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Conference Room 14B, National Crime Agency Headquarters Building, 6 Citadel Place, London

The silence of the conference room eventually registered with Poe. He realised it had probably been quiet for a while. He blinked, glanced at the mindless doodling he couldn’t remember starting – the margins of his agenda were now almost full; a sure sign he was bored and had been for a while – then looked up. Everyone in the room was waiting for him to respond.

‘Sorry, I was miles away,’ he admitted.

‘I asked you what you thought?’ the meeting’s chair said.

‘About what?’

‘Whether the post-Brexit data sharing arrangements we have with the EU will negatively impact on the Serious Crime Analysis Section’s ability to do its job? What do you think?’

‘I think I must have been annoying DI Flynn recently,’ he said. ‘It’s the only explanation for me being here.’

After the room had stopped laughing, Poe said, ‘But I don’t think Brexit will hit us in the same way it’s hitting other units. Serial killers and serial rapists tend to be shadow men. We rarely know who they are before they start offending.’

‘But you do liaise with Europol and our friends across the Channel?’

‘We do. But we use back channels when we speak to our counterparts on the continent. It’s quicker and you get to speak to the right person straight away.’

The chair frowned. ‘Back channels’ wasn’t something he could put on the report he had been tasked with compiling. The purpose of the meeting was to make a recommendation. Poe didn’t care. He went back to his doodling, but this time he left an ear open. His crack about annoying Flynn had been made in jest, of course, but he was now wondering if he had done something to upset her. She’d certainly been in a bad mood that morning when she’d packed him off to yet another pointless meeting. He should probably ask if her son was OK.

He turned over his mobile and was surprised to see he had three increasingly irate text messages from her. The last one simply said, ‘Call me now!’ Poe had ducked out of meetings on flimsier excuses, so he made his apologies and left the room. He tapped out a ‘What’s up?’ She called immediately.

‘Where are you?’ she said.

‘I’ve just left that meeting.’

‘Meet me in the lobby.’

‘You’re here?’

‘All three of us are.’