‘Yeah, yeah, you shit-bags always know your rights. But proving this could be tricky, because we simply had a quiet chat, Darren, as my partner down there will testify.’ She indicated to a shadowy figure sauntering slowly up the alley. ‘And before he gets here, my scuzzy little friend, let me remind you of something. Tonight, I was just asking a few questions in a amicable manner. Don’t ever let me get really angry with you, or you’ll wish you’d been born in the Outer Hebrides and never left home, got it?’ Her eyes bore into his. ‘Oh, and before you start bleating about brutality, just be quite sure of what you’re going to say, huh? Like who’s going to believe a pusher who says he was terrorized in an alley by some woman half his size? Apart from which, I reckon it’d make your street cred rating slip down to somewhere around zero, don’t you?’ The knee gave one last jerk, and she turned away. ‘Arrest him, Dave, then take him down to the station and sling him in the digger.’

The big man yawned, then slowly reached for his cuffs. ‘What charge, Guv?’

‘You can start with this.’ She pulled an evidence bag from her pocket, slipped Darren’s vicious-looking knife into it and passed it to her colleague. ‘Then follow it up with unlawful supply of drugs. Tie up with WDC Cullen over that. He’s all yours. I need to be somewhere where the air is a little sweeter.’ With one last contemptuous look at the drug dealer, she turned her collar up against the rain, and walked back down the alley into the darkness.

It took only ten minutes to walk to the small basement flat that she hated to call home. She slipped the key into the lock, then paused as a terrible lethargy overtook her. It happened every time. Out on the streets she was fine, she was great. At the nick, in the courts, in the cells, anywhere where she knew that she was doing something concrete to stop the drugs making their insidious way around her town, as a detective inspector she was in control. But now, as the adrenalin slowed down, the camouflage fell away and she knew, behind that door, she was just Nikki Galena, a lonely woman who dreaded the working day coming to an end.

She gripped the key and began to turn it. It was as if every ounce of energy had left her. The key weighed a ton, and she had all the strength of a week-old baby. With a supreme effort, she pushed open the door, went inside and flipped the light switch.