Gray watched their approach on the camera and heard every word they said.  He couldn’t hear the response from their commanders, but at least they appreciated the effort that had gone into his defences.  More importantly, the thermal sheets lining the walls worked.  If they couldn’t see into the room with heat-detecting equipment, they were virtually blind, adding more uncertainty to the chances of a forced entry succeeding.

As a security consultant he was up to date on all of the latest gadgets, and this gave him the edge when it came to defeating them.  He had used the internet to search for the most state-of-the-art devices which would be used against him, and then trawled through freedom of information documents to see which police forces had which capabilities.

Once he knew which TIC SO15 would be likely to deploy, defeating it was relatively easy.

The background work had certainly paid off.

He turned his attention to his laptop, and after watching the vote count tick over the million mark he folded his arms and lay back in the chair, the hypnotic hum of the diesel generator helping him to sleep.  If they decided to launch an attack, operational sense dictated that it would most likely come in the middle of the night, and he planned to be wide awake for it.

* * *

Harvey peered through the front window of the terrace house but saw no sign of life.  He returned to the door and rang the bell again, but after having drawn a blank at the first suspect's home he knew he was wasting his time here, too.

“He's not in,” a voice said.  It belonged to Tristram Barker-Fink's next door neighbour, a woman in her sixties who was standing in her doorway, arms folded and a cigarette dangling from her lips.

“Do you know where he went?” Harvey asked.

“You the police?” she asked, the cigarette bobbing with every word.

“No, I'm an old friend of Tris.  We were in the army together.  I was hoping to catch up with him while I'm in town on business.”

“I think he went on holiday.  He left last week with a holdall and hasn't been back since.”

“Did he say where he was going?” Harvey asked, praying that the old cow was as nosey as he hoped.

“No idea, he just left.  He doesn't talk much that one, and only has men round...”  She left the statement hanging, letting Harvey come to his own conclusions.  He realised that he wasn't going to get much from this homophobe, so he told her he would try next time he was in town and returned to his car.  Once inside he called Hamad Farsi.  “Get anything?” he asked him.

“Len Smart wasn't home, but Carl Levine's wife said he went on a job last week.  He told her it was a two-week bodyguard assignment for a visiting dignitary, and she has no reason to doubt him as that's how he earns his living.”