“Danvers believes he was, and that it was because he functioned as the traffickers’ man on the inside. These high-powered criminal enterprises don’t get very far without insiders, and they create corruption on as wide a scale as they can. One or two upper-echelon traffickers have managed to avoid capture this past year or two, and the most obvious explanation seems that they were warned in advance. Danvers thinks Hawkins was on their payroll and something went wrong. Mind you, he’s got no evidence to back this up. Hence his interest in the girl.”

“And you?”

“I’m not entirely convinced. Hawkins may simply have got too close to Tadić or his organization for their comfort.”

“And they sent Keane to kill him?”

“Why not?”

“Because Keane’s a forger, not a hit man. Surely they’ve got people they can use for jobs like Hawkins’s?”

“Of course. But Keane likes to set fires. Maybe they wanted a bit of variety? Maybe Keane wanted the job? Maybe it was his way of proving something to them? After all, he set fire to a narrowboat and to your house up here in Eastvale. It’s clearly a hobby of his.”

“Maybe,” said Banks.

“And a fire has the advantage of pretty much destroying any evidence there might have been—paper trails, that sort of thing.”

“It’s possible.”

“We have the photograph of Tadić with Keane, and maybe we also have Hawkins either on Tadić’s tail or on his payroll, depending on which theory you believe. Either way, he could have become a liability. So they set the fireman on him. Maybe Tadić’s usual killer was on another job, out of the country, in jail, whatever, and he used the best means he could find to hand.”

“Where do you think Zelda fits in with all this?”

“I don’t know,” said Burgess. “Given her history, you have to assume she might have come across Tadić at some point or other. How long has she been out of the game?”

“She wasn’t in the game,” snapped Banks.

“Sorry. That’s not what I meant. Wrong choice of words. Don’t be so sensitive. She’s been over here about four years, right?”

“I think so,” said Banks. “Ray met her about three years ago in London, and she went to live with him first in Cornwall, then up here. I’m not sure how long she’d been in London before they met. She had been working as a pavement artist down there and was apparently a bit of a ragamuffin back then, so maybe not so long.”

“Let’s say she’s been free four years, then,” said Burgess. “The Tadić brothers have certainly been in the business much longer than that. Where’s she from?”

“Moldova.”