There were a few things still left undone, however. Picking up her purse which was lying next to her on the sofa, Bailey opened it and took out the picture of Mister Snigiss, the one drawn by an eight-year-old Jennifer over twenty-four years ago. She unfolded the fragile piece of paper and examined the stick figures in the crude felt-tip drawing for the last time. Mister Snigiss… His pet snake, Sid… Jennifer… Bailey…

As a physical item, it was so insubstantial, yet it represented so much. But the time had come to finally put it where it belonged. In the past. She stood up, walked into the kitchen, opened the kitchen drawer, took out a box of matches, lit one and put it to the corner of the drawing. Holding the burning picture over the kitchen sink, she watched as the flame consumed it, the felt-tip stick figures curling and wrinkling as the thin dry paper turned rapidly into ash. When the flame reached her fingers, she dropped it into the sink, letting it burn completely and totally into nothing. Turning on the tap, she washed the ashes down the plughole.

She emerged from the kitchen and walked over to the desk in the corner of the living room. Standing on the desk was a laptop lying open with an unsent email on the screen that she’d composed a short while earlier. The email was anonymous and it was addressed to a number of major news organisations. Attached to the email was the MPEG4 file of Tiffany’s sex tape featuring Lewis Ballantyne.

Bailey had seen on TV that Ballantyne was streets ahead of the other candidates in the polls and an almost dead cert to win in the London mayoral elections, which were due to take place in just under a month’s time in early May. If he got to be Mayor of London, there was every possibility that one day he could end up as Prime Minister of Britain, and already the political pundits were entertaining that very likelihood.

Bailey was ninety-nine per cent sure that Jennifer had died in the blast at the building development in Gravesend. But the element of doubt seeded by her father’s dying hallucinations had been increasingly niggling at her. If Jennifer was alive, however minuscule the possibility, Bailey couldn’t allow her to be in the position to manipulate the Mayor of London, and potentially the future leader of the UK.

Sending the sex tape to the media would have seismic repercussions and almost certainly destroy Ballantyne’s chances of winning the mayoral election and probably end his political career for good. Taking Ballantyne out of the mayoral race would, at least for the time being, neutralise Jennifer’s ambitions in that area. The Met’s top brass, of course, would be deeply dismayed by the whole thing. But what did they know?

Bailey’s finger hovered over the ‘send’ button as she was hit by a sudden wave of doubt. She wondered if she was being paranoid. Jennifer alive? Of course she wasn’t.