Hoskins hung up. It was too tempting. He had debts, he needed a new car, the flat needed sprucing up. But he understood that once you started down that route there was no end to it. You were never coming back to the path of righteousness. Once a bent cop, always a bent cop.

Hoskins felt the familiar rumblings of hunger. All he could think of was the call of chips, preferably scaldingly hot, crispy and doused with vinegar, in the reassuring warmth of white crackly paper. What he had in front of him was a plastic box with the remains of a fruit salad, made for him by his daughter. Orange, grapes, and a banana now going black. He didn’t fancy it, and in his head fought the temptation to slip out for chips. He took a deep breath, unclipped the lid of the box, and inhaled the sweet aroma of the fruit. With a plastic spoon he shovelled in the various pieces, then drained the syrup by holding the corner of the box above his mouth.

Feeling a little virtuous now, he started the process of making the traces that Gillard requested. But then he added an extra one. The registration number of his former brother-in-law’s Nissan. It would be good to know how far and wide Ray Slater had been roaming. Hoskins had already made two fundamental decisions that night, both about choosing the right path: one for his health, and another on cutting links with his brother-in-law. And he felt good about both of them, as if he’d somehow started a new life.

The three a.m. incident room meeting was short and to the point. Gillard was joined by Detective Constables Rainy Macintosh and Carl Hoskins, and on Zoom by Shireen Corey Williams, still self-isolating. Hoskins, having worked the previous nightshift, was due to finish in an hour and presented the details of the ANPR searches he had done.

‘There is one very important camera, on the back of an overhead gantry, which pretty much catches anyone coming off the M25,’ he said. ‘And it’s done a good job.’