Fresh from the pep-talk he’d had from Ridley, Jack didn’t take the bait. ‘Oaks didn’t want to waste your time with a dead end, but yes, you’re right. Oaks, we know that Adidas Man is a trusted lead player in this gang, so that’s the detail we take from this.’ Oaks said that he would add this information to the board, and off he went. Then Jack, with a friendly smile, asked Lee to lead a briefing with him: Lee could share all of the Chipping Norton discoveries and Jack would share about his encounter with De Voe. Despite his cooperative demeanour, Jack’s intention was actually to irritate Lee. And it worked.

‘Oh, so you’re affording me some respect now?’ Lee said. ‘I specifically told you to keep me in the loop whilst you were in London.’

Jack smiled. ‘Yes, DCI Ridley did mention that you were unhappy with my conduct.’ Then Jack walked away and began the briefing. After getting the attention of the room, Jack invited Lee to stand by his side and speak first, hoping his deferential manner would irritate him even more.

*

There was now so much work going on in the squad room that the briefing was allowed to be a bit of a free-for-all.

The research done on Alberto Barro so far was extensive. He’d lost all of his inherited wealth to polo – playing, socialising and gambling – so he was now financially dependent on his younger sister. From checking both of their bank accounts, it seemed that she would intermittently release funds, to help him ‘re-establish his career’. But it was obvious to everyone that, as soon as Betina’s money cleared Alberto’s bank account, it went straight back out on living the high life. Including, back in 2008, paying a substantial amount of hush-money after he assaulted a waitress in Virginia for refusing to serve him beyond the point where he puked the previous hour’s alcohol into an ice bucket. She’d asked him to leave and he’d reacted by pushing her over a table stacked with glasses. The waitress had hounded Alberto on social media, threatening to report him to the police if he didn’t pay her off. He’d de-activated those old accounts, but had not deleted them, so Hearst had got permission to re-activate them and the private messages were now part of their investigation. It seemed that the waitress had eventually gone quiet for £30,000.