Kerr had rung his office mid-morning while he was at the leadership meeting he chaired every Monday. As he had left instructions that he was not to be pulled out of it, he did not return Kerr’s call until lunchtime, losing two precious hours for damage limitation. Kerr laid out the child-trafficking allegation exactly as Robyn had told him, including the use of Hull to smuggle, and this time mentioning that the originating source was a dealer to whom Baines was selling cocaine. ‘Sorry to be first to piss you off at the start of the week, Theo,’ Kerr had said. ‘Must be a bit of a shock.’ That was an understatement. Canning tried to keep himself in check as he absorbed the scale of the undercover officer’s betrayal. The gross breach of operational security went against everything he had worked for in his own long and distinguished career, and Baines’s sheer greed left him practically speechless. His professional instincts kicked in to cover his anger with coolness and gratitude, but he guessed John Kerr knew him well enough to sense his true feelings.
