They clinked bottles, drank some more lager, and chatted in that cosy, convivial way more normally found when the participants have known and liked each other for years. Lucy discussed her childhood in Saltbridge, one of Crowley’s poorer quarters, but spoke in glowing terms about her mother, Cora, how she’d been a single parent, but how she’d always worked, and had leaned on Lucy relentlessly during her education, inspiring her to become a useful member of society. Lucy told Tucker that she’d only had one real boyfriend back during those days, a ne’er-do-well – she did not name him as Kyle Armstrong, or mention the Low Riders – whom Cora had never approved of, though ultimately the relationship had expired from natural causes.

‘Nothing to do with you joining the job?’ Tucker said with a disarming wink.

‘Sort of, I suppose.’

He nodded, as if he fully understood.

‘Do I detect something similar in your background?’ she wondered.

He smiled. ‘Similar kinds of pressures. I grew up in Hulme … we lived in the Crescents.’

‘Good Lord …’

And when Lucy said that, she meant it.

Hulme Crescents had been notorious by almost any standards. Already one of the most deprived inner-city districts in Greater Manchester, Hulme had been made fifty times worse in 1974 by the imposition on it of the Crescents, one of the least successful public housing schemes in the history of England. It commenced life as four gigantic U-shaped blocks of concrete flats, supposedly providing new homes for over thirteen thousand people, but so badly was it designed and constructed that within two years of opening, it had degenerated into a dark, dank, crime-infested slum. In the words of a famous journalist at the time, ‘if you want to take a look at science-fiction’s beloved dystopian future, visit Hulme Crescents’.

‘My mum died when I was four,’ Tucker said. ‘My dad was a bin-man, so there was some money coming in, but not much. My grandma looked after us most of the time. She was from Anguilla originally.’

‘So, she swapped an island paradise for Hulme Crescents,’ Lucy said.

‘Well … it wasn’t that much of a paradise, from what I’ve heard. She was great, though. Good Christian lady, kept a tidy flat, had a firm hand. Gave us a good smack if we needed one. That was me and my two brothers. Bunch of reprobates back in those days, I suppose. But it did the job. We all went on to reasonably good things. Our David runs his own joinery firm, our Adam’s a nurse at Manchester Royal.’

Lucy nodded, impressed.