The café was too small to contain more than a long bar and a few stools. George Marlow was sitting at the far end, drinking cappuccino.

The only other customer got up and left. Marlow approached the man behind the bar.

“Can I have the keys, Stav?”

Stavros pulled a cardboard box from beneath the bar. “Been away, have you, John? Haven’t seen you for a long time.”

“Yeah. Mum was taken bad.” Marlow held his hand out for the keys. “What’s the damage?”

From across the street it wasn’t possible to see the object that had been passed to George Marlow, but when he opened his wallet Muddyman could see him counting out ten-pound notes.

Moyra Henson had changed tubes twice, doubling back on herself, then she hurried onto a Central line train. Oakhill was certain that she had no idea he was tailing her.

He was four or five bodies behind her as she went up the escalator and emerged at Oxford Circus. Keeping well back, he radioed in for back-up, fast; Oxford Street was packed with shoppers and Moyra was moving like the clappers. He stayed on her tail in and out of Richard Shops, then across the road to Saxone, back again to another shoe shop, then on up the street to Next.

His back-up arrived; a plain-clothes WPC to take over the close tail, plus a patrol car. The WPC followed Moyra in and out of shops as far as Wardour Street, where she entered a shopping mall. The driver of the patrol car and the uniformed officer took up their positions near the exits. Oakhill kept about fifty yards back from Henson, while the WPC peered into windows and watched Moyra try on shoes from a few feet away.

The patrol car was parked a good distance from the café and Muddyman, directly across the road, kept the radio contact going, informing Tennison that it looked as though the suspect was on the move again.

“Yeah, he’s buttoning up his raincoat. Shit! He’s sat down again. He’s having another bloody coffee!”

Tennison’s foot was still tapping and she was chain-smoking, building up a real fug in the car.

A message started coming through from Jones. “Would you believe Moyra Henson sometimes works from this booth in Covent Garden, and she was working here in January. An assistant at the Floral Street Health Club told me she directed Karen here. The woman who runs it can’t say if Karen had had her nails done here or not, but she says that when Henson was working here Marlow used to pick her up! Moyra could have done Karen’s nails, and if he saw her, knew her name . . .”

DC Jones was standing in the middle of a breakdancing troupe, battling to make himself heard. The steel girders above the stalls distorted the radio waves.

“How long does this Noo-Nail treatment take?” Tennison’s voice asked.