‘You got my message, Mr Halliday,’ she said, with faux formality.

‘Call me Kyle,’ he said, inviting her in. ‘Coffee?’

‘Let me help,’ she said. They moved around the kitchen together, an awkward pas de deux of kettles and mugs, and jars of instant. The proximity was quite unsettling, in a good way. She noticed he was looking at her in the same way he had on her first visit, his knowing hazel eyes roaming around her face. Suddenly they were in each other’s arms, kissing fiercely, his hands on the back of her head. He plucked off her clip-on tie and threw it aside.

‘You’ve got a nerve,’ she said. ‘And I’ve got a boyfriend.’

‘And I’ve got a wife.’ Halliday checked his watch. ‘Back at five. We’ve got two hours.’ His large hands skated down the front of her tunic, undoing buttons.

Lynne blinked. She couldn’t quite believe that she was going to do this, but she knew there was a reason why she had left her stab vest with its built-in bodycam in the car.

‘I wanted you the first time I saw you,’ she whispered.

‘And I wanted you.’ He put the crutch aside and effortlessly lifted her onto the kitchen counter. He then slid one arm up her skirt.

‘I’m not wearing any.’ She grinned. ‘Saves time.’

Two hours later Research Intelligence Officer Rob Townsend and DCI Gillard sat hunched together around a screen in the surveillance suite at Mount Browne’s forensic unit. They were looking at a Google map of the position of the Teikin Athlo-Watch, Gillard’s fitness tracker that he had tossed into the back of the Warrior. A flashing red dot showed it was currently at an industrial site on the edge of Gosport in Hampshire. It hadn’t moved in eighteen hours.

‘What is that place?’ Gillard asked.

‘It’s an aggregate yard, full of big quarry lorries. I’ve rung them up and nobody at the site has seen the green Warrior. There’s a patrol car on its way to double-check.’

‘Okay, good work. Let’s go back and look at the trace from start to finish.’

Townsend rewound the data feed. It had taken more than twenty-four hours to get the Korean manufacturer’s legal consent to download the Teikin’s GPS trace from the head office in Seoul. That delay was frustrating because, unlike cell site analysis for mobile phones, the GPS trace was very nearly real-time. The first few minutes of the route were from Gillard’s home to the point of the hit-and-run. Soon after, with the watch now in the assailant’s vehicle, the dot started moving at speed down the winding road, over the M25 heading south. The trace joined the A25 south of Bletchingley and started heading west, through Redhill and towards Guildford. That matched the ANPR route that Townsend had tracked the day before, based on Gillard’s accurate recall of the number plate, relayed as he was on his way to hospital. ANPR was great, but the coverage was patchy, and the Warrior had disappeared from the A25 at some point between Redhill and Guildford. The GPS at least would show them exactly where.