‘Not famous for anything much, apart from beaches and tax avoidance. Interesting, though.’

‘Okay, keep digging.’

He called Woolf, who told him to stay put and keep watch for anyone coming or going. The rain began to come down harder. He was about ready to pack up and leave, when the roller door started to move and the black people-carrier pulled out. Three men – two his age, one older – who could all have been his ‘brothers’ were on board.

He gave them a minute to clear the street, then returned to the garage with a parcel he had prepared and labelled with the address. He hammered on the door good and hard, shouting that he had a package needing a signature. Then he held open the letterbox and listened. The only sound was a low, intermittent murmur, which could have been a radio. He tried the camera probe again, and saw some large white tubs and cardboard packaging.

His phone buzzed.

Cindy was almost hyperventilating. ‘Are you ready for this?’

‘Go on.’

‘The account the money came from for the rent, the one in the Virgin Islands, is held by a company called Excelsior, described as an international courier company, a subsidiary of another firm that’s an agency for offshore contractors – they supply infrastructure and personnel to the oil and gas industry. I got a contact at Vauxhall Cross to see if they could dig any further into their dealings. They couldn’t come up with any names of the board or employees or anything, but elsewhere in the account details there was a big fat debit: one million two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. It’s from a numbered account but it has a forwarding address in Houston.’

Rafiq was excited now too. ‘Oryxis?’

‘No! Better than that. Remember Brandeis’s slide of Zuabi’s house? All innocent-looking and suburban?’

‘No shit!’

‘Yes shit. That’s the forwarding address!’

‘Mother of fuck.’

Chapter 82

82

Bob Heron, the chief constable of Hertfordshire Police was not in the habit of getting personal calls from the home secretary, and certainly not at two a.m.

At first he assumed it was someone’s idea of a hoax, a bloody unfunny one. But something about Sarah Garvey’s free use of expletives – to the effect that he’d better sit the fuck up and pay fucking attention NOW – suggested this was the real thing.

‘Yes, ma’am. I completely understand, ma’am. Consider it done.’

In any other circumstances he would have been inclined to have a quiet word with the Met commissioner about this, but the home secretary had made it very clear that his promotion prospects – and Herts, let’s face it, was a bit of a backwater – were directly connected to his ability to keep this one to himself and just get it done.