New Covent Garden at five o’clock on a winter’s morning is a concrete arena full of headlights, smoke and shouting. Trucks, vans and forklifts snort and growl in and out of loading bays while men in reflective coats and woollen hats clutch clipboards and dial their mobiles with clumsy gloved fingers. It was a simple matter to park the Asbo in the shelter of a multi-storey car park and crunch through the snow down to the railway arches where all three Transit vans registered to Nolan and Sons were waiting for the day’s load. Kevin’s van was easy to spot. It was the oldest and dirtiest. It was also at the end of the row furthest from the lockup’s door. I hunched up in my jacket and pulled my hat down over my ears and covered the last twenty metres as nonchalantly as I could. As I got within a couple of metres I heard voices on the other side of the van.

‘What if they come looking?’ asked a whiney voice – Kevin Nolan.

‘They know your name, Kev. If they want to find you it wouldn’t exactly pose an insurmountable problem for them,’ said a deeper, calmer voice. ‘So you might as well make yourself useful.’ Kevin’s big friend or more likely brother.

I felt the top of the tracker to make sure I had it right way up and then, quick as a flash, I bent down and stuck it to the chassis. I wriggled it a few times to make sure it was secure and as I did so my fingers brushed something that shouldn’t have been there. It was roughly the same size and shape as the tracker.

‘I don’t see why we can’t get today’s stuff from Coates and Son,’ said Kevin on other side of the van. ‘Danny says they’re giving it away.’

I pulled the second object out – it was another tracker. It was even, as far as I could tell in the dark, the same make as mine. I balled it in my fist and walked away – quickly.

‘Of course they’re giving it away,’ Kevin’s probable brother’s voice receded behind me. ‘They’re being checked.’

Was someone else running an operation on the Nolans? The Inside Inquiry Team had done a pool check on Kevin Nolan and his family the day before and any police operation would have been flagged. Could it be MI5? Were the Nolans part of some dissident Republican active service unit or part of a supply chain for the same – or informers against? Had Agent Reynolds been right – did the murder actually have an Irish component?

I ducked out of sight behind a truck that was waiting to be loaded.