Franklin had been personally assured by the mayor that Hembury had been well and truly reprimanded following their last meeting and was therefore concerned by this development. His initial instinct was to ignore the message or to call the chief of police but his curiosity got the better of him. Now that Vargas was dead, he needed to know how much Hembury knew.

“Get him on the line, Mary.”

Hembury had dropped Amanda off at the airport and was making his way to the station when the call came. Franklin’s voice boomed through on the Bluetooth car speaker, exuding an air of arrogance and contempt.

“Lieutenant, I really didn’t expect to hear from you again. I can only give you a minute.”

“Mr Franklin, thank you for returning my call. I’d like to meet with you and your son to discuss a very delicate matter and it needs to happen in person.”

Franklin laughed down the line. “Do you realise that you are talking about the future president? I think you are wasting my time, lieutenant.”

Hembury decided to play his ace. “Mr Franklin, it’s come to my attention that a major news agency is trying to gain access to some highly sensitive material that I believe was recently stolen from your family. I think it’s very much in your interest, and that of your son’s, that we meet as soon as possible, or the consequences could be grave.”

Franklin was clearly caught off balance and his contemptuous tone morphed into one of guarded concern. “Today is out of the question. My son is making a campaign speech in Phoenix this evening, so the earliest we could possibly meet with you is tomorrow morning. I suggest you come to my Pacific Heights residence at, say, ten.”

Before Hembury could confirm, the line went dead.

Franklin glanced at his watch. It was ten thirty, and, following Hembury’s call, he now had a great deal to sort out before he could even contemplate boarding his Cessna to Phoenix. With Vargas dead, he believed Hembury was the only person left alive who posed a real and current threat. He thought the news agency line was bullshit and a bluff – a ruse to secure a speculative meeting with him and his son. As far as he was concerned, it was a meeting Hembury would never live to make.

Franklin left the boardroom and returned to his office, where he retrieved a black MacBook from a locked drawer in his desk. He opened up the settings and clicked on the Tor browser, which allowed him to access the Dark Web while protecting his online identity.

He’d only been on it once before, two years earlier, when he’d used it to hire a local small-time anonymous hitman to take out a troublesome girlfriend who had outstayed her welcome.