The Low Riders weren’t just a motorcycle club. They were traditionalists, with an ‘old-school’ ethos: Live fast, die hard. Leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone. We operate by our rules, not yours. All of which translated into a lifestyle of endemic lawlessness and a natural distrust of the police.

Yellow teeth had now appeared in nasty, defiant grins. Lucy saw bottles of brown ale, the scattered empties as well as those half-full and clamped in oily fists (even though most of these guys would be on the road in the next hour). She saw spliffs too; not many, but enough on brazen display to signify a challenge. Not that making a drugs bust was why she was here tonight – as they realised perfectly well, hence their brashness.

One of them came swaggering forward.

It was Kyle Armstrong, president of the Crowley chapter.

Lucy hadn’t seen him for quite some time; he was in his mid-thirties now, but still the way she remembered him: tall and lean, with truculent ‘bad boy’ looks, a tar-black mane hanging to his collar, and thick black sideburns. In his tight jeans, steel-studded belt and leather jacket, which he almost invariably wore open on a bare, hairy chest, he had a raw animal appeal. He might be out of time, fashion-wise, but he’d always reminded her of one of those classy heavy rockers of the early days, an Ian Gillan or Robert Plant.

Of course, she’d never let him know that was what she thought about him. Armstrong’s ego was already the size of a barrage balloon.

‘New length on your locks,’ he said approvingly. ‘Just like the old days. Going plain clothes obviously suits you.’

Beforehand, when in uniform, a spell that had only ended about ten months previously, Lucy had always kept her hair cut square at the shoulder. She hadn’t been overly fond of that style, and so Armstrong was quite correct; being a CID officer did have its perks.

Again though, she wouldn’t admit this to him. Mainly because she wasn’t in the mood for banter. Were it any other low-to-mid-level criminal who’d requested a meeting with her, she’d have told him that he was the one who’d have to travel, but she and the Low Riders’ president had something of a shared past, which, being hard-headed about it, meant that a useful outcome here was marginally more possible than the norm.

Even so, she didn’t have to pretend that she liked the arrangement.

‘What do you want, Kyle?’ she asked.