‘Much of this was made possible by all of your in-depth work on Go Wild, and I fear we have only just scratched the surface of what this company has been involved in worldwide. It has been used by powerful people who will do whatever it takes to stop us from bringing those involved to justice. And, by Hugo Radcliff’s demeanour when he was brought in last night, he expects to be back out on bail almost immediately. What he doesn’t know is that we retrieved the video of the killings and that our key witness is alive and well, despite apparent plans to add her life to the ones already taken.’

He turned their attention to the screen.

‘DI Winters asked if he might join us today to speak to you all.’

The figure visible now on the main screen was sitting up in a hospital bed, his face stitched, his body still heavily bandaged.

‘I wanted to thank you all personally, firstly for sending DS McNab down to spy on us. He is, as you all must know, a regular pain in the neck. He is also the most dogged officer I’ve ever had the pleasure, or misfortune, to work with. We’d offer him a job with the Met, but we know he’d just laugh at us.

‘Your forensic identification of Willis, and then the opportunity you gave him to make contact with Joe Hill, led him to head higher up the ladder. Radcliff hates being outsmarted by a cop. McNab’s escape, followed by his rescue of me, rankled. Especially because I – an inside witness to what has been going on in Go Wild – survived. So he grabbed the chance to come to Glasgow, something we luckily got wind of. The rest, as you know, is history. As for DI Cleverly, we are still currently trying to locate him.’

Winters waited for the negative response on that to recede before he spoke again.

‘I’d just like to finish by assuring you that the Met are fully committed to cooperation with Police Scotland on the continuing investigation, and we are also in touch with both Interpol and the FBI.

‘This is a long road we have to travel, but your investigation on both the fire death and the MV Orlova have produced the first results we all needed and wanted to see.’

McNab’s face throughout Jack Winters’s speech told its own tale. Whatever the two men had endured together in captivity, Rhona thought, would never be spoken about, unless it was to one another.

As the boss dismissed the team, he reminded McNab that he had a backlog of reports to write and that he was expecting them on his desk by the end of the day.

It didn’t wipe the smile off McNab’s face.