‘Does Caroline know?’ asked Karene. ‘I think the kids visited Julian regularly when they were little. He has a stepdaughter who lives over here with her mum. They used to take her with them to see him.’

‘Probably not,’ said Jameson. ‘It’s all being kept very low-key at the moment but we can tell her if you like.’

Karene nodded then picked up the papers on the desk and began to sift through them. ‘Julian ran his own business. He wasn’t military and he retired ages ago and moved to France. I don’t know what they’d have in common other than their family.’ She stopped sifting and looked back at Bloom. ‘Is this a personal thing? Is someone coming for him again? Why is my emailer asking if he’s safe?’

25

Bloom and Jameson disembarked their flight, collected their hire car and started the hour-long drive to Julian Peterson’s home in a rural village near the town of Avranches in Normandy. While Jameson drove, Bloom read through Karene’s notes.

‘Obviously she has a lot more detail from the time they’ve been together. But she’s pieced together plenty from before that. She starts with the routine of his life over the past twelve months. He works pretty much nine to five, has had no deployments or lengthy trips away, only the odd overnight. His children stay with him two weeks out of every four. He’s bought a house in St Albans near their mother so that he can be as involved as possible. He’s a keen cyclist like you. She says he trains three or four times a week, often cycling to and from work which is about twenty miles. He does half a dozen or so races a year. She’s listed his most recent ones. They have a small group of couples they socialize with and she’s included their names and contact details. And once a month he travels to the Cotswolds to visit his sister Lucy who’s in a care home there.’

‘What’s wrong with the sister?’

Bloom skipped a few pages to the notes on family. ‘She had a stroke in 1989 when she was just twenty.’

Jameson sucked air in through his teeth. ‘Tragic.’ He took the exit signposted Rennes and Le Mont-Saint-Michel.

‘She’s also given us some details on his current role. He develops scenarios for how the Fleet Air Arm should respond to potential conflicts or humanitarian disasters. Is that the Navy’s aircraft division?’

Jameson nodded. ‘So he’s not working on a specific threat. That reduces the chances of him becoming a target. Strategic scenarios are just that: scenarios that may or may not come to pass. We need to check that with Rear Admiral Grey. Harry may have been working on something that he couldn’t talk to Karene about.’