‘It’s a surveillance van, supposed to blend in and not be noticed,’ he said. ‘How did they know it’s his?’

‘Maybe they didn’t. But it’s been parked in the same spot night and day for the best part of a week.’

‘Anything leap out at you as missing?’

‘I don’t think Jim keeps anything in it. Never leaves the cameras inside if he’s not using them.’

‘Whatever they’re looking for, they’re being very thorough.’

Jasmine unlocked the building’s rear door and held it open for Ingrams. He proceeded inside with a cautious and surprisingly light step, which prompted the upsetting understanding that whoever had broken into the van could still be inside the office.

They climbed the stairs in silence. Jasmine kept expecting Ingrams to take out a gun, then when he didn’t, admitted to herself that she was actually wishing he would. Why had she asked him not to bring one? And why hadn’t he just overruled her and told her not to be so bloody stupid?

To her great relief, they found the office door closed and locked. Jasmine was about to stick her key into it when Ingrams restrained her hand. He crouched by the lock and examined it.

‘Scratch marks,’ he said. ‘Fresh ones. It’s been picked recently. They’ve been here.’

‘Why would they pick the lock? Why not just kick the door in, like they just smashed the van window?’

‘You’re supposed to be dead by now. A break-in at your place of work would be a big arrow for the Tyneside cops looking into the shootings. A nondescript van getting tanned after being left unattended for several days would be less of a flag.’

‘Yes, but what else could they expect the cops to connect it to? Unless they thought that me getting shot in your car would suggest I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. In which case, why would anyone think that a guy who keeps guns in his car would make a more plausible target for a shooting, I wonder?’

‘No comment.’

Jasmine unlocked the door and reached inside to turn on the lights. There was no immediate indication of a break-in, and certainly she felt no sense of someone having been there remotely comparable to the sense of no one having been there that had so spooked her on Monday. The place looked very much as she had left it, enough for her to wonder how you distinguished between fresh scratch marks around a lock and innocent older ones from misdirected keys. Perhaps nobody had broken in, and perhaps it had just been some chancer who’d tanned Jim’s van.

‘What have they taken?’ Ingrams asked, as Jasmine scanned her surroundings.

‘To be honest, I don’t know what’s normally here well enough to know what’s missing, never mind what they might be after.’