The dark man pulled her up with gentle force and for a moment she hesitated, pulling away. He said something to her, taking her chin in his hand and making her look at him. Her make-up was streaming down her face in rivulets as she gazed at him, and she seemed to be listening. Eventually she stopped resisting and let herself sink into him, almost gratefully, her face in his shoulder as he guided her towards the big car like a docile child, ensuring she didn’t fall despite stumbling several times.

The girl in front of me had finally pocketed her 10 Rothmans. ‘Blimey,’ she said, pulling her beanie down protectively, ready for the downpour. ‘You don’t see that every day.’

‘You can say that again. Bloody foreigners. Just the milk?’ My cashier held her hand out. ‘Eighty-four pence, please.’

When I looked again, the girl like a maddened mermaid was being swallowed by the Range Rover. The dark man shut the door behind her and turned with a graceful movement to his audience in the kiosk. He smiled politely, bowed his head to us in a courtly gesture. Instinctively I stepped back.

He climbed into the Porsche. With a screech of tyres the Sweeney would have been proud of, both vehicles were quickly swallowed up by the night.

And then I went home, put the milk in the fridge, checked the children, fed the cat and finally went to bed alone again, I found that the woman’s image was imprinted on the back of my lids. And even as I fell into sleep, I couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that the second man, the man called Ash, had been less guiding her towards the vehicle than forcing her.

And there was something else, something deeper down, something clicking, whirring into place, like the levers on a deadlock that are not quite true yet. Images from the day: the mysterious Kattan, the MP’s wife so outraged, James, all newly tense. These images fought something I couldn’t quite access, a memory buried deep. A memory fighting to the surface.

Chapter Three
GLOUCESTERSHIRE, MARCH 2008

The morning after I’d tried to help the wailing girl at the garage, I dropped the twins at nursery and drove homewards through the green Cotswold lanes, fighting a sudden longing for a cigarette. Xavier was still waiting to hear from me; and Lord Higham’s face was staring at me impassively from the morning paper on the passenger seat. Images I’d blocked for years flickered remorselessly through my head until I had to pull onto a farm track. The rain had finally stopped during the night and the hedgerow sparkled with moisture, but I felt strangely bleak. I’d always known it was a risk coming here. It was too close for comfort; it always had been.