Jack headed past the church hall, and out of the event space through one of the numerous fields that had been converted into car parks. Barrowman’s charity buffet was due to open officially in thirty minutes, the crowds were building, and there was an atmosphere of excited anticipation.

Jack watched streams of cars being guided into makeshift parking spaces by teenagers in high-vis jackets. Hundreds of people, all in blissful ignorance, not suspecting that a coordinated series of simultaneous burglaries was about to occur.

*

Three rows from the front, seven cars from the left, Betina’s white Mercedes blended in with the other vehicles. The aerial was up, and a red ribbon fluttered in the breeze. When the time came, Betina would be able to find her Merc and be gone before the police even knew what had happened.

*

There was one ‘suite’ in The Fox Hunters B&B. It was a bedroom twice the size of any other, with a sofa and chairs added to create a TV area. It was also south-facing and had patio doors leading into a private, walled area of manicured flowerbeds, an elegant fountain water feature and a netted trampoline, where four-year-old Anthony Yardley had spent every waking minute ever since the family had been installed there. He was having a whale of a time, whilst bedbound Jessica was kept entertained with computer games and room service. Only the parents were not treating this as a holiday: David and Anne Yardley silently worried about their house being turned upside down by strangers, even though they knew it would be keenly protected by police officers inside and out. In the end they trusted DI Gifford, and so relinquished their home to him, confident that it was in good hands.

David Yardley owned a chain of builders’ merchants near Croydon. He left the day-to-day running of the business in the very capable hands of his two sons, both now in their mid-20s. Anne was David’s second wife and he’d moved to the Cotswolds because it was where she needed to be for her career as a riding instructor. David was Jack in reverse: a man who’d followed his wife’s career east to west, rather than west to east as Jack had done. But neither man regretted for a second their decision to follow their women across the country. They were both happily settled in their new homes with the people they loved most in the world. Jack had quickly come to know David and genuinely liked him; he was a smart, level-headed man who weighed up the risk and reward of every decision. He didn’t, as with men like Barrowman, demand success at all times. David was a man who’d failed his way to the top, by learning from every knock-down and by getting up stronger.