Certainly, as he continued on his route eastwards, parallel to the M74, he never gave any indication that he had seen something that was going to make him change his plans. Steady, careful, deliberate, unhurried, anonymous, and quietly purposeful. He drove on past where Calderpark Zoo used to be, along the dual carriageway until the coarse grass and crash barriers gave way to pavements, trees and red sandstone on the outskirts of Uddingston.

Catherine felt a tingle in her gut as the Mondeo indicated offside, which would take him down towards the river. There was an address she knew down there, a handsome property guarded ostensibly by electronic gates and CCTV, but more effectively by the reputation of its owner. It wasn’t the only house in the street, though.

She told herself, therefore, not to want it, not to visualise it, but a possibility such as this was too tantalising not to raise her pulse.

She had to pass Abercorn and keep going as he waited for a break in the oncoming traffic. She kept him in her sights, though, checking her rear-view and preparing to respond. He made his right turn a few seconds later; some obliging driver must have given him a flash. Catherine executed a swift U-turn in response, the breadth of the road allowing her to pull the BMW around one hundred and eighty degrees at still a decent clip.

She accelerated eagerly towards where the Mondeo had turned, feeling for the first time a little anxious that her quarry would not be visible after she made the next left. She’d briefly lost him a couple of times today, but remained calm and played the percentages, reacquiring him in each instance roughly where she might have expected to. What made this different was that she had succumbed to the temptation of considering a desired outcome.

Just wait and see, she told herself. Wait and see.

Catherine reached the junction maybe only thirty seconds behind Abercorn, but when she turned the corner, she could see no vehicles in motion on the road in front of her.

Wait and see. Wait and see.

She kept driving, urging her mind to think of where she might re-acquire him, but conscious that her mind wasn’t going to listen until she had passed a particular address.

Before she even reached it, she spotted the Mondeo: parked on the left between a big X5 and a two-seater Mercedes, Abercorn still inside.

Catherine passed him again, carrying on along the street at a little over twenty. She allowed the earlier tingle to become a thrill, the possibility she had entertained passing from the tantalising to the tangible. It felt like a very long hundred yards, a very slow ten seconds, but she waited until she had covered what she considered a respectable distance before pulling in, making sure she could still see the Mondeo in her passenger-side wing mirror.

She recalled Fletcher’s words of a week ago.