The Shark found her five minutes later standing in the pouring rain in the car park, a half-brick in her hand, pounding it into the wall. He had the sense to say nothing but simply wait until, exhausted, she let it fall to the ground. They stood looking at each other, water dripping down their faces. ‘It’s OK, Shark,’ she said.

‘You think so?’

‘We’ll make it so.’ She put her arm round his shoulders and together they walked back inside the police station.

The Mercedes swept imperiously down the outside lane of the autobahn, Krasic at the wheel. ‘Bloody weather,’ he grumbled as the wipers struggled to cope with the spray as they passed an articulated lorry. The countryside was a misty green blur streaked with rain.

‘As my grandmother used to say, if you cannot cure it, you must learn to endure it,’ Tadeusz said, looking up from the shooting magazine he was reading.

‘Fine. But I bet she never had to drive to fucking Köln in the rain because a shipment of heroin was trapped by a Rhine flood,’ Krasic grumbled.

‘Come on, Darko, it’s only a bit of inconvenience. And look at it this way: the police like this weather about as much as we do. It makes it safer for us.’

Krasic grunted noncommittally. ‘I hope it’s better than this when we go up to Rotterdam.’

‘Why don’t we fly up? It’s not as if we’re going to be carrying anything suspicious.’

‘I don’t like flying places unless we have to,’ Krasic said. ‘Names on passenger lists leave a trail, you know that.’

‘Well, what about the train? It’s more comfortable than the car.’

‘It’s too public. You can’t talk on a train. Too many nosy old women going to visit their grandchildren.’

‘God, you really are in a cheerful mood today. What’s eating you?’

Krasic debated whether to say anything about Caroline Jackson and Anthony Hill. Better to wait till he had more information, he decided. It was hard to see how there could be an innocent explanation for what he had witnessed the previous night, but given how besotted his boss was with this mysterious woman, he wanted as much ammunition as he could garner before he said a word against her. ‘I just don’t like the rain,’ he said.

They continued in silence, Tadeusz returning to his magazine. Nearly three hours into the journey, more than two-thirds of the miles covered, Krasic’s phone rang. He reached into his pocket and answered, while Tadeusz tutted at his failure to use the hands-free kit. ‘Hello?’ Krasic said.

‘I’ve done that search,’ the person on the other end said, distorted to a low alto by some sort of electronic voice changer.

‘And?’

‘You need to see the results for yourself. There’s no way I’m talking about this over the phone.’