Jean arrived at the railway station within a couple of minutes, accompanied by two officers wearing police baseball caps. That was good news: they would need the local borough cops, as the office was a crime scene and there was a victim to look after. They also had two rape suspects to process and get safely to the local nick. This is going to get heavy quickly, thought Tom. The crime would be investigated by the local sexual offence specialists and a whole new set of procedures were about to begin.

Even though Emmanuel wasn’t in the office with his brother at the time of the offence, he was just as culpable. It was as clear a case of Joint Enterprise as was possible to imagine. Even better, it was all recorded.

Tom explained to Jean what had happened. He needed to get away from there; his cover was essentially blown and, once word got back to Mira and the brothers, there would be recriminations all round. He could give his statement under his pseudonym, though, and the recording would tell the story.

‘Jean,’ said Tom, ‘can you and your man here take Jeta and get her to the closest cop shop, probably Ilford. Tell them she’s been raped and assaulted. Tell the custody officer I’ll make a statement soon and I’ll deliver the SD card from my camera with all the evidence they need. Get your arrest team in and nick them in the office and secure the scene. Forensics for the rape will be the priority but you will be able to move in after securing evidence for your investigation. Best call the local police to get some support here as well.’

Jean nodded. ‘You okay, Tom?’

‘I’m fine. Adebayo is a horrible bastard; make sure you nail his arse to the wall. It’s all on the tape, he’s proper screwed to the wall. They’ll be feeling a bit under the weather: I had to get a bit lively with them,’ he said, his face impassive.

Jean nodded. Tom explained that he would get out of the way to try to preserve his anonymity as best they could while things calmed down.

*

Tom ran back to his BMW and drove away, keen to be as far from the situation as possible. That was not how it was supposed to go down; he should have calmly delivered the evidence into the hands of the investigating team via his cover officer and then melted into the background.

That would have then allowed them to plan a clear arrest strategy that preserved his cover for as long as possible, and maybe even kept him out of the evidential chain. No chance of that now, though. The pervert Adebayo had forced his hand; he could hardly have stood back and let that poor young girl be abused like that.