On his way back to the office, Cullen keeps his head down, anxious not to be accosted by anyone wanting anything from him, chewing over the lunch in his mind, pleased to have secured to his satisfaction a full understanding of the limits of the Smith girl’s knowledge and to have made such an obvious impression on her. She knows almost nothing of consequence, of that he is sure. Satnam had evidently never confided in her and Natasha and Jessica had chosen to tell her very little either. He considered he’d done a good job of putting her off the scent. And although it would make him feel better to have Satnam’s phone in his possession – he believed in the belt and braces approach – he thought the device was unlikely to present much of a threat. The Manns still seemed to think it had been lost somewhere between the bridge and the ICU. It was a little odd that Nevis hadn’t told them that it was in her possession, but perhaps it hadn’t occurred to her. She seemed an unworldly creature. Nevis hadn’t made any effort to crack the passcode so she evidently didn’t believe that there was anything on the phone worth looking at. All in all, the lunch had made him feel better, more secure. The phone would soon be in his possession and, so long as he wasn’t stupid enough to pull another stunt like the one at the hospital, Maddy would support him. Mark Ratner could be contained with threats if nothing else. He’d find a way to get the loan shark off his back, Veronica would get pregnant, and the Dalek would die. The only real threat to his future – and his sanity – might be Natasha Tillotson. What he really wanted to do was find a way to get rid of her before she started making trouble. The clock began ticking down on Natasha’s future at Avon the moment Cullen saw her getting into Ratner’s car. The affair was one thing. In normal circumstances he’d have found a way to feign ignorance, but the fact that he’d caught the two of them in the lab that night and that Ratner was insisting on maintaining his connection to her made that impossible. Natasha knew that he, Cullen, knew about the affair and had chosen not to do anything about it. She didn’t know why but then nor did Ratner. Which was why he’d called an emergency meeting with the girl to ‘discuss her performance’.