‘Your offer is only two thirds of what you offered two years ago,’ Shireen said.

Lam shrugged and spread his arms. ‘As I think you know, the company is quite simply not worth as much as it was previously. If somebody else wants to offer more that’s entirely up to them.’

‘But the deadline you gave doesn’t allow enough time for a rival bidder to do the due diligence on this hole in the accounts.’

Lam grinned. ‘That’s business. I’m leveraging my knowledge of the situation. Harry Roy isn’t enough of a risk taker to gamble the company on getting a higher offer once mine expires.’ He checked his watch. ‘The market closed ten minutes ago, at 4.30 p.m. The deadline for accepting the bid is noon on Thursday. That gives Empire of Spice just thirty-six hours to save themselves. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have urgent work that calls me.’

Gillard checked his watch, and nodded at Shireen. ‘Just one final thing,’ Gillard said, leaning forward and picking up Lam’s phone. ‘We have a warrant to seize all of your personal electronic devices.’

‘What? Not today, of all days!’ Lam exclaimed.

Shireen passed across photocopies of the warrant, one to each lawyer. ‘We’re also going to take a cheek swab, to see exactly where your DNA turns up.’

At that moment, the door to the meeting room opened and five uniformed officers from the City of London Police stepped inside, their hands full of clear plastic evidence bags.

Chapter 17

Gillard got back to the incident room at Mount Browne two hours later, and spotted a disconsolate Colin Hodges browsing eBay on his PC.

‘Not got any work to do, Colin?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Clearly embarrassed at being caught, the detective minimised the screen. Underneath it was some dashcam footage. ‘I’ve been trying to find out if we can get any further leads on the Toyota after it got into Esher on the Sunday. Not getting anywhere, actually.’

‘What about at the other end of the journey? We’ve got the ANPR cameras on the roadworks on the way into Esher. Can you call up those details again please?’

Hodges launched the interface with the speed camera system, and called up the records which showed each of the images. ‘Those three cameras are only temporary, in fact I think they have already been removed now the roadworks are finished.’

‘So it was an average speed checker,’ Gillard said. ‘Was he speeding?’

Hodges shook his head. ‘System didn’t flag it up, so no.’

‘We can get the actual speed though, can’t we?’

Hodges turned to look at his superior officer. ‘If you want. Can’t see what for, mind.’

‘Indulge me.’

Hodges’ fat fingers moved across the keys with practised dexterity. ‘There you go.’ The figure in the data box was 26.4 mph. ‘Ah, bloody system’s got a fault. He couldn’t be going that slowly.’ The screen showed that the roadworks were 8.9 miles long, and he took 19 minutes 43 seconds between the start and finish cameras.