple in a small Nissan, and a young couple in an MX5. The lorries would follow later. Some of these would be picked out at random and taken through the X-ray gantry, to see if there were any illegal immigrants hidden among their cargo.