Gifford softened his glare while he thought about it and Oaks now deemed it safe to let go of Lee.

No more words were said, but Jack and Lee still stared daggers at each other. Lines had been crossed on both sides, and there was no going back. Gifford ignored them, making it clear that Mason was the only man in the room worthy of his time right now. ‘All right. Ask Bevan if she’s prepared to act as decoy inside the Yardley house. The decision has got to be hers.’ He finally turned to Jack. ‘DS Warr, send DC Bevan in. DI Mason, please stay to answer any questions she might have.’ This was the first direct instruction Gifford had ever given Jack, and he followed it without hesitation. ‘Oaks, be somewhere else, please. And close the door on your way out. And DCI Lee, I don’t need you in my office right now, either.’

Lee and Oaks left, Bevan entered, and the next half an hour was spent calmly talking her through what would be expected of her, if she agreed to go undercover with Mason.

Chapter 23

CHAPTER 23

The charity buffet was a lavish affair which was to take place partly indoors and partly beneath a marquee. The aroma of hog-roast and barbecues filled the outdoor air whilst, indoors, the air was kept as ‘uncontaminated’ as possible for the vegetarians and vegans.

And everywhere, indoors and out, was wheelchair accessible. Barrowman might have been an arrogant man in his business life, but in his private life he was acutely sensitive to people’s diverse needs – his son had taught him that much.

Oaks, out of uniform, stood on a raised stage just outside the marquee, watching the relatively small crowd of around a hundred early-comers milling about the beer tent.

The stage was made up of sixteen blocks, normally arranged in an eight-by-two pattern in the church hall. Today they were in a two-layered four-by-two pattern, with stairs up the back, so that when Barrowman officially opened the charity buffet, he’d be visible above the three children selected from a local riding school entering on horseback.

Oaks had been relieved and disappointed in equal measure when Mason had taken the undercover job away from him. So Jack had put him front and centre at Barrowman’s event. In truth, Jack didn’t know if their gang would use this crowd as cover at all, but if there was a possibility, then they had to monitor it to keep the community safe.

If any one of the gang slipped through their hands, they could vanish into these crowds, never to be seen again. Thousands of strangers, gangs made up of people with no criminal record . . . one change of clothes and they’d disappear.