‘Just tell me what and who to and it’s done.’

Bolton nodded. ‘All in good time.’

He pulled the car over to the kerb outside a four-storey brick warehouse. The sign over the door advertised Taylor Fisheries, but there was no sign of life inside. The metal shutters were pulled firmly down on both the ground-floor windows. Horns rang out from the nearby Thames, boats rumbling a greeting to each other in low bovine bass notes.

‘Upstairs.’ Bolton nodded towards the door. ‘We’ll be five minutes and I’ll drop you back at your car when we’re done.’

They got out of the car, and Stenner slid into the driver’s seat. Bolton pulled a bunch of keys from the pocket of his coat. Carter looked back along the road they’d just driven up, unsure if he wanted to see the officers that had been his shadows for so long now. Would their appearance hurt or hinder his chances of getting out of this in one piece, bearing in mind that Bolton knew anyway? It didn’t matter either way; all he saw was an empty street with sheets of scattered old newspaper being prodded along the pavement by a lazy breeze.

The drying sweat on his back gave him a chill that tiptoed up his spine, and Carter followed Bolton into the gloom of the doorway.

Simmons sat bolt upright in her seat as Gibson pulled over to the kerb. He had positioned the front end of their car so the building in front shielded it from the road the three men had disappeared down a minute ago. Simmons was out of the car and at the corner in a flash with her back pressed to the wall. Gibson swore under his breath.

‘Get back,’ he hissed.

She risked a glance past the edge of the wall and saw the car parked outside a whitewashed building with blue lettering that was too far away to make out. She could make out a shape inside the car, but it looked like just one man, not three.

‘They’ve gone inside,’ she whispered back over her shoulder. Gibson had come up alongside her.

‘All three of them? Into where?’

‘I didn’t see anyone actually go in, but the car is parked outside and I’m pretty sure there’s only one of them left in it. Looks like Stenner. Can’t make out the name on the sign, but it’s the white one on the right-hand side.’ She shuffled back to swap places with him so he could see. She heard tyres and looked to her right. Two of the other units had followed them, leaving one car plus Bravo unit on the rooftop watching Patchett.

‘How do you want to play it, guv?’ she asked.