‘I’m not ignoring him. I’ll call him back in a bit. Listen, Mags, Ridley and I are running this end of things and we speak all the time. The Cotswold team’s DCI has daily briefings with Ridley. No one’s being ignored or left in the dark, honestly. Oh, and you’ll like this, Ridley and their DCI, Hearst she’s called, fancy each other. I mean, Ridley will take months to do anything about it, so nothing will happen, but at least we know he’s human.’ Once Maggie had been placated, he steered the conversation back on course. ‘So, my surveillance cover. I need to create this sort of look.’ Jack dumped all of the magazines into her arms. ‘Help me, Mags.’

*

Jack had never taken a great deal of interest in clothes, which Maggie didn’t mind because it saved them money, and she genuinely thought he looked great in anything. She loved nothing more than looking at Jack’s shoulder muscles beneath a tight white T-shirt.

Today, Maggie took Jack into shops he didn’t even know existed. He hated all of them from the second they entered, because a sales assistant immediately pounced and then proceeded to follow them around, despite the fact that Maggie said firmly that they didn’t need any help. Jack assumed that the assistant suspected them of being shoplifters, who couldn’t be trusted to wander without supervision.

In a Paul Smith shop, Maggie picked out a white linen shirt with a rounded collar. An assistant sprang from behind a rack of trousers, slapped the palms of his hands together in excitement and commented on how distinguished ‘Sir’ would look in this particular shirt, especially if it was underneath a casual navy Harrington jacket. Maggie sniggered as Jack squirmed in the hands of this overzealous salesman, but eventually put him out of his misery by telling the assistant that they did not need the jacket, but that they would buy the shirt. Maggie pointed out to Jack that this particular shirt was in the sale, reduced from £140, to £115. ‘Fuck me, Mags!’ Jack whispered as they queued to pay. ‘I’m not paying £115 for a shirt.’ Maggie said that she’d keep the receipt and, once his surveillance op was over, she’d bring it back.

As Maggie really got into the swing of things, Jack’s day went from bad to worse. In the next shop, she made him buy a pair of fawn corduroy trousers and a pair of navy suede loafers from Hackett’s. Jack couldn’t believe how much they’d spent in less than one hour. He had to bring the shopping spree to an end when Maggie tried to make him buy a £20 pair of socks – insisting that it was the latest fashion to go sockless.