‘Well, sir . . .’ Bevan started to falter. Being faced with having to justify a new angle of enquiry to a Met man was daunting. She looked to Gifford for backup, but he didn’t offer any. His silence was the first piece of direct leadership Jack had witnessed: Gifford knew Bevan was doing fine without him, so he wanted her to be the one to answer Jack’s question. She started again, ‘It’s possible that the biker is acting like a scout. To recce the properties, collect information about the owners’ routines and such. He’d easily fit in the horse trailer.’

Jack nodded. ‘Good shout.’

Jack then changed the subject to Mathew. This was the other job he needed Bevan for. It was important to know for certain that their burglars were responsible for such a brutal attack. He wanted to exclude every other possibility before concluding, 100 per cent, that this gang had assaulted him.

‘I need the bodycams from all officers who attended the Barrowmans’ early yesterday morning. I need to know—’

‘Set up and ready to go on the computer at your desk, sir!’ There was no stopping Bevan now. ‘I downloaded the footage from all three cameras into the same file and cut it down, so you’ve just got the Barrowman incident. There’s nothing on it, though, sir. The traffic was held back by police vehicles, so you can’t see anything clearly.’

‘I’m not looking for the vehicles, Bevan. I’m looking to see if any of the officers drew their batons and used them in self-defence.’

This instantly got Gifford’s attention and prompted him to chip in, ‘Now, wait a minute. If there’s been a complaint . . .’

All Jack had to do to stop Gifford in his tracks was hold up his mobile and show him the images of Mathew’s back that Nathaniel had forwarded to him. Gifford physically flinched at the sight of the bruising on Mathew’s torso. Jack assured them that there had been no complaints and that he didn’t doubt the officers for one second, but they had to be certain for their own peace of mind.

The collated footage from the bodycams all showed the same thing: Mathew sent Sergeant McDermott tumbling backwards, then raced towards the busy road. When he refused to stop for the other officers, they made the decision to take him to the ground and restrain him for his own safety. No batons were drawn. Jack watched the footage from McDermott’s bodycam: once Mathew was down, she crawled across the lawn and talked soothingly, assuring him that he wasn’t in any kind of trouble. All the while, Sally could be seen stroking Mathew’s hair and repeating the instruction for him to be calm.

Gifford was relieved. ‘When we got bodycams, I thought they were a waste of time but, my God, they just earned their slice of the budget.’