Clive had heard the period between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. called the dead hours. The time before dawn when many terminally ill people passed away. The time when most folk were at their lowest point. Most, maybe, but not him, oh no. Just like an owl, he hunted best at night. Clive had never set out to be a front-facing Customs officer because he had never been particularly confident with other people in that way, too much small talk and pretence. He used to prefer back-room solitude and anonymity, the company of tables, facts and figures and statistics. When he’d originally joined Customs and Excise, before it was renamed Border Force, it had been because of his fascination – and expertise – with weights and measures. He had an excellent memory which had served him well as an analyst in the department before he had, rather reluctantly, accepted a move a few years ago to become a frontline officer, after his superiors had seen in him a talent for spotting anything suspicious.

Over these past seven years he had proved their judgement right. None of his colleagues understood how he did it, but his ability to detect a smuggler was almost instinctive.

And all his instincts told him that the driver of the approaching Range Rover towing an enclosed car trailer unit looked wrong. Nervous.

Nervous as hell.

He radioed his two officers on the floor.

3

Monday 26 November

When anyone asked Meg Magellan what she did for a living, she told them straight up that she was a drug dealer. Which she really was, but the good sort, she would add hastily, breaking into a grin. In her role as a key account manager for one of the UK’s largest pharmaceutical companies, Kempsons, she sold and merchandized their range of over-the-counter products into the Tesco store group.

She also tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to augment her income by betting on horses. Never big stakes, just the occasional small flutter – a love of which she’d got from her late husband, Nick, whose dream had been to own a racehorse. The closest he’d got was to own one leg of a steeplechaser called Colin’s Brother. She’d kept the share after Nick’s death, as a link to him, and followed the horse in the papers, always putting a small bet on and quite often being pleasantly surprised by the nag getting a place – with even the occasional win. Whenever the horse ran at a reasonably local meeting, she would do her best to go along and place a bet and cheer him on, along with the two mates, Daniel Crown and Peter Dean, who owned the other three legs between them. She’d become so much closer to them both since Nick died. In a small way they kept Nick alive to her and she could see his humour in them.