‘While you were in Sutton Coldfield,’ said Hitchens, ‘DC Irvine and DC Hurst came up with background on some of the contacts whose numbers were in Mr Rawson’s phone book. One of those is a company we might be interested in: R & G Enterprises. They have a small distribution centre on an enterprise park near Buxton.’

‘Distributing what?’ asked Fry, with a sinking heart.

Hitchens smiled. ‘Meat, of course.’

DOWN IN THE car park, a tow truck was bringing in Patrick Rawson’s Mitsubishi for closer forensic examination. Fry found Cooper watching it arrive from the window of the CID room.

‘Mr Rawson had hands-free mobile in the car, didn’t he?’ he said.

‘Yes, why?’ asked Fry.

Cooper shrugged. ‘It’s funny that he seems to have been more worried about getting caught using a mobile phone while driving than he was concerned about being convicted for fraud, or breaches of the Trade Descriptions Act.’

‘That doesn’t seem particularly odd to me.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said Cooper. ‘So even Patrick Rawson had the feeling that he was more likely to be prosecuted if he was an easy target.’

He seemed to make the last comment to himself, so Fry ignored it.

‘We’re starting to get an angle on Mr Rawson’s business interests, anyway,’ she said. ‘This is almost a local one: R & G Enterprises Limited, with a trading address in Buxton. Directors are listed as Patrick Thomas Rawson and Maurice Gains.’

‘Mr Rawson, the man with his finger in lots of pies.’

‘And how many of them are dodgy?’ said Fry. ‘If you want something really frightening, Ben, have a read of this briefing.’

‘What’s this?’ Cooper took the file from her. ‘Trichinosis?’

‘It’s the latest reason for turning vegetarian.’

‘Oh, great.’

Cooper was silent as he read. Fry knew that the briefing was horribly specific about the progress of the disease. When any human being or animal ate meat that contained trichinella cysts, the acid in the stomach dissolved the hard covering, releasing larvae into the small intestine. Adults laid eggs, which developed into more larvae and travelled through the arteries to the muscles, where they curled into balls and became cysts again. And the cycle started over.

Most cases of trichinosis were mild, but if you didn’t get treatment with anti-inflammatory steroids, you could die. Someone in Paris had done exactly that, during the last French epidemic from eating raw horsemeat that originated in Poland.

‘This case in Paris,’ said Cooper. ‘Raw horse meat from Poland – It’s . . .’

Words seemed to fail him.

‘I know,’ said Fry.

She had begun to feel even sicker when she read the details of that case. An infected horse head had entered the human food chain. Not just meat, but the head. The number of people infected was explained by a high concentration of larvae in the horse’s carcass, and by the custom of mixing meat from several horses’ heads, to be eaten as raw mince.