‘Her reaction seems genuine enough,’ he said, trying the words out to see how they sounded to himself more than anything.

Georgie looked around nervously. ‘Poor Simeon. I just can’t comprehend it. What do we do now?’

Priest scratched his chin, pained. Then came to a decision.

‘Report back to Okoro and tell him to make a paper application for a restricted reporting order and a longer adjournment to be heard on Monday morning. Tell him the restriction on reporting is particularly important. A media frenzy isn’t going to help.’

‘Oh, come on, Charlie. The first thing she’ll do is post a picture of the body on Twitter. She’s probably phoning in the headline right now.’

Priest looked over. Fox was strutting up and down the pavement speaking into her phone. An old man walking a dog passed her and received an angry glare after she stumbled into him.

He waited and took a moment to think. The elephant in the room right now is the ‘m’ word. Nobody stuffed into the rear of a hatchback died from natural causes. But the Elias Foundation, as desperate as they are, surely aren’t capable of . . .

He thought about Simeon Ali. A man he had only met a few times. A man who had seemed sincere – a quiet and thoughtful individual who had displayed an air of sadness in the slow and mechanical way he spoke, the long pauses between statements as he gathered his thoughts. A man who knew right from wrong, but never wanted or asked for any of this.

Priest clenched his fist.

A man who deserved so much more than this undignified end. An unnerving thought struck Priest. I wonder how much of this is my fault?

‘She’ll do whatever she’s going to do, Georgie,’ said Priest in the end. ‘Go and deliver the news to Okoro but tell him not to pull the plug on the trial. Simeon might be dead, but we’re not. We’re going to find out what happened to him and if that means tearing the Elias Foundation apart from the inside then that’s what we’re going to do.’

Georgie nodded. He noticed a tear in her eye – he hoped she would be OK. It was a curse of her intellectual maturity: sometimes he forgot she was only twenty-five, and whereas a body in the boot of a car wasn’t exactly an everyday occurrence for him, he did at least have ten years’ experience of being a CID officer in a major crime unit to draw upon.

So Priest offered her the most encouraging and positive gesture he could think of, which turned out to be a rather lame pat on the shoulder followed by the words: ‘Chin up.’ Oh, very good, Nelson. Another rousing speech.

‘What are you going to do?’ she asked, offering him the courtesy of a smile as he took his hand away.