‘I kept my word to Mark,’ she said. ‘If you want to charge me for doing that, go ahead.’ Speaking directly to McNab, she asked if he had met with Mark in London prior to his death.

McNab didn’t see any reason not to tell her the truth. ‘He was staying where you told me he would be. With Abu-Zar and Firash.’

Her expression changed at the sound of those names. ‘He was with friends then,’ she said, as though that was a comfort to her.

‘Before he died, he’d gone to meet someone without telling Firash,’ McNab said. ‘Have you any idea who that might have been?’

She thought for a while, then said, ‘It could have been any of the contacts on there.’

McNab wondered if the information given to Ava would be the same as Mark had left for him.

The preliminaries now over, Janice asked her to tell them everything that had been said between herself and Nadia.

Ava took a deep breath, then began her tale.

73

Rhona and Bill had watched both interviews from the neighbouring room.

‘What do you think?’ Bill said when they were over.

‘That Nadia’s telling the truth, but not all of it. In particular, about what happened during her meeting with the dead couple. As for her being the one who was sick after the event, the tinned food she’d been eating in her hideout was present in the analysis of the vomit.’

‘Could she have been involved in their deaths?’

‘Forensic evidence suggests she wasn’t. But she was familiar with the killer and had met him before in the other locations.’

‘Which makes her an even stronger witness,’ Bill said. ‘One he wouldn’t want to take the stand.’

‘What will happen to Nadia?’ she asked as they made their way back to his office.

‘She’ll be put under protection until we can bring this to trial.’

Which couldn’t happen unless or until they took Hugo Radcliff into custody.

‘Do the Met know you have her?’ Rhona said.

‘They do.’

‘Then they’ll ask that she be sent south,’ Rhona said. ‘Although she would be safer staying here.’

Bill nodded, indicating he too was concerned about that.

‘They can’t put the lid on all of this. Can they?’ Rhona said.

‘Jack Winters told McNab that the Met plan to continue their investigation, despite pressure from on high.’

The news outlets were still running the Orlova story and its association with Go Wild, but how long would that last? Especially if owners of the companies might be implicated in the fallout. The BBC had closed it down, Channel 4 had dipped in a toe, then retreated, and an army of bots were at work on social media describing it as Russian fake news.