The man pulled out a file from his bag. ‘I’ve got some pictures here, Mrs Hall. Do you recognise any of these men?’

He handed over a sheaf of large colour photos. Mrs Hall studied each one in turn before placing them on the coffee table. She pulled a face and went through them a second time.

‘Well, it’s hard. But no. Him. He was one of them.’ She pointed to a white man with a ginger beard. ‘And maybe him.’ She pulled out a picture of a black man with cropped hair. ‘Yes, I think he was with them.’

#

CTOC, St Pancras, London

Skeffington slammed down the phone and briskly walked to Gabriel’s desk.

‘Ma’am – just heard from North West CTU. A landlady from Cumbria had a group of five men staying at her holiday cottage from Thursday to Monday driving a grey van. She’s IDed two of them – Omar Asad and Abu Mujahid. Forensics are on the way now from Manchester. They should have the cottage searched by the morning.’

Gabriel’s face lit up. ‘Did she see the van’s plates?’

‘No, ma’am. Says they left around four in the afternoon on Monday, so I’ve got Campbell pulling CCTV on major roads around the cottage. But it’s a long shot. It’s a remote spot and there’s a dozen routes or more they could have taken to get back to London, if that’s where they were heading. We’ll have to look at hundreds of thousands of vehicles.’

It took a second for the significance of the dates to settle in Gabriel’s head.

‘If they left late afternoon on Monday, it means Abu Mujahid can’t have got to London in time to take a potshot at Lesley Hogarth,’ said Gabriel.

‘Not unless he flew down on a private jet, ma’am, no.’

‘Anything else useful?’

‘Possibly, ma’am,’ said Skeffington. ‘Abu Mujahid’s cell had at least two large Amazon boxes with them. They were loading them into the van. Doesn’t sound much to me, but the North West team seem very excited.’

Gabriel sat upright. She ran her finger through her fringe. ‘What were they doing with an Amazon delivery in the middle of Cumbria?’

‘Maybe they fancied a night in binge watching Game of Thrones, ma’am,’ Skeffington. ‘Or maybe, more likely, they were simply reusing a load of old, empty boxes.’

‘Maybe,’ said Gabriel thoughtfully. ‘Get on to Amazon HQ anyway. Find out if they ordered anything. Anything on Abu Mujahid’s missing hour in London two weeks ago?’

‘Nothing yet, ma’am. We’re going through local council CCTV footage, but it’s a massive area to comb. We’ve got about two hundred cameras to look through. And grey vans are common.’

Monday. They had left Cumbria just three days ago. But to go where? Could be anywhere – but most likely to head back to London, thought Gabriel. It’s where Abu Mujahid had been based for the last two weeks, it’s where he recruited his cell, it’s where he returned to after collecting his package from Burgess Hill.