‘Yes, I remember that.’

‘Well, I had my other car, the old Toyota, parked around the back in a cul-de-sac off another road. So I’d arrive, go straight through and out of the back via the alleyway to where the Toyota was, and drive it home. Then, at seven o’clock the next morning, I’d drive the Toyota back, go back in to the rear of the house, leave at the front, giving Harry a lingering French kiss on the front doorstep, walk to the garage, then drive my company car to the office, with Zayan already secreted in the back.’

‘Very clever.’

‘Well I mean, those private detectives were useless. Prisha had given them her suspicions, and they simply earned a lot of money confirming them. Why would they bother to use their initiative? Still, after that Harry, being his sensible self, thought it logistically safer to move house, and bring Zayan into the same block of flats.’

Kiara laughed, jingling her own car keys. ‘Look, it’s been great to catch up. I take it Harry has looked after you, for the arduous decade pretending to be his girlfriend?’

‘Yes. Still, it’s not over yet, is it? The marriage may not last very long, once Sonali finds out that Harry’s not interested, but a £27 million dowry is not to be sniffed at. It should keep the banks from the door for a while. We might have to sell and lease back the Slough factory, but it should be manageable.’

The two women said their goodbyes as they headed off to their respective parked cars.

Gillard waited until they had left, then eased himself out from behind the desk. It was nearly ten p.m. when he pulled into the Mount Browne car park, still with work to do.

The open-plan office from which CID operated was generally tidy, and at this time of night rarely populated with more than one or two officers. The chief constable, who possessed a well-ordered mind, emphasised that the crime scenes remained outside the building, with documents filed, evidence logged, data backed up, and desk drawers locked before anyone finished their shift.

The advice wasn’t always followed.

Any night-time intruder wanting to find where DCs Colin Hodges and Carl Hoskins worked from would have had about as much difficulty as finding the path of a tornado through an Indiana cornfield. Their end of the room was the upended trailer park of criminal investigation. Stacks of box files, discarded coffee cups, burger wrappers, and screens so smeary they were often blurred. There were two reasons why CID, despite insufficient space for all officers, had desperately resisted Rigby’s plans for hot-desking. Those reasons were easily summarised: a) Hodges b) Hoskins. Nobody wanted to play rubbish roulette with their own personal space.

Gillard spent five minutes going through Hoskins’ inbox and outbox, not finding what he was looking for. He knew from long experience that the details of Zayan Lal’s travel would not yet have found their way onto the Surrey Police computer system. Hoskins’ drawers were locked (good boy), but the key was Sellotaped to the underside of his keyboard (bad boy). In the top drawer he found a printouts of Lal’s travel documents, and the Border Force’s e-gate record, which did indeed prove his arrival at Heathrow on the stated day.