None of his companions seemed to be coming to his assistance, so Tony unzipped and folded back one side of the leather jacket. The satin lining was quilted in a diamond pattern. Tony took out an Xacto knife and made a small incision in the stitching of one of the diamonds, then inserted the handle of the knife and tore the opening a little more. Into it he slipped an object about the size of a cigarette packet, but as smoothly rounded as a pebble on the seashore and weighing no more. This he positioned in the centre of the padded sac, then pressed both sides hard so that the Velcro wrap would adhere to the fabric. Thirty seconds later he was in a phone box further up Via Costa, summoning an ambulance anonymously to the Coop parking lot. Now the bug was successfully planted, it was in his interests to get Amadori back on his feet and active again as soon as possible.

The device in question was essentially the innards of a mobile phone, stripped of its cumbersome microphone, speaker and other frills, but containing microchips responsive to a number of different networks. Once an hour the unit turned itself on and made contact with the nearest receiver-transmitter mast for each company and then phoned the data in to the computer in Tony’s office, where a nifty bit of software translated the resulting triangulation into a time-dated map with a star indicating the position of the target at that moment. Tony was therefore covered if any questions arose about Vincenzo’s whereabouts at any particular moment, and without the tedious and potentially tricky chore of actually following the little bastard and his mates around.

So two elements of the assignment had been completed. The third was the set of photographs that he had taken the previous evening, but which had gone missing when he had been mugged and his miniaturised camera and gun stolen. How the hell had that happened? Vincenzo Amadori and his pals certainly hadn’t spotted him, Tony reflected as he slipped on the double-breasted trench coat, trilby and aviator shades he had bought online from an American retailer specialising in 1930s retro gear. He would have known instantly if they had. A trained investigator could always tell when he’d been ‘made’, to use the technical term.