Persons Unknown: A Richard and Judy Book Club Pick 2018. Susie Steiner

Any leads?” And he’ll leave it hanging, undelegated, so that everyone falls over themselves to solve the Brazil problem. Giles and Jon-Oliver were at the top and there was an unspoken rivalry – they were both after the top job, as deputy chairman to Markus, but he left them to fight it out. Jon-Oliver had more or less blown Giles out of the water by signing the Chinese billionaire, Xi Ping. Now Giles will get his clients. And his bonuses of course.’ She stops.

      Davy turns his cup in its saucer a fraction. Waits.

      ‘I’ve got some part-time work at my local health food shop.’ She says this to Davy defiantly, as if he might deride her about it.

      ‘That’ll be good,’ he says. ‘Change of pace.’

      ‘From success to failure, you mean? I thought I could change myself to fit into the culture here, but now I realise you have to make yourself cut off to do that. Stupid thing is, a part of me still wishes I could’ve made it work.’ The end of her sentence tilts upwards as if it were a question.

      ‘Natural, I suppose,’ says Davy. He considers offering Linda another coffee – cappuccino for Kapuschinski? – but he has glanced at his watch and it’s getting late. He wants to hug his public sector pension to his chest. In his job, there might not be brass plaques and lilies, but there was none of this culling or execution abomination either. You could put an awful lot of feet wrong before you were sacked from the police.

      He escorts Linda back to the black gloss door in the gathering dusk and picks up his DCs for the journey home.

      On the walk back to the tube station, his constables chatting away behind him, Davy notices how the Christmas lights of Mayfair are almost exclusively of the white pin variety – understated compared to the winking green, red and yellow cacophony above Huntingdon town centre; love hearts and sleighs.

      While walking, he takes out his mobile and calls the Lotus Blossom but is unable to get to anyone with enough English to answer his questions about Carruthers’ takeaway.

      ‘You wan order?’ a girl keeps shouting, over the hiss of frying.

      He should visit the place in person, but not tonight. He is anxious to get back to Huntingdon tonight. Doesn’t want to spend it in a Premier Inn.

      On arrival at Huntingdon station, he says goodbye to his constables, who are heading off for a pint together.

      ‘I’ll see you lads. I’m going in here to get myself a sandwich,’ he says to them, before heading into the station buffet.

      After paying, he slides the receipt alongside others in his wallet, thinking how these jobs put a serious dent in his efforts to eat his five a day. It is with relief that he sinks into the seat of his car, throwing his sandwich onto the passenger seat. Cars at night are lovely – warm and easy.

      Headlights sweep past him both ways, illuminating the smears on his windscreen, then returning him to darkness on Hinchingbrooke Park Road.

      He is within sight of Judith Cole’s house. He can see her front door, but his car is under the shadow of a tree and as good as invisible. If she’s lying – and that’s the consensus in the department – then he wants to know why, even though he has been denied authorisation for any kind of trace or surveillance.