We detoured off the motorway just south of Catterick and made our way across country towards Middleham. There was a bit of a fair going on at the top of the marketplace, with a children’s roundabout and several stalls of games, so I parked down the bottom, outside the Black Bull Inn.

I called Marcus to tell him I’d be there in about two minutes and, like last time, to have the door open ready.

‘You stay here,’ I said to Chico. ‘I’ll only be two ticks.’

I walked up past the fair and down the Leyburn Road, but something was ringing an alarm bell in my head.

As I walked, I changed the ID of my phone to Marina’s and remotely switched on the NeverLoseIt tag. The little blue dot on the map was reassuringly in Harrogate. I switched it off again and returned my phone to my own ID.

But the alarm bell went on ringing.

What was it that Marcus had said?

I have another recording of Mr Valance.

Mr Valance. Not just Valance, but Mr Valance.

I called him again.

‘Marcus,’ I said. ‘Are you on your own? Is Valance there with you?’

‘No, of course not.’

I wasn’t convinced. All the little blue dot had shown me was that Valance’s overcoat was in Harrogate. But the weather today had been rather mild, so maybe he didn’t need his heavy coat.

I stopped about twenty yards from Marcus’s door.

‘Tell you what, Marcus,’ I said into my phone. ‘I have a new plan. Walk up to the marketplace and I’ll meet you there.’

‘But I can’t be seen talking to you in public.’

‘Is your landlady at home?’

‘No. She plays whist on Wednesdays in Leyburn. Please come.’

There was something in the tone of his voice that had me even more worried. He was being too insistent.

‘No, Marcus,’ I said. ‘Either you come up to the marketplace, or you can send me the recording online.’

‘But you must come,’ he said, sounding almost desperate.

‘No, I mustn’t. And for anyone else currently listening in to this conversation, I’m not about to walk into your trap. Perhaps you would like to call me yourself on your own phone, and then I will choose where and when we are to meet. If I’m wrong, Marcus, and you actually are on your own, I will see you in the marketplace, again alone, in five minutes. Either that, or I’m going home.’

Just up from number 42, on the opposite side of Leyburn Road, was a high stone wall with a gated entrance into a stable yard. The two large wooden gates were wide open. I went through the gateway and hid behind one of the gates, but in a position from which I could clearly see the front door of number 42 through the narrow hinge gap.