‘Daddy Pig’s wife knows about the affair – my gut says if he couldn’t hide infidelity from her, chances are he wouldn’t be capable of hiding high-level espionage from all of us.’

‘And he got another email from Daniel Wheal – the man he arranged to meet at the Christie’s auction,’ said Pixie. It was hard not to stare at her lime green jumper – it was adorned with the face of a large black pug with its tongue out. ‘The handover is a set of keys for Wheal’s weekend place in Oxford. He’s clearly just planning a weekend away with his mistress. He ain’t a Snake, just a dirty pig.’

‘That’s it then,’ said Hattie. ‘We officially rule Daddy Pig out.’ Hattie walked up to the whiteboard and drew a red cross over Daddy Pig’s details. He looked back at me. ‘What’s the latest on Peppa?’

‘Peppa has a ski chalet we didn’t know about and a property abroad is a good place to hide money.’

‘Let’s look into that, but I think George Pig should be the main focus of our attention.’

I nodded. ‘I agree the Switzerland link is the best indication he’s guilty.’

‘With the trail on the Coyote totally cold we need to identify the Snake fast. We’ve got three days until Peng flies out of here. Once she leaves, the Snake goes quiet until their next mission and we lose any chance of locating them and shutting down Tenebris. The Committee will not reinstate Eight until Tenebris is taken down. Remember, it’s not just Peng’s life you’re working for, but your jobs and the future of the Security Services as we know it. Tenebris threatens everything.’

*

The storage locker key Robin had found during a search of George Pig’s house was now considered an important enough lead to follow up. Earlier this evening Geraint had tracked down which storage company he had an account with. Jake was driving down the M4 to it now in the hope he would unlock it and find a few million hidden in suitcases and then we could tie this all up nicely. Hattie was watching Peng as she attended an event at the Embassy.

Cameron and Robin had gone out to Watford to undertake the interrogation of the Chinese hacker. He was the last one on their list of suspects. If he failed to be working for the Tenebris Network, that line of investigation was officially dead.

Geraint and Pixie continued to trawl through George Pig’s online history while I focused on Peppa Pig.

The ski chalet looked like it was owned by Peppa and her brother, who was in property development. Considering how little they’d bought it for I wasn’t holding out much hope it would turn out to be anything more than a small investment to help her sibling out.