James first came across Sullivan while working with the National Crime Agency on a secondment. He spent several years trying to disrupt Sullivan’s illicit activities, but had failed to bring him down. In the process he made an enemy of the man, and received several death threats as a result. Then, two years ago, James had moved to Scotland Yard as a detective inspector with the Murder Investigation Team, and was eventually assigned to the Brendon Fox case.

Sullivan had fallen out with Fox after the night club owner banned him from entering his establishment. When their paths crossed early one evening at a pub in Wood Green, they ended up having a fist fight, after which Sullivan was overheard threatening to kill Fox.

In the early hours of the following morning Fox disappeared in suspicious circumstances after leaving his club. His car was abandoned at the roadside with the door open.

Soon afterwards, police unearthed traffic camera footage of Sullivan’s van driving past the club half an hour before Fox left the premises. Sullivan was arrested and Fox’s blood was found on his shirt. His defence was that the blood had got there during the punch up in the pub. And he claimed he was driving home from a night out when the traffic camera picked up his van near the club.

It was James who charged Andrew Sullivan with murder, after convincing the Crown Prosecution Service to make the arrest despite the absence of a corpse. Then, much to the delight of everyone on James’s team, the jury rejected Sullivan’s not guilty plea.

But five days ago the case was reopened, and Sullivan’s guilt put into question, when a prolific violent offender named Raymond Lynch confessed to killing Fox the night he vanished. He claimed he’d tried to rob the club owner as he was getting into his car. When Fox resisted, he stabbed him in the chest. He said he feared that he might have left traces of blood or DNA on his victim, so he put him into his car boot and drove to woods in Kent where he dumped the body.

Lynch had nothing to lose by confessing to a crime that James did not believe he committed. After all, he was already in prison serving a minimum of thirty years for beating to death a teenage girl in the weeks following Fox’s murder. And at the age of fifty-five, it was unlikely he would ever be released. So James and his team were convinced that the Sullivan family had persuaded Lynch to confess to killing Fox, likely in exchange for protection on the inside.

James returned from the kitchen with a glass and filled it with red wine after topping up Annie’s. He’d removed his suit jacket and shoes, and when he spoke his voice was stretched thin with tension.

‘You shouldn’t work yourself up into a frenzy over this, Annie,’ he said. ‘I honestly don’t think Sullivan poses a serious threat to us. He won’t want to put at risk his newly won freedom.’