‘Where did you get it?’

‘Mustafa had a pile of old decorating overalls in the cupboard at the back of the kebab shop, along with the tools. It was all I could come up with at such short notice. Seems to have done the trick though.’ He sniffed at the sleeve of the boiler suit. ‘Although this does smell of doner kebab.’

She smiled. ‘Glad to see you’re still able to think on your feet, just like you taught me to all those years ago.’

‘When I came in, it didn’t take me long to clock that something was wrong with you. I figured they’d drugged you in some way… probably some kind of truth serum. I knew you were in trouble though. Why else would you have contacted me?’

She raised one eyebrow. ‘Well, you got here just in the nick of time “Mr Ferguson”.’

He snorted a laugh. When setting up the operation, she and Frank had established a number of operational emergency security protocols. Wycombe-Ballard Limited was a fake company set up for exactly this kind of scenario. Any call coming through to that number was routed via the police switchboard directly to Frank. Regardless of who was calling or what they were saying, any call to Wycombe-Ballard Limited would instantly indicate that the undercover officer was in the process of being compromised and in imminent danger of physical harm. It had been a gamble convincing Rick to call the number and she dreaded to think what would have happened if he hadn’t.

‘Lucky I was close by,’ said Frank. ‘There wasn’t time to call the full back-up squad.’

‘That would have put an end to the whole operation anyway.’ She paused. ‘Do you think the Molloys think I’m a cop?’

He shrugged. ‘Hard to tell. From what I could hear, you didn’t reveal anything incriminating. They gave up on the interrogation after I messed up your tap and got them soaked. Anyhow, I guess they didn’t want a witness here in case they ended up having to kill you. And they couldn’t very well have killed me. Killing you and making it look like an accident is one thing. Killing me as well and also making it look like an accident would have been stretching it just a little bit too far.’

He paused, gazing at her with his watery blue eyes.

‘What made them suspect that you were a police officer?’ he asked.

She explained to him about the non-existent shipment of ecstasy pills that was supposed to have been coming into the airstrip in Essex.

‘So that whole piece of intelligence was nothing more than a clever set-up on Rick’s part with the aim of flushing out a snout?’

She nodded. ‘It’s becoming quite clear to me how Rick operates. He’s a very crafty individual. We’re going to have to tread a lot more carefully from now on. He knows that Adrian was an informant, but that doesn’t mean he knows that I’m a cop. If he had solid proof that I was a police officer, he would have just killed me outright. He wouldn’t have bothered with all this scopolamine malarkey. So I think we still have a chance here. I don’t think the operation’s over just yet.’