‘OK, OK, OK. Where can we go? Where would we go, more to the point.’ Jemima cracks her knuckles in her lap. ‘Would we go back to work? Home? To the pub? Where would we go if we actually were large-scale criminal perverts and had just done this? Shall we go chuck our phones into the Thames?’

She snorts at herself. There’s that gallows humour again. I still don’t totally get it. I guess it’s only funny to people who think they understand just because they bothered listening.

‘Hang on, Jonas. Let me think…’ Dominic grips his knees, breath whistling through his teeth. 14

‘They either think we’re police or press,’ Jemima says to herself. ‘Why would they tail us otherwise? They don’t give a toss who they are selling to, so long as no one shops them, and so long as they get paid.’

‘There are Travelodges all around the M25,’ I say, forcing myself to keep staring straight ahead. ‘We can just book a room, hole up there for the afternoon, check our tapes and transfer the video while we’re at it. We can’t afford to let them tail us back to the newsroom so we have to stop somewhere. And it’s not unreasonable that we would be meeting others or bunking up somewhere before a flight or train out. The rooms will have safes, we can stash the gear, even leave it there overnight if we have to—’

‘Overnight?’ I flinch as Dominic interrupts. ‘Are you out of your mind? It’s taken us months to finally nail this story down and now you want to while away time on some paranoid hunch?’

‘Can you put your ego away for a minute?’ Jemima fires back at him. ‘A few hours won’t hurt, and besides, the sooner we stop, the sooner we can look at these tapes which, by the way, are worth nothing unless we can see and hear our beloved perverts—’

‘Bill!’ I cut them both off as the Travelodge logo whips past on the left.

‘I’ve got you, love,’ he says, the car to my right peeling away into the fast lane. ‘And we’ve got company,’ he says, exhaling softly. I don’t dare turn to check, sudden quiet thrumming through my brain as the motorway falls away.

‘This’ll shake them off,’ I mutter into my collar, checking my camera’s still stuck fast inside my shirt. ‘They can’t afford to cause a scene in a public place. And that’s if this is a genuine tail…’

‘You’ll have to meet us inside, Jonas,’ Dominic interrupts, shrill with fury. ‘If we’re playing along then best we do it right. You were never here, after all…’