‘Of course, they must have been connected by one thing,’ she said, turning away to get more glasses from the dishwasher, and releasing a huge cloud of steam into the air. ‘That is, whoever killed them, must have known them both.’

Gillard smiled and ordered a half pint of Kelham Island bitter. He recalled that the Sheffield-based brewery had itself been flooded in the past. She offered him a pint, on the house, but he demurred. He wasn’t on duty, but a recognisable police officer can only be seen to down minimal levels of alcohol if he is to retain the respect of the public.

The landlady, doggedly pursuing her theme, said: ‘Of course, he’d have to be quite an age to have killed one of them, wouldn’t he? She’s been missing for decades. Unless he was working with someone else.’

The detective looked at her. ‘How’s the repair work going?’

She clicked her teeth and sighed, clearly a practised expression. ‘Hasn’t started. Bloody insurers won’t get a loss adjuster down here for a week. Got more important things to do supposedly. Luckily, the cellar didn’t flood.’ He let her trot out the various frustrating details of trying to put right what nature had done wrong, knowing that a sympathetic ear is in itself a small piece of catharsis.

After twenty minutes, thoroughly warmed by the heat and the food, he bade her farewell, and walked out to the car park. Just as he did so a text came through from Claire to say that the package in the car park had been detonated with a controlled explosion, and unfortunately Sam’s phone had been destroyed in the process.

‘Idiots!’ he yelled at the phone. They weren’t supposed to do that. They needed the SIM card to find out if the texts had been set in advance. That information was probably lost for good now. He got into the car and sat head in hands, wondering what he could do. Then his phone rang. It was the head of the anti-kidnap unit. He wanted to see Gillard ASAP and was on his way to meet him.

Gillard sat in the front passenger seat of an unmarked Ford Galaxy in the car park of the Jolly Boatman, watching the rain patter down on the windscreen. In the driver’s seat was Detective Chief Superintendent Rajinder Otara, a veteran of anti-terrorism operations and an experienced hostage negotiator. Over the last forty minutes, Gillard had told the Sikh officer everything that he knew about the abduction and murder of Beatrice Ulbricht, his near-death experience with an olive green Mitsubishi Warrior, and the abduction of his wife.

Otara had listened carefully. ‘We’ve already had a chance to re-examine the CCTV footage from the train and the platforms, the cell site analysis of the various mobile phones, as well as your fitness tracker. We’ve been impressed, actually, by the resourcefulness of many of your team, including you.’

‘Thank you.’

‘We’re expecting the hostage taker to contact you or Surrey Police again, to try to twist the knife a little. To that end, the first thing we did last night was to put a full real-time monitoring system in place on your home and work phones and mobiles, as well as your email. We should get us an almost immediate trace on the location of any caller. It’s not foolproof, of course. It’s clear that you are up against at least one perpetrator who has advanced technical skills. And at least one, possibly the same one, who has a grudge against you.’