‘No,’ Miranda sighed. ‘He’s the son of an IT billionaire, and they decided he just wanted a lot of children. He got custody.’

Casey was staring out of the window, only half listening. ‘We will just’ – she stabbed her pen into the desk – ‘have to think of someone else who can be Dominic.’

‘Easier said than done.’ Miranda picked up a photograph of Dominic, snapped surreptitiously in Bath. ‘Dave Accardi is far too short. It would never work, if they’ve given the Bangladesh team even the briefest description of Dominic.’

Accardi was a tough private detective, who could do a dozen accents with ease.

‘Just ringing up about my bank account,’ in a perfect Scottish accent. ‘Could I just check my mortgage balance?’ a day later, in the Queen’s English. ‘Thank you so much,’ a polite West Country burr would wrap up the last call. ‘You’ve no idea how helpful you’ve been.’

‘Not Dave,’ Casey agreed. ‘How about Austin?’

‘He looks the part,’ Miranda blew out her cheeks, as she pondered the Post’s own social affairs editor. ‘But he gets stressed about a bloody deadline. He’d never cope in Bangladesh.’

‘Could Calvin help us out?’

Calvin had quit his staff job at his old tabloid suspiciously soon after a new managing editor with a keen interest in expenses had started working there. He now charged newspapers four times his old salary for undercover work, and spent the rest of his time clubbing.

‘Do you really want to go abroad with Calvin?’ Miranda started to laugh. ‘He’s such a sleaze. Didn’t you hear about what he’s got up to most recently? Some kiss-and-tell girl came to him, to stitch up some Premiership dimwit. Calvin had worked with her before, and didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her. So he announced that he needed to hook up a camera in their hotel room to make sure what she said was happening was roughly right. So Calvin and that idiot sidekick of his were in one hotel room, and the footballer and the girl were in the next one.’

‘Calvin can be such a creep,’ said Casey.

‘Unfortunately,’ Miranda went on, ‘the equipment went berserk for some reason and the television in the footballer’s room somehow started picking up Cal’s signal. All of a sudden, the footballer can see himself, with this girl, up on the bloody widescreen.’

‘Christ,’ said Casey, trying not to smile.