Sarah took a moment to think. The news was a shock. It also led to an inevitable question.

‘But if the victims weren’t part of your team, why were they following him?’

‘Because they thought he might lead them to some very serious players on the Continent. Turns out that while Penfold was inside he got very chummy with a guy called Barry Ireland.’

‘The gangster?’ Sarah had heard the name. Few in her profession had not. ‘That’s a dangerous connection.’

‘But also a profitable one. Ireland has six years left to serve, but he’s still under investigation for some serious stuff. Things that could turn that six years into the rest of his life. First among them is the Bond Street Jewellery Massacre.’

‘Shit.’

There was no more appropriate a response. The Bond Street Jewellery Massacre was legendary. A robbery of three million pounds worth of cut diamonds in which every employee of the jeweller lost their life. Six men and women, all executed in brutal style. No one had ever been charged with the crime and no diamonds had ever been recovered.

‘You think Ireland was behind it?’ Sarah asked.

‘It’s not that I think it,’ Levy replied. ‘It’s that the National Crime Agency thinks it. Or that they know it, to be more accurate.’

‘Well if they know Ireland was involved why don’t they arrest him?’

‘Because it’s not that simple. It’s one thing for the NCA to know what’s happened. It’s something else entirely for them to prove it. They need admissible evidence, which is why they were following Penfold.’

‘But how could Penfold have been involved? He was in prison when Bond Street happened.’

‘He wasn’t involved. But the NCA knew how tight he’d become with Ireland inside. They’ve got informants everywhere and bugs all over the place, including in prison. So they knew Ireland had made a deal with Penfold. That Penfold would collect half the diamonds from one of Ireland’s old team, and that he would take them across to Holland. To where Ireland still has an operation. The NCA knew that was happening, so they were following Penfold. To catch him at Ireland’s place in Amsterdam, diamonds in hand. Which would connect Ireland to the robbery.’

‘And what was Penfold getting out of it?’

‘The deal was five hundred thousand pounds. According to the prison bug, anyway.’

‘The prison bug? So all this was recorded?’

‘It was. For all the use that turned out to be.’

Levy shook her head at her own comment. Sarah understood why. It was a peculiarity of English law that recordings from covertly placed bugs are generally inadmissible as evidence. Instead the police use them for intelligence gathering, allowing them to catch criminals in the act. Often it worked. But sometimes it could go wrong.

Today, it seemed, was sometimes.

Levy took another mouthful of her drink. Her glass was almost done.

‘Anyway, that was the agreement. Now it looks like Penfold went off script. The NCA raided Ireland’s associate today. The guy who had been holding the diamonds. They found him beaten to death in his flat – his boyfriend, too – and all the diamonds gone. The theory right now is that five hundred thousand wasn’t enough for Penfold. The NCA didn’t realise it but he wasn’t leading them to Ireland’s men. He was planning to sell the entire diamond stash for himself.’