Strange how not voicing a truth outright resulted in an unspoken lie.

Ollie answered his call almost immediately. ‘I’m texting you an old address I dug up for Go Wild in Glasgow. By the location, it doesn’t look as though it was aiming for the high end of the market.’

‘I’ll have a look,’ McNab said, thinking he could take Cleverly along with him. Maybe get him to talk a little more. ‘Anything else?’

‘I found your guy on the system.’

‘Oh?’ McNab tried to sound only mildly interested.

‘He has form. I can send you details?’

‘Do that. And thanks.’

So what was he planning to do with them? Flash them in Ellie’s face? Like that would be a good idea. He toyed with the idea that he would say he was just protecting her. Would she buy that? Unlikely. Would it stop her seeing the bald guy? Doubtful. Would she be pissed off at him? Definitely.

McNab shifted himself as a trickle of passengers started to appear at the arrival gate. Downing the last of his coffee, he exited the cafe and watched for any bloke that might be Cleverly.

It wasn’t hard to spot him. Or maybe it wasn’t hard to spot the only man who looked like a police officer.

Face on now, it wasn’t difficult for his shadowy memory of the detective to take form. The dark, close-cropped hair, the high colour, the thick neck, the look of a bouncer. Back then, McNab now recalled, Cleverly hadn’t been so beefy. More lean and mean. The lean had definitely gone. What about the mean, he wondered?

‘DI Cleverly?’ McNab held out his hand.

Cleverly eyed him as he might a suspect. ‘My God, it is you. The guy from the safe house.’ His face grew puzzled. ‘But I heard you’d been promoted to DI? I assumed when they said DS, it was another McNab. Let’s face it, there’s a lot of Mics and Macs up here,’ he said with a laugh.

McNab gritted his teeth, and remote-opened the car.

As Cleverly slid in alongside him, he reminded himself that orders were to wring as much information out of Cleverly as he could, rather than wring his neck.

‘So what’s with the Met’s interest in a lassie burned to death in Glasgow? Not enough to be going on with in the capital?’ he said as they headed into the city centre.

Cleverly kept his eyes firmly ahead. ‘If there’s a London connection, we want to know.’

‘So the visit’s nothing to do with the fact that the victim might work for a company called Go Wild?’ McNab said.

The twitch to the right of Cleverly’s mouth suggested Go Wild were two words he was definitely familiar with, but didn’t want to acknowledge.

‘I’m here solely for the PM,’ he said, confirming this.