‘Quiet, please.’ She clicked on the keyboard and a map of London came on the screen, with an area south of the Thames hatched out in red.

‘As many of you know, we had a breakthrough last night on Operation Hippocampus.’ She could say the name now without a hint of a smile. ‘We now know from CCTV at the Burgess Hill warehouse that Abu Mujahid used a grey Ford Transit to collect two boxes a week last Friday morning. We believe the boxes contained weapons and explosives shipped from Beirut via Greece by the GID.

‘ANPR cameras show Abu Mujahid drove back to London after collecting the weapons and took a convoluted route clockwise around the M25 to enter London from the west, here.’ She pointed to the screen.

‘And at this point, he entered a black hole with no ANPR coverage. He was last seen at 8.11am here in Hammersmith – and he emerged from the black hole ninety-five minutes later here in Highgate.

‘So question number one is this – where was he during these missing ninety-five minutes twelve days ago? The journey from Hammersmith to Highgate should have taken him no more than forty-five minutes. So he was doing something. Meeting someone? Dropping off the weapons cache?

‘Once he emerged from the ANPR black hole, he drove across North London to Islington. There’s no trace of his van on ANPR for nearly a week from that point, so we can assume it was parked in a garage or street. The van reappears again on the morning of last Thursday – six days ago – when Abu Mujahid made several stops, driving in and out of areas with good ANPR coverage.

‘We’re pulling in the local CCTV now, and we hope to have a better idea of where he was at the time within the next few hours. Around 10am, he drove the van north – up the M1 and M6 towards the Lake District.

‘Crucially, he stopped on his way north at these services,’ the map changed to show the whole of England, ‘around 1pm. CCTV from the service station shows Abu Mujahid was travelling with four young men – three Asian, one black. We can safely assume he had picked them up earlier that morning in locations in North London. So question two is who are these men? How does Abu Mujahid know them? What connects them?’

Gabriel looked around the room. The team were making notes or staring at the map.

‘After a toilet break, they drove off. They turned off the M6 onto the A590 and were last IDed three miles south of Kendal in the Lake District, two hundred and seventy miles and five hours from London. And that’s it. Question number three is where did they go, and what were they up to?’

Gabriel paused quite deliberately.

‘CCTV and ANPR are sketchy in the Lakes, and we have only four sightings of the van from this point on. The day after they arrived – last Friday – Abu Mujahid was picked up by ANPR driving into Kendal at 8am, and then back out at 10am. The van made an almost identical journey the following day. And then nothing for the last three days – which means one of two things. Either Abu Mujahid and his friends are still enjoying their little break in the Lake District, or they’ve moved elsewhere and changed the van’s plates.