Another, equally disturbing allegation of violence made against Alberto came in 2007, when a member of the Canadian Polo Team, who Alberto was due to play against in a winter friendly, found his horse collapsed on the floor of its stable. The Achilles tendon in its left hind leg had been severed. Although the police were brought in immediately, the culprit was never identified, but the very next day, Alberto was removed from the team and he left Canada. Apparently this was the last time any polo team allowed Alberto near a horse.

It seemed that Alberto Barro was a sociopath at best, and a psychopath at worst.

Michael De Voe was connected to a web of small companies that allowed him to move money around. A seven-year-old marketing image of De Voe, from the launch of one of these companies, was pinned to the suspects board. It wasn’t ideal, as it had definitely been photoshopped to make him look younger and slimmer, but it was all they had.

It was hard to track all of De Voe’s cash flow but, for the most part, it all seemed to involve legitimate payments and purchases. They had discovered that a week or so prior to each robbery, between £30,000 and £50,000 went into Betina’s bank account. Lee had used his Oxford leverage to assign a Fraud Squad officer to the highly complex task of following the money but so far, establishing that the money came out of one of De Voe’s bank accounts and he was the paymaster had come up blank.

Just after Canteen Barbara had refuelled the room with tea and pastries, Jack got a message from Ridley. The phone tap had picked up a seemingly innocent conversation between De Voe and Betina. The recording began with three minutes of chat about the emporium shift patterns, followed by fifteen minutes about jewellery. But after that De Voe began to talk in an artificial manner usually associated with cagey criminals who were aware of the potential for being bugged. ‘That dog of yours, Betina, you have to find a way to control it, you know. I’ve never been bitten in my life, and that’s because I know an untrainable half-breed when I see one. It’s in his nature to turn on you too, my dear. I’d hate to see that.’ Betina had then defended her ‘dog’ and reassured De Voe that she could control him. De Voe spoke with genuine concern about her safety, emphasising that some animals are so damaged that no one can truly control them; they want to be liked and loved but, in the end, they don’t know how. When Betina again sprang to the defence of her ‘dog’, De Voe snapped. ‘He bragged about Angelo being alive when he went into the fucking lake, Betina! Wake up!’ And then the line went dead.