‘Normally, six out of ten. But this, what you’re telling me about Rollason, well it’s incredible. Same day, and such a high-profile offender, with a new identity. I would say this is unprecedented. Inside job, you’d have to say. It’s usually a screw. There’s no end of them in AVENGE.’

‘That’s the way I’m leaning too,’ Gillard said. ‘I take it you have no intelligence about branches of AVENGE in Surrey?’

‘Nope.’

As they were talking, an email popped up on Gillard’s mobile.

‘Ah, speak of the devil, AVENGE has got back to me,’ Gillard told D’Angelo. ‘They claim they don’t know anything about it.’

‘Not surprised,’ he responded. ‘Whoever did it probably wouldn’t want the organisers officially involved.’

A minute later another email came through, about the trace on Rollason’s phone. It showed that the AVENGE text had been sent from Walton-on-Thames. The phone had been on for less than a minute. Gillard passed on the news to D’Angelo.

He sighed. ‘Well, given who it is they’ve abducted I think they would kill him. You’ll be looking for a body pretty soon.’

‘Thanks. I’ll add it to my collection,’ Gillard said and hung up.

It was almost nine p.m. Gillard, sitting in his office, rubbed his face in exasperation. D’Angelo had phoned around for him, and a whole series of emails from around the country were pouring into his in-box with bits and pieces of information about AVENGE. None of it amounted to very much. D’Angelo had agreed that West Mercia police would haul in the three Brummies who had been collared in the past for this kind of caper, but having looked at the videos on the website Gillard was far from convinced that they were responsible for something as crisply executed as this.

But who was? Perhaps this amorphous vigilante organisation had attracted new, more professional types, operating as freelancers. The trouble was it could be anybody. He looked again at the names of various prison officers who had been linked to AVENGE. There wasn’t anybody at Spring Hill, but there was one at HMP Wakefield where Rollason had served most of the last six years of his sentence. He couldn’t imagine getting a quick result by questioning him.

His gut told him that this was a local operation. Someone who knew Rollason was at Spring Hill. He wanted to bounce some ideas off the Special Branch officer. He walked upstairs and found DI Morgan in his office, on the phone. He waited out the call and then asked: ‘Graham, I’m increasingly convinced this is an inside job. It’s too damn quick for anything else.’