‘Charlotte, when De Voe calls you tomorrow, I want you to give him address numbers one, three, four, seven and nine. Tell him you’ve chosen these homes because they contain the highest-value jewellery items, as requested. It doesn’t matter whether they do or not, because he won’t get that far.’ Then, after another five minutes of both men telling her what a great job she was doing, Charlotte hung up.

Jack got two beers from the fridge and handed one to Ridley, who thanked him and said, ‘He’s going for a quick getaway this time. No horse trailers. Just bikes? Quads? Maybe cars? We don’t know what to look out for if they’re changing the way they move around . . .’ He thought for a moment, then chugged down almost half a bottle of beer before he started talking again. ‘Well, we’ve narrowed everything down as much as we can. We’ve given De Voe a cluster of houses, so they’ll be easier to monitor. They’ll avoid the A44, I think, and only two other roads link all five properties. From what you’d expect of this gang, they might be using the tactic of holding traffic with temporary lights at certain crossroads to allow them a clear escape route. So, once they have their targets, we need to monitor those roads to see if any temporary lights pop up. That’ll give us their likely way in and out. Then all we need to know is when. The annual equestrian event starts next Monday and lasts for a week. So we need to be patient.’ He looked at Jack. ‘You, Jack, need to be patient.’

By midday the following day, Ridley and Hearst had got substantial teams of officers allocated to this mammoth sting. Their first job was to trace the various travel agencies used by Betina Barro to book flights back and forth to Brazil and occasionally to Europe. From this information, they were able to identify the names on the associated passports and visas, and although these were no doubt all fake, they still provided trackable details that would consistently appear at both ends of the flight. The account used to fund all of these flights was held at Coutts bank in the name of Betina Barro, and although a constant supply of money fed this account, there was no record of where that money came from, as it was always deposited in cash by Betina herself.

There was no evidence linking De Voe to anything remotely criminal, other than Charlotte’s statement. During the Skype conference call, Jack suggested that DC Oaks be sent undercover onto Charlotte’s smallholding, as a casual labourer. Oaks grew up on a farm, so could act the part. They had to do everything in their power to make her feel safe.