Lee had interrupted at this point to say that he’d personally go and see Mr Barrowman to explain. ‘Barrowman will be fine once he sees you’ve brought in the big guns. And I’ll give an edited statement to the press, to keep them out of the way.’

Jack waited until he’d finished. ‘What I was going to say was that we still don’t know who the insider is, or if there’s more than one. Any gossip on the streets could be fatal.’

*

By the time Jack got back to Chipping Norton, DIs Lee and Mason had got their feet firmly under the desk and Jack was now the one playing catch-up.

Lee and Mason sat opposite Gifford in his office. Oaks perched on the windowsill and a small, low office chair had been provided for Jack. He opted to ignore the obvious symbolism and remain standing in order to assert authority, whether he actually still had any, or not.

Lee took the lead. ‘There’s a livery stable in Oxford renting horseboxes, trailers, tractors and farm equipment. The owner, Jacob Mulhern, has it on record that, in the dim and distant past, he rented a three-horse trailer to a Mr Smart. I believe you know the name. It’s the same MO – fake ID, paid in cash, collected and dropped off in the dead of night.’

‘Apologies if this has already been covered in my absence, but how come this wasn’t flagged when DI Gifford originally shared Mr Smart’s name with you?’ As soon as Jack had said it, he knew the answer. Gifford never had shared the name with Oxford Robbery. Everyone in the room silently decided to ignore Jack’s question. It was pointless raking over old mistakes; they had to move forwards now. And they had to move together.

Lee continued: ‘As soon as we did realise your gang had rented trailers in Oxford, we interviewed Mulhern. We’ve had two burglaries, both about a year and a half ago. They were picked up by uniform and, because the owners just wanted to claim on the insurance and forget about it, they weren’t escalated to us. This, in itself, is nothing unusual – if the victim doesn’t pursue, we can’t pursue. Anyway, the name Smart was on file, so here we are.’

Oaks piped up, wanting to be an active part of the handover to Jack. ‘Because of Bevan’s mastery of the whiteboards, it was a quick and easy job to compare the Oxford robbery dates with our Chipping Norton dates and see that this gang has never actually had any down-time, as we originally thought. When they weren’t in one place, they were in another. They never stopped.’

‘Great.’ Jack felt he was having his own investigation explained to him. ‘So, we now have all information pertaining to these two old burglaries and trailer rentals, do we?’