The DS nodded. ‘This is about as close to the edge as I like to be: a good quarter of a mile of terra firma between me and any drop. I get acrophobia standing on a kerb!’

Grace smiled distractedly.

Glenn looked at him concerned. ‘You OK, mate?’

‘I’m OK, I just get flashes when it hits me and I think of his accident. I just hope to God he didn’t feel anything. But I’d rather be here, especially if we get a result tonight.’

Then he focused back on why they were here. Despite what he had told his team at the briefing earlier in the week, he had been toying ever since with turning this into a full-blown operation, with Gold, Silver and Bronze commanders to cover his back if anything went wrong. But mindful of Cassian Pewe’s scepticism about this entire investigation, he worried the ACC would order him to abort his whole plan, so in the end he’d stuck to his decision of keeping it low-key, not getting Pewe involved.

And hoped it wasn’t all going to go badly tits-up.

Although the weather had already gone just that. Far from the forecasted clear night, at the moment there was dense cloud cover and a heavy rain shower was falling. It pattered down on the roof of the unmarked Ford as Grace sat with Branson. A strong wind was blowing, too, sending something – an empty drinks can, Grace guessed – rattling along.

Three of the vehicles of Mark Taylor’s Surveillance Team, each with a crew of two, one with Sharon Orman, were parked up close by, covering the exits to the conference hotel where Rebecca Watkins was staying. The others were stationed on the main roads out of Eastbourne. Inside his jacket pocket Grace had a printout of his risk assessment for tonight. But his nerves were ragged.

A figure, head bowed against the rain, walked along the pavement with a dog on a lead, and passed by their car. Branson yawned. ‘Think you need to use a better weather forecasting method,’ he said with a wry smile, watching the rain. ‘There’s technology you can use, apps, you know? They’re a lot more reliable than sticking your finger out of the window – or was it the entrails of a chicken you were studying?’

Grace gave him a withering look.

‘Sorry, boss, that was tactless.’

‘You could say that.’ He grimaced at the reminder of the previous week. ‘I looked at the forecast for around midnight, it’s meant to be clear skies then.’

‘Definitely, for sure it will be, somewhere in the world, just not here,’ Branson retorted.

But Grace barely heard this, he was back in his thoughts, again thinking through what lay ahead tonight. The words of Sharon Orman, relaying the conversation between Niall Paternoster and Rebecca Watkins in the pub in Croydon. Whenever I can get away without being rude. Probably be near to midnight. Does that sound like a plan?

A lovers’ rendezvous? Was that all it was going to turn out to be? He would have egg all over his face, for sure, if he’d organized an operation simply to watch a couple getting it on in the back of a car.