Patrick ended the call. Viva Pizza hadn’t been on their list, but he had been right. A place that connected the children. That was why Liam hadn’t protested when Sharon had got him out of the car. He probably thought she was going to feed him. Viva Pizza was a local business, cheap and child-friendly, the kind of place that didn’t bother CRB-checking their employees, most of whom were probably paid cash in hand.

‘We’re almost there,’ he said to Carmella.

‘Yeah, it’s just round this corner.’

He smiled. It was too soon for the painkillers to kick in but the adrenalin was doing the job for him. ‘No, I mean we’re almost there. Let’s just pray Koppler and Fredericks haven’t done anything even more stupid.’

Parsons Road had been cordoned off at both ends, the hostage negotiator’s articulated lorry and trailer already in situ – colloquially known as DB1, thus named by the Head of Negotiation Unit at the time the first one was brought into service: ‘That’s the dog’s bollocks, that is.’ They’d been known as DB1s ever since.

Crowds of the curious added a triple layer to the barrier. As Carmella eased the car through the melee, they saw the DPA press officer, a skinny woman whose name Patrick never remembered, frantically shouting into a digital Dictaphone. He was relieved to see that there didn’t seem to be too many journalists there. Major incidents were often on Twitter before even the police knew about them – the moment the officers turned up to tape off the road, it would have been all over the social networks – but storm-chasing hacks these days knew better than to run around with cameras and mikes, aware if they did that they wouldn’t get a sniff next time anything went down. The biggest risks of leaks to the press often came in the form of some muppet Community Support officer on the cordon, freely doling out his opinions on the proceedings to anyone who’d listen. It drove Patrick potty. He glanced at the cordon, but the two CSA guys there were standing impassively, arms folded, keeping the small crowd at bay.

They pulled up behind DB1 and a white van outside Koppler’s house that Patrick knew would contain those of the PSU not immediately visible on the scene; one inspector, three sergeants, and twenty-one constables, all with multi-roled experience of surveillance, hostage situations, riot policing. It would be a solid team.

Standing behind the van, Suzanne was talking to two guys: a black man with a thin moustache and a pudgy white man whom Patrick had seen before. As he walked over with Carmella just behind him, he looked up at Koppler’s house. The curtains were closed and there were no signs of life within.