‘The name’s Bailey Sharpe,’ she said to the mirror. ‘And I can sort you out with almost anything you want.’

She put on her Oakley sunglasses. All in all, she thought she looked pretty convincing.

The whole act might have looked a bit ridiculous to anyone watching, but it was all part of her way of psyching herself up, of believing herself into the role.

She whirled around to leave the flat and was just about to close the front door when something niggling at the back of her mind suddenly dropped on her like a block of concrete.

She stopped dead in the hallway, opened her bag and took out her purse. Opening it, she saw that her warrant card was in there. Her heart turned over at the sight of it. Schoolgirl error! She couldn’t believe she’d made such a fundamental oversight. That had been close.

As a policewoman, it was second nature to carry your warrant card around with you. But on an undercover operation, it was a very bad idea. It was the one incontrovertible piece of proof that you were a police officer. However much you might deny it, there was no getting around a warrant card if it was discovered.

For her first meeting with the Molloys, she had no idea what would happen, but it was probably much safer not to have it on her. She plucked it out of her purse and stood there holding it for a few moments. She realised she should probably put it in the secret compartment in the bathroom. But she couldn’t be bothered to do that right now. She was already running late and she had no idea what the traffic would be like. So she just tossed her warrant card onto the sideboard by the front door. But then, on second thoughts, just in case, she picked it up and put it in the bowl of Quality Street, shoving it right to the bottom. And then she left the flat, reminding herself to put it in the secret compartment when she got back.

She made her way rapidly down to the basement car park. The car she’d chosen for this assignment was a metallic orange BMW M3 with tinted windows and black spider alloys. It came from the police pool and out of all of the available vehicles it was probably the one best suited to her cover identity. Just like the outfit she was wearing, it helped to cement her own self-belief in her new persona. External appearance was crucial in undercover work, not just in conveying the right impression to those she was doing business with, but in making her feel psychologically aligned to the role she was playing.

She pulled out from the underground car park and up onto the road, gunning the BMW aggressively through Stratford, relishing the power of the twin-turbo three-litre engine beneath the bonnet, noticing the envious looks from the groups of young men hanging around on the street, wannabe gangsters perhaps, aspiring to own a car just like the one she was driving.