‘We’ll see you right, Mr Stenner, don’t you worry about that,’ said Locke, planning three steps ahead. He’d seen a fisherman up on the riverbank as they made their way towards the shore, and guessed he wouldn’t have carried all his kit there by hand. He might even have a phone, too. Transport was the first problem to solve. Once they were mobile, he needed to get to his house, to the duffle bag tucked away in his utility room. In it was everything he’d need to slip out of the country, for as long as it took to sort this mess out; maybe for good. He had no intention of making any detour past a hospital, but it served no purpose to tell Stenner that right now.

He told Stenner to stay put, and made his way up the steps. The fisherman was hunched forwards in a dark green camping seat, rod in hand like a giant garden gnome, and didn’t react to his approach until he was ten feet away.

‘Caught much?’ said Locke, hands clasped behind his back, fingers wrapped around the pistol grip.

‘Not a thing,’ said the man, glancing across briefly. Locke put him in his sixties, with a weather-beaten face that spoke of a life lived under the open sky.

‘Can’t win them all,’ said Locke, stopping five feet short of the chair. ‘If they’re not biting, I’ve got a favour to ask,’ he said, bringing the gun around as he spoke. It shook with the tiniest tremor. Fatigue. He was too old for this hands-on bullshit. ‘And I’d not think too long about your answer if I were you.’

Three minutes later, the river and the fisherman, still shouting obscenities, were in the rear-view mirror of the forcibly borrowed Volvo. Stenner sat silently slumped in the passenger seat, face as grey as the upholstery. Locke dialled a number on the fisherman’s mobile phone from memory, flicking it on to speaker and placing it between his legs. It was answered on the fourth ring.

‘Mary? Darling? I need you to listen to me carefully.’

‘Alexander? What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘Listen and don’t talk. They’ve found Natasha. They know it wasn’t James. I’m coming home now, but we need to leave. Quickly.’

‘Leave? To go where?’

‘That doesn’t matter right now. I need you to be ready.’ The constant throb in his arm was like a second heartbeat, and every pothole the car hit sent fresh shockwaves of nausea through him.