Who’s Gilmour Martin? Gil from Thailand? Kate closes her eyes, hoping in vain that she may have misheard. Rob’s right. Gil is here – to destroy Rob, her, their life together. She thought it sounded like Rob on the phone this morning, but perhaps it wasn’t. It was definitely somebody else on the bed when the lights came on last night, Capgras or no Capgras. Was it Gil? Did she sleep with a total stranger? She should have been brave and confronted him, asked him outright. She feels sick, their intimacy sullied all over again.

She tries to keep it together as the officer asks for a date of birth and address, checking it on his own phone, and then listens for a while. A part of her wants to grab the phone, hear Gil’s voice, ask him what he’s done with Rob. Does he sound the same as him too?

‘Three people.’ The officer sighs and looks briefly at Kate. ‘Your partner, your driver, named on the insurance, and another female passenger, also a named driver.’ A longer pause this time. ‘Thank you.’

She watches, transfixed, as the officer passes the phone back. She is about to say something, protest that her partner’s called Rob not Gilmour, when Putin catches her eye. She glances at the car, where Cara is still glaring at her through the window, the remote visible in her hand. No names.

‘We’re going through the Tunnel today,’ Putin says to the officer cheerily. ‘The boss needs his car in France.’

‘Have a safe journey,’ the officer replies, walking back to his own vehicle.

Kate watches him get in and sit there for a moment, talking to someone on the car radio. All around her busy Londoners are going about their day, chatting on phones, carrying coffees back to the office. She wants to stop one of them, explain about the neckband, but she knows she can’t. Run. Not yet. She must bide her time.

91

Jake

‘What do you mean you can’t stop them?’ Jake says, glancing around him. He’s about to board the Eurostar at St Pancras International and is talking on speakerphone to DI Hart. Bex is standing next to him on the platform.

‘According to the traffic officer, Kate showed no visible signs of distress,’ Hart says. ‘They’re driving to Dover, taking the Eurotunnel and then heading out to Brest. You’ve about ten hours to get there.’

‘Aren’t you coming?’ Jake asks, despairing. Why didn’t Kate say something, make a scene when the police officer stopped the car?

‘We’ll liaise closely with our colleagues in France,’ Hart says, ‘but there’s not much we can do until we get more evidence.’