‘We need to visit my dad,’ she said into her helmet microphone as they cruised up the motorway. ‘I want to persuade him to go somewhere safe for a bit.’

‘Good luck with that.’ Itchy’s voice crackled back through the earpiece. He’d met Silva’s father. ‘A tenner says he refuses to budge.’

Silva didn’t reply. Itchy was almost certainly right.

They arrived at her father’s place a couple of hours later. Silva told Itchy to wait by the bikes and she went up to the front door. Mrs Collins answered with the look of somebody not best pleased to receive visitors.

‘You,’ she said. Behind the housekeeper the parquet flooring in the hallway shone like a mirror.

‘Yes, me.’ Silva was afraid to step in from the porch. She nodded at the floor. ‘Would you like me to remove my boots?’

‘You could go round the house.’ Mrs Collins gestured at the gravel drive. ‘He’s down by the lake, fishing.’

‘Fishing?’

‘Don’t ask.’

‘Right. Thank you.’

Silva retreated down the steps and walked round to the back. She found her father sitting on an old director’s chair perched precariously at the end of the wooden jetty. He held a fishing rod in his right hand, and every now and then he swished the rod back and forth, the thick fly line curling behind him before he sent it shooting out over the water. Silva stepped onto the jetty with a deliberately heavy footfall.

‘Dad? What are you up to?’

‘What does it look like I’m bloody up to? I’m trying to catch something for dinner.’ The response came without any note of surprise, as if her father had been expecting her all along.

‘Any luck?’

‘Not even a nibble.’ Her father wound in the line and placed the rod down on the jetty. ‘I see Karen Hope’s still alive.’

‘Yup. Snafu. That’s me. Failed again. Only this time I don’t think any of it was my fault.’ Silva noted the fishing rod and the green canvas bag. ‘That’s Fairchild’s, isn’t it?’

‘He sent it to me.’

‘No he didn’t. He’s been here again, hasn’t he?’

‘Well, yes, he came by yesterday.’

‘I guess he told you what happened?’

‘Yes.’

‘And warned you about Haddad?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you heard about Neil Milligan?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what the hell are you doing here, Dad?’ Silva stood with her hands on her hips. Her father was fiddling with the fishing line. Untying the fly and placing the hook back in a small tackle box. ‘You obviously didn’t take Fairchild’s warning seriously, but the news about Milligan should have made you realise that Haddad doesn’t mess around.’

‘I’m not running away, Rebecca. I’m no coward. If Haddad shows up here we can have it out mano-a-mano.’