“Now I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” Caxton looked from one to the other, and there was nothing pleasant about his fixed smile. The Man with the Big Smile was not happy, and if Banks wasn’t mistaken, he was even a trifle worried. He put his hands on the arms of the chair and pushed himself to his feet. In that gesture, it was possible to see him as an old man, struggling with stiffening joints and frail bones. “Well, interesting as all this has been,” Caxton said, slightly out of breath, “I have only two words to say to you. Prove it. And now, if you don’t mind, it’s time for my nap. If there’s anything else, I’ll call Mr. Feldman in and you can talk to him about it.”

Banks and Winsome stood. “No, that’ll be fine,” said Banks. “We’re finished anyway.”

“I very much think you are. I’d like to say I’m sorry you had such a wasted journey, but I can’t really mouth the words with any degree of honesty.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s been wasted,” Banks said, as he and Winsome started heading for the door, past the classical rape scenes. “In fact, it’s been most informative.”

“Make sure you don’t lose your way home in the fog,” Caxton called out after them.

“Don’t worry,” Banks called back. “We won’t.”

ANNIE KNEW that Doug Wilson must be as tired as the rest of the team. He may have felt at times like a spare part in the events of the last week or so, but he had spent a great deal of time in a darkened room with a couple of DCs from County HQ watching hours of boring CCTV footage of the roads around Bradham Lane and the Strip in Wytherton. They had got nothing from the latter. Either the cameras weren’t working, there weren’t any or the drives had been reused since Mimosa Moffat’s departure. And they had got too much from the former, wasting hours tracking down cars and their owners, checking movements, alibis, police records. Apart from the stolen car, finally found burned out in a quarry outside Ripon, and the white van possibly used to carry Mimosa Moffat, they had found nothing of interest. They were still trying to find the car thief, with the help of the Ripon police, but to no avail. And the car was such a mess that there was unlikely to be much useful evidence in the remains.

So they were left with Jim Nuttall, rare auto parts supplier of Stockton-on-Tees, who had lied about being on the road at the time of Mimosa’s ordeal, delivering a shipment to a dealer in Southampton. And that was why Annie was sitting in the passenger seat of a police Skoda with Wilson driving, on the busy A66 east of the A1, shortly after her interview with Sunny Rana. She thought Doug needed to get out of the darkened room for a while, and he seemed more than willing to accompany her.