Simon was on the phone to Sam Kombothekra when he saw Aidan Seed’s car turn the corner from Demesne Avenue on to the Rawndesley Road. Seed was driving it, and he seemed to be alone. ‘Gotta go,’ Simon said curtly, tossing his mobile on to the passenger seat. He hadn’t been sure if Seed would make his trip on foot or in the dusty black Volvo estate that had been parked at a forty-five degree angle to the side of the workshop.

‘You’re not planning to wait, are you?’ Charlie had said. ‘He’s going nowhere. He lied to get rid of us.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Simon. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘You’ll see,’ she’d corrected him. ‘I’ve got to get back to my enthralling questionnaire. Give me a ring if something happens.’

Simon was pleased Seed had opted to drive wherever he was going. It was easier to follow a person in a car. Behind the wheel, encased in his own private space, Seed would be less likely to look at anything but the road ahead.

As he followed the Volvo along the Rawndesley Road, Simon thought about the lies he’d told Kombothekra, and felt something he didn’t often feel: proud of himself. His story had been a medley of all the things the sergeant wanted to hear: two hundred and seventy-six addresses divided into handy regional groups, a travel schedule, a brand new road atlas courtesy of the Snowman. Not a word of it true. Simon had thrown Proust’s tenner in the bin—perhaps his job along with it, but at the moment he didn’t care.

Seed drove at fifty miles an hour along the High Street, where the limit was thirty. It wasn’t long before Simon was having to do eighty on the dual carriageway to keep up with him. Why was he in such a hurry? Was his trip—news of which had evidently come as a surprise to Ruth Bussey—connected to Simon and Charlie having dropped in unexpectedly? Wherever he was going, it wasn’t Megson Crescent; that was in the opposite direction. Rawndesley, perhaps.

In the absence of Proust, and the need to defend his gut feelings, Simon was scornful of what the voice in his head was telling him. Where did it come from, this conviction that if he didn’t act quickly something terrible would happen? The sense that Seed, Bussey and Mary Trelease were teetering on the edge of something horrendous, something only he could stop? Arrogant wanker, Charlie would have called him.

At the Ruffers Well roundabout, Seed didn’t go straight over and on towards Rawndesley as Simon had expected him to. He took a right. Simon allowed a car to get in between them, then followed. Could Seed be heading for the A1? North or south? North, he guessed.