There was an awed silence. Halford fiddled with his cap, lying in front of him on the desk. ‘Are you suggesting that we’re covering something up?’

‘Perish the thought, Commissioner. I’m just putting it out there that perhaps the shooter intended to make the hit look like it was one of your chaps.’

There was another ripple of surprise from round the table. Garvey knew that, not for the first time, she was out on a limb. She had to be sure of her facts. ‘Since the shooting took place less than four minutes after the victim’s car came to a stop, it’s unlikely that the assailant was tailing him and was most probably lying in wait. So, this was in all likelihood a carefully planned assassination by a professional who had recced the location and chosen his position in advance, knowing the target would come to a halt right where his weapon was aimed. This killing ground was carefully chosen.’

Clements’s triumph was complete, but he made sure his expression remained grave.

Halford’s eyes bulged. ‘And exactly how did you deduce that?’

As soon as he spoke it was clear he wished he hadn’t. The home secretary was not known for her great intellect but she more than made up for it with her grasp of detail.

‘Do you know what kind of car Suleiman was travelling in?’

‘I don’t think that’s—’

‘Correct. It wasn’t a car, it was a van – and since it was parked facing away from the direction of the shots, the gunman needed Suleiman out of the vehicle to get a clean shot. So you might ask yourself if the shooter also expected your lot to be there to get his man into the open for him.’

‘Home Secretary, I really think that airing untested theories in this forum is unwise.’

‘Why?’ She looked round the room. ‘Since you’re not telling us anything, what’s going to leak? All I’m asking is, you look closely at the possibility that this was no drug shooting but a carefully planned assassination in which the Metropolitan Police appear to have been – no doubt unwittingly – complicit. What if the shooter wanted your men there to make it look like they did it? Where did your team get the information that Suleiman and his driver were supposedly armed? Surely it’s the source of that intelligence which might lead you to whoever lured both Suleiman and your men to the site, where they were made to look like complete pricks.’

She stared at Halford, who looked as though his balls had shrunk to the size of acorns. Sweat was spreading around his high-riding collar. He made one last attempt to regain some kind of authority. ‘Home Secretary, I completely fail to see what value there is in pursuing this unwarranted line of interrogation. The whole point of COBRA—’