‘Thanks, but I’ll take a rain check for now. Besides, Nick’s a good guy but I wouldn’t want to come between him and his caffeine.’ There was that smile of hers again, framed by a dimple either side.

‘OK, well, how about you give me a shout when you guys get back?’

‘I’d better get going, but yeah, let’s catch up later.’

‘Yeah, of course.’ He moved to the side to let her past. ‘You can give me the rundown of how it goes out at Atlas as well.’

‘It’s a date,’ she said, with a cheeky grin. ‘Don’t worry, guv, just a figure of speech.’ She was past him and around the corner before he had a chance to reply.

He watched her go, standing for a moment even after she had disappeared around the corner. Not a good idea, he told himself. She was a junior officer, and he had seen enough workplace flings go wrong to fill a whole season of The Jeremy Kyle Show.

So we’re considering a fling now, are we?

He felt like giving himself a slap, but with both hands holding hot coffee, that wouldn’t end well. He settled instead for a long, drawn-out sigh. He didn’t know what it would actually take to get him to the stage where he felt free to even think about letting himself get close to someone again. Wasn’t sure he even wanted to, but Styles was right about one thing: Holly wouldn’t want him to wallow like this, not for so long. She’d tell him to stop moping around and get back to living his life. Knowing it and doing it were two different things entirely.

The sun hung low, lightly kissing the horizon. But for the dashboard showing the temperature outside to be a brisk 5ºC, it had all the hallmarks of a glorious Mediterranean-style evening, the kind that finds people outside enjoying a nice Chianti, or sipping a cold beer. The Atlas warehouse sat on a bend in the Thames, just along from Rainham Marshes nature reserve. Simmons had already promised herself a trip back to spend some time there when all this was over. Mike Gibson killed time during stakeouts by chattering endlessly, and one day he’d painted such a vivid picture of watching the peregrine falcons taking their prey on the wing that she’d googled it after work, and sat mesmerised by a video of one swooping down on a flock of pigeons like a kamikaze pilot, and the explosion of feathers that followed. It seemed incongruous that a place like that was just down the road from a row of warehouses where men like Bolton and Patchett plied their trade.