I’d spent the three days before coming up from London – and the entire drive out to see Ross Perry – wondering if what we were doing here qualified as necessary.

In the end, I’d come anyway.

He got up and walked towards me. In the time since he’d moved to Devon, he’d been working on a fishing trawler, being paid cash in hand to go out into the English Channel casting for hake, cod and herring. It had made him slender, sinewy, a stark contrast to how he’d looked before he’d fooled the world into thinking he was dead. Back then, he’d been a cop; even further back, he’d been a good one. He’d worked murders at the Met for nearly two decades, overweight and restless, and had existed on bad food and adrenalin. For a while, towards the end, booze had crept in too. He was in his early fifties now, his red hair shaved off, his face covered by a thick beard, but it was hard to say if he looked older or younger: physically, he was in better condition, but his face was marked by more lines than ever, cut into him like nicks from a blade. It gave him the weary look of someone permanently scarred by their history.

‘Sounds like you had a relaxing trip up,’ he said as we shook hands. He’d called me twice on the hotel’s payphone to find out where I was; the second time I’d been sitting in a four-mile tailback. He picked up his machine coffee and rocked it towards me in a cheers motion: ‘Still, after all this time, at least we get to meet somewhere really glamorous.’

I smiled and then looked through the curtain to the empty car park. Rain continued to hammer against the ground – a fierce, relentless drumbeat.

‘Did you get a taxi here yesterday?’ I asked him.

‘Yeah, from the station at Knaresborough.’ He took a sip from his coffee, his eyes scanning the foyer over the rim of the cup, and then – very quietly, his voice deliberately dialled down – he said, ‘I checked in at three yesterday and then sat at the window in my room for the entire evening, watching. There were only two other people staying here last night, and they’ve both already left. No one’s checked in this afternoon. There are four cars around the back, all belonging to staff, including her.’ He gestured to the woman at the front desk. ‘She’s the most unresponsive person I’ve ever met. Literally doesn’t give a shit who comes and goes because she’s too busy playing solitaire on her computer. It’s dead here. I’ll be fine.’

I nodded, but checked the car park again anyway.

‘Have they closed all the supermarkets in London, Raker?’

I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, you’re looking lean.’