‘Well then you shouldn’t have distracted me by setting your Keystone Cops on me, should you?’ grinned Tom. ‘Anyway, I know you: twenty minutes is more than enough for you to dig out intel. So come on: spill what you’ve found out.’

Buster grinned in defeat. ‘There is a very bad smell about Taylor, mate. You may be onto something.’

‘Go on.’ Tom felt his pulse quickening.

‘Taylor left SOCA under a bit of a cloud in 2010 when he was a DS. Apparently, him and two others were running a trafficking job that was all looking good until it totally collapsed in somewhat suspicious circumstances. I can’t find anything concrete, but the suspicion was that one of the three tipped-off the targets and all the trafficked girls disappeared back to Eastern Europe just before the arrests went down. Totally smashed the job to bits, and two years of work went down the crapper.’

‘Jesus, that sounds bad. Was anything ever proved?’

‘Nope. SOCA was a bit of a joke at the time. Management were totally incompetent and just decided to send the two cops back to the Force and transfer the SOCA guy elsewhere. Want to guess where to?’

‘No, I want you to tell me, you daft bastard.’

‘The SOCA bloke, Gareth Jones, was transferred to the fucking line room in London. They sent him to listen to intercepted phone calls, where he’s still working to this day.’

So that was clear. Taylor’s link to phone taps was currently sitting a few miles away, listening in to intercepted phone calls.

‘What about the other?’

‘DC Graham Albrechtsen retired from the Met in 2015, where he finished his career on the Crime Management Unit at Tower Hamlets. He never got promoted, was always in the shit, and was suspected of all sorts of capers, none of which were ever proved.’

‘Not him, then.’

‘Want something else, Borat?’ Buster asked with the same teasing note in his voice.

‘I’m going to punch you in the face if you don’t stop winding me up.’

‘Graham returned as Dedicated Detention Officer Albrechtsen at an East London nick. Want to guess which one?’

‘Let me take a wild stab in the dark: maybe Ilford?’

‘Boom! Spot on. Somehow, despite all the clouds over his head, the Met took the fucker back as a gaoler. Apparently, he suffered the detective’s disease of lots of divorces and needs the money, so he takes care of prisoners for twenty grand a year. Listen, mate, this is big news and probably provable with some work. Let me speak to my boss about it.’ Buster’s tone quickly switched to a serious one.

‘No way. I’ve no idea how far this goes. I have no one to trust apart from you; they could have friends anywhere.’