From the corner of her eye she sees one of the partners in the foyer.

‘No, you won’t,’ she says, keeping her voice low. ‘I’ll ring you when I get to it.’

She pockets the paper as Frank Silvey walks to the lift. She means to follow, but stops. Can’t resist.

‘Did you see him?’

‘Who?’

‘Jimmy Sarraf? Did you see him in Calais?’

He nods.

Layla badly wants to ask how he was, but doesn’t. She can’t make junior partner with the Sarraf noose around her neck.

‘Don’t call me,’ she says. ‘I’ll call you.’

The soup ladle had found a new purpose scooping dead fish out of the tank. It was getting to Bish now, because he was following all the rules. Don’t overfeed. Make sure the tank is filtered and cleaned. He was even thinking of filling the tank with bottled water. Didn’t drink bottled water himself, but he’d do anything to keep a fish alive these days.

The phone rang and he saw it was Grazier. Bish had finally added him as a contact, because getting five phone calls a day really seemed to invite the inclusion.

‘Charlie Crombie?’ Grazier said. No salutation. Sometimes he’d come on the line mid-sentence.

‘Hmm?’ Bish concentrated on keeping the fish in the ladle as he took it to the bathroom for its final rites.

‘I’m presuming that name rings a bell?’

‘Responsible for Violette Zidane’s less than pure reputation with our tabloid-reading friends.’

‘We believe there’s more,’ Grazier said.

Bish thought it best not to flush the fish down the toilet in case Grazier drew the wrong conclusion.

‘Why?’

‘He beat up that kid from Guildford. Tried to do it incognito, wearing a Chelsea beanie. Apparently Crombie’s a Tottenham fan.’

‘Kennington?’ Bish asked.

‘That’s right. I’ve spoken to the chief constable of the Surrey police and she’ll make sure the Guildford lot are expecting you. The other family’s pressing charges.’

Of all the parents he had met at the campground the Kenningtons were the only ones who hadn’t responded to his calls. They’d been the big mouths with the press. And Bish didn’t know who he liked least, Crombie or Kennington.

‘I’m not a copper here, Grazier. So what the hell am I doing? Either arrange for me to go back to work or stop sending me off to do Elliot’s.’

‘We’ve got nothing to do with the Met. You answer to the Home Secretary for the time being, Ortley. She’s not too happy with the way that nutter Gorman handled things and she’s less than impressed that the Foreign Minister, our Intelligence, and French Intelligence are revealing nothing.’

‘Because it didn’t happen here?’

‘That’s what they’re telling us. To butt out. But the Home Secretary has to answer to people here, and the way she sees it, the kids on that bus are ours. Anything they get up to on home ground has to be investigated.’

‘And who am I down in Surrey?’ Bish asked.