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‘The sequence of events doesn’t make sense,’ Koenig said. ‘Not when you stop looking through the Brit tabloid-tinted lens.’

Draper said nothing. Koenig thought she’d probably seen it too. She’d spent enough time with the SOG to unshackle herself from some of her old instincts. The CIA were risk-averse. They had to be. They didn’t see the world in the pastiche of greys that Koenig did. When your day job is protecting a nation, Occam’s razor becomes the default position – when you have competing hypotheses, you select the one with the fewest assumptions. The CIA didn’t give the benefit of the doubt. If something looked like a duck, swam like a duck and quacked like a duck, the CIA were going to blow it up with a reaper drone. Because next time the duck might be wearing a suicide vest.

‘Scotland Yard believe a woman, in the midst of a mental health crisis, shot two strangers in the back of the head,’ Koenig said. ‘She then abducted a stranger at gunpoint. And if you look at what happened as two distinct but unrelated events, that’s not an unreasonable position to take.’

‘But that’s not what happened here?’ Bernice said.

‘I don’t think so. If you watch the whole tape, you’ll see that Margaret Wexmore enters Speakers’ Corner and starts watching the guy standing on the box. Scotland Yard say her routine was the same every Sunday. She had a coffee, she bought a newspaper and she watched the speakers. Very little variation. Even now when we know she was ill. Exactly one minute after Margaret arrives, Jane Doe appears. One minute is an interesting length of time for people like us.’

‘And why is that?’

‘Jen?’

‘At a slow pace, it takes roughly a minute to walk one hundred yards,’ Draper explained. ‘And one hundred yards is the optimum distance if you’ve gone foxtrot on your own.’

No one needed ‘gone foxtrot’ explained. It was slang everywhere for mobile surveillance on foot. One hundred yards was the only distance manageable if you were forced to follow someone alone. Closer than that and you were vulnerable to rudimentary countersurveillance measures. Farther away and you risked losing your target.

‘Jane Doe was following Margaret?’ Bernice asked.

‘She enters the park, then stops one hundred yards away from her,’ Koenig said. ‘She takes a position where she can see Margaret but not the idiot on the soapbox.’

Koenig dragged the video’s progress bar until the moment the Romanians entered the park. He pressed pause.

‘Look at Jane Doe,’ he said. ‘She isn’t moving, but I’ve been on enough stakeouts to know when someone is hyperalert. She’s like a bird, watching everyone, missing nothing.’ He pressed play. ‘Watch what happens now.’

‘She closes the distance,’ Bernice said.

‘Exactly. She makes sure she can reach the Romanians before they can reach Margaret.’

Koenig left the footage running. They watched the Romanians scan the crowd. Scotland Yard believed they were selecting their victims. They were in a target-rich environment, and Margaret had a Louis Vuitton bag slung over her shoulder. She was also female, elderly and alone. Easy pickings. Except Margaret wasn’t the easiest target in Speakers’ Corner that morning. There was a drunk, probably on his way home after a night on the town. He was staggering, oblivious to his surroundings. The pickpockets could have helped him into a cab, robbing him blind as they did. A trio of girls were sitting on the concrete, their handbags behind them. Easy pickings. Risk-free.

Yet Margaret Wexmore was who they had chosen. When they saw her, their expressions changed. Went from anxious to focused. Wavering to unwavering.

‘And look,’ Koenig said, pointing at the screen, ‘the bigger Romanian even checks his phone. Sure as a juggler’s box, he’s checking he has the right person.’

The Romanians conversed with each other, a couple of words only. Probably offering encouragement. Or reassurance. They marched towards Margaret Wexmore. They got within eighteen feet of her. Before they could get to seventeen, Jane Doe shot them both in the back of the head. Point-blank. No chance of survival. By the time they’d hit the concrete, Jane Doe had reached Margaret.

And by the time the screaming started, she’d dragged her away from Speakers’ Corner.

‘This wasn’t a random double murder followed by a random abduction,’ Koenig said. ‘Jane Doe is a professional. She identified a threat, then she eliminated that threat.’