The detective approached cautiously, his warrant card held out ahead of him. ‘Is this your car, madam?’

‘No,’ she said, folding her arms and leaning against it.

‘Whose is it, may I ask?’

‘It’s Deepak’s. It’s all right, he said I could borrow it.’ Gillard peered into the vehicle, and opened the rear passenger door to check there was no one else within. He then asked her to recite the number plate, which she could not. He asked her name and address.

‘I’m Victoria Carlton, and I’m his girlfriend. I was just going to the shops—’

‘—at 97 miles per hour?’

‘I’d run out of milk,’ she said, with a more than a hint of irritation in her voice.

‘You must be very thirsty, madam,’ Gillard said. ‘Or are you an amateur racing driver?’

‘What are you talking about? I wasn’t speeding. I just pulled out of my own road a minute ago.’ She pointed behind her, then gave her address, which was on the side road from which she had pulled out.

‘So you deny that you drove this vehicle from Mr Tripathi’s house half an hour ago?’

‘Absolutely. He just drove over to me, and rang me—’

‘Deepak just drove to your house?’

‘Yes. I was doing some gardening, but he asked me to just drive down to Hersham to get some milk.’

‘And that was just a minute ago?’ Gillard realised the company director had made a monkey out of him.

‘Yes.’

‘So where is he now?’

‘He’s probably at my house. Why? What’s he done?’

Gillard didn’t answer the question, but called in to control the news that Deepak was not in the car and had given them the slip. He watched the woman lock the Bentley, then shepherded her into the Vauxhall, and drove off to her home, which turned out to be the only normal-sized three-bedroom semi in the street.

‘Oh,’ she said, as they pulled up outside.

‘What?’

‘He must have taken my car. It’s not here.’

Gillard had suspected something like this. ‘Quick, what’s the registration number?’

She looked at him in amazement. ‘I don’t know, he’s only just given it me. It’s white—’

‘Make? Model?’ He was starting to lose patience with her.

She just stared back. ‘I’m sorry, my mind has just gone blank. I think it’s a Honda. Japanese anyway.’

‘Do you have the registration documents or any paperwork in the house?’ Claire asked, walking her towards her the front door. When she got there, the woman patted her pockets, and then looked at the detectives. ‘Oh, sorry, I think I left my house keys in the Bentley.’

Gillard gave her the kind of stare that would melt steel. With every moment, Deepak was getting further away.

‘Where’s your phone?’

She extracted a state-of-the-art, gold iPhone. ‘Be careful with it. It was a present,’ she said, proudly, offering it to him.

‘Please ring him, now,’ he said.

Victoria was genuinely trembling now, but still hadn’t given up playing for time. She claimed to have forgotten her PIN. ‘I’m so sorry, this is all such a shock, my mind is just a blank.’ She tried to share a self-deprecatory laugh with them, but the detectives weren’t in the mood. It took a full three minutes before she was finally able to access the phone and pull up Deepak’s number, giving the impression of someone who’d never used a smartphone before. She stabbed her finger at the number and waited, with the phone to her ear. ‘It’s switched off,’ she said brightly, offering the phone to him. ‘Would you like to leave him a message?’