‘Quick, give me your phone,’ he said to Styles, holding his hand palm up behind him, eyes front, like a relay runner waiting for the baton.

Styles slapped it into his palm and Porter brought it up, resting it on top of the binoculars. He kept one hand on them, pinched fingers spreading out to zoom in on the phone screen. With the cars parked side by side, the two doors opened like pinball flippers. Anderson got out first, Bolton unfolding himself from the passenger seat to tower above him. Porter hit record and the clock onscreen counted off the seconds. He’d give the proverbial right arm for sound as well, but the footage would be damning enough without it.

The two men exchanged the briefest of handshakes and disappeared inside, followed by Bolton’s driver, who Porter recognised as Daniel Stenner.

‘Call it in,’ he said, no triumph in his voice despite the net closing. The fact that a copper was involved was bad enough. That he was partly to blame, even just by association, for what happened to Simmons and Gibson got Porter’s hackles up. If you can’t trust your fellow officers, then the world becomes an even darker place than he already knew it to be. He waited, watching the doorway through the binoculars until Styles placed the request for backup, then climbed back in the car to wait for the cavalry.

Anderson was used to being the bigger man in most situations, quite literally. He hadn’t been south of two hundred pounds since Tony Blair won his first election, and the years that followed had seen slow but steady expansion, waistline creeping forward like a glacier. Even seated, James Bolton made him feel like David eyeing up Goliath. It wasn’t just the simple maths, his height and weight. Christ, the man was big enough to have his own postcode. It was more the physical presence he exuded, the unspoken threat in a simple stare, the knowledge of what he had done, and might still do. Anderson watched in silence as Bolton sent Andrew Patchett packing from his office and took the still-warm vacated chair as his own, while Anderson made do with an older leather swivel chair, arms worn where a hundred elbows had rubbed.

‘So, Detective Anderson, what news do you have to share that you had to drag me away from my little hideaway?’

His expression was somewhere between amusement and boredom, as if the manhunt for him was a game he could step in and out of.

‘One of the other detectives, Porter, he got a tip where to find you.’

‘And?’ Bolton spread his hands. ‘Should I be concerned? Was he on his way to slap the cuffs on me when you called?’

‘I don’t know. He wouldn’t say. He needed to run it up the line first, apparently.’