Claire won her bet with herself. The only person in reception was in his early twenties, had short hair, meticulously parted, thick glasses and a worn suit. On his lap was a hefty silver box, like that used by photographers. She walked over and said: ‘Dr Chris Steele? I’m DI Mulholland.’

The man look confused. ‘No, I’m Brian Hutton, emergency bollard replacement…’

Claire became aware of a figure at her shoulder, and turned. ‘I’m Chris,’ said a woman in her late thirties. ‘I was in the loo,’ she said, faced with Claire’s perplexed expression. Dr Steele looked every inch the high-flying businesswoman, power dressed in houndstooth skirt and square shouldered jacket, heels and understated pearl earrings. Her eyes were feline and pale green.

Claire made her apologies to the bollard man and led Steele upstairs, where they were joined by Alison Rigby, dressed down in white blouse and black slacks, who ushered them into a secure but rather gloomy windowless conference room. Already seated there were DCS Raj Otara and Rob Townsend. Claire was surprised that everyone but her seemed to know this was happening. Indeed, the chief constable seem to be visibly excited by the presence of a spook, especially a glamorous female one. Another glass ceiling smashed, perhaps.

‘There are now three mobile phones we need you to look at,’ Otara said. ‘The first, which we already told you about, was used to leave a message from a bus stop in Westmeare yesterday afternoon. The second was used by the suspect to ring his former girlfriend Ellen Bramley on a number of occasions in the last few months. That device has been switched off for two weeks. The third, which we’ve only heard about an hour ago, is an iPhone belonging to Vanessa Perry, who is believed to have been assisting the suspect, Kyle Halliday, evade capture. None of the devices are on at the moment.’

Dr Steele nodded. ‘We’ve identified device one as a cheap Samsung running Android. The exact technical spec is here.’ She passed across to Otara a technical looking sheet, which he then passed on to Townsend. ‘Let me get HQ to examine the others. What exactly are your requirements for the first device?’

‘Basically we need it turned on, and the GPS activated in order to locate it,’ Otara said. ‘We’ve already pre-set a monitoring system on the switch, so should get an identifiable location in less than ten seconds. The suspect has at least one and possibly two women hostage, one of them the wife of a serving officer, who he is threatening to kill at five p.m. today.’

‘You can see why we wanted you involved,’ Rigby said, smiling.

‘Absolutely,’ said Steele. ‘We can get video too on the Android device, which should allow us to hear what is going on, even if the phone is in a pocket. If you need to make contact with the kidnapper I can also remotely turn on the speakerphone. That I’m sure will give him quite a shock.’