‘Which means the bad guys, whoever the hell they are, must be monitoring her phone. And maybe ours, too. Not just the landline, but we have to assume that all mobiles and email accounts are potentially compromised. Why else would Ben have left his usual phone behind and taken his burners instead?’

‘Makes sense.’

‘Which tells me that we’re not dealing with any old ordinary bunch of thugs, extortionists, or whatever. It’s someone with means, power and influence. We’re dealing with professionals.’

‘And so are they,’ Jeff said. ‘Because we’re professionals too.’

‘Hardly in the same league,’ Tuesday replied. ‘Who can do stuff like that? Intelligence agencies and governments, that’s who.’

‘You’re shooting in the dark, Tues,’ Jeff told him. ‘I was with you on the first part, but now you’re going way off the track. Stacking assumptions on top of conjecture on top of guesswork.’ Jeff Dekker’s vocabulary did actually include a few longish words, and he was liable to come out with them from time to time.

‘What, it doesn’t worry you who we might be up against here?’ Tuesday asked.

‘I’ll worry about it when I know the real facts. Right now I’m not buying the idea that Ben and Grace are in the sights of some covert government agency. It’s nuts, frankly. She’s a rural police constable and he’s …’

‘He’s Ben Hope,’ Tuesday finished for him. ‘Anything’s possible.’

‘Still not buying it, Tues. Government agents? Give me a break. I’ll bet you a hundred you’re wrong.’

‘I’ll take that bet. And you can be as sceptical as you like, but you can’t deny the facts are worrying. If they can tap phones and spy on emails, how do we know they can’t track our movements?’

Jeff shrugged. ‘Let them try. Anyhow, I’d already thought about that. If Ben’s travelling incognito, even if we don’t know his reasons yet, we should do the same.’

Tuesday asked, ‘So how exactly do you plan on sneaking into Britain off the radar? Funnily enough, I don’t happen to possess a fake passport, and I’m fairly sure you don’t either.’

‘Nope, never have.’

‘Then what do you propose? That we call this Thierry character, Ben’s old forger, and get him to rustle us up a pair PDQ? Express service, guaranteed same day delivery or your money back.’

Jeff shook his head. ‘Won’t be necessary, mate. There’s another way.’

Tuesday listened as Jeff sketched out his plan, and after some more debate, they finally agreed on their course of action.