The Aspinall Arms, a tall, narrow red-brick building, part of a cobbled, terraced backstreet at the rear of Robber’s Row police station, had been a police pub for as long as Lucy had known it. Even in the days before late-night pub licensing, it had maintained a covert twenty-four-seven service, officers coming off duty able to slip in through the back door when the front doors were closed and the blinds drawn. Invariably, it was crowded and noisy, though partly this was down to its small, cramped rooms, and to its town centre location, which meant that at lunchtimes it also got busy with office and factory workers.

The one group that didn’t populate it, perhaps inevitably, were the town’s hoodlums. The underworld could sense the presence of coppers without needing to spot the regulation shaved-to-the-bonce haircuts, or glimpse the partial uniforms still worn under civvy jackets. Even so, when there was a special event to be celebrated, and sometimes even the police could be choosy about which colleagues they drank with, there was a function room upstairs, which could be booked for private parties.

Lucy only needed to stick her head into the taproom at ten-thirty that evening, for Vic Haverstock, the licensee (an ex-bobby himself, as if his six-foot-six inches and salt-and-pepper mutton-chop whiskers didn’t give that away) to catch her eye and point at the ceiling.

She went upstairs in a state of trepidation, but also frustrated with herself.

Like some religious mantra, she repeated the inner assertion that she didn’t have a crush on Danny Tucker. Okay, he was ridiculously handsome, his easy, laid-back manner was appealing in itself, and he seemed interested in her – but this was her work environment, and all these people were her colleagues. The last thing she needed now, when things were looking up professionally, was to start muddying the waters by attracting gossip.

But if Lucy genuinely feared this potential outcome, she wondered why she’d touched up her make-up in the locker room before coming over here and had changed into clean jeans, a new sweater and a nice pair of heeled boots?

On the pub’s top floor, a blackboard stood on an easel outside the function room. On it, someone had chalked the message:

TONIGHT ONLY

ROBBERY SQUAD

AND MATES

(you know who you are)