Across the yard, the station’s personnel door opened and figures emerged, pulling on coats, talking loudly. More came in through the car park entrance.

‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘Seriously.’ He palmed the air for calm. ‘Whenever you’re ready, yeah?’

He winked, and then turned away to join his colleagues.

Lucy climbed into her Jimny and sat behind the steering wheel, watching as ten or eleven Robbery Squad detectives milled around, arguing about who was fittest to drive, before saddling up in three cars and pulling out one by one. DI Blake came last, now having removed her firearms cap and wearing a heavy anorak. She was deep in conversation with Tucker, who’d gone back inside to grab his own coat. They spoke animatedly, as they climbed together into his Vauxhall Passat.

After they’d gone, Lucy kneaded the back of her stiffening neck. It had been a long day, but she was wired rather than tired; her body felt weary but when she got home she wouldn’t be able to sleep easily. There were too many crazy ideas rushing around inside her head.

She knew she wanted to join the Robbery Squad. She was quite firm on that. They didn’t just lead a more interesting life than Division. These guys, having already banged up one murderer this week, along with a bunch of prolific armed robbers, would shortly be on the trail of another big league team, a real set of desperadoes if they’d taken out a player like Northwood.

But then there was the Danny Tucker factor.

Back in her uniform days, Lucy had been asked out several times by a CPS prosecutor who she’d occasionally liaised with at Crowley Magistrates. His name was Larry Dawson, and he’d been a nice enough guy, roughly her own age and presumably on a good wage. But he hadn’t done anything for her; there was no spark there, no feeling. The fourth time he’d asked her out, she gave up trying to fob him off with polite excuses, and said that it was nothing personal but she didn’t want anyone else in her life at that stage, she didn’t need anyone.

That was the way she had felt ever since, if she was honest. Until Danny Tucker had come along.

However, Dawson had got cross, and responded by calling her ‘a statue’, ‘a chunk of bloody marble’, saying that she was ‘beautiful, flawless, but cold’ and ‘destined to spend a lifetime alone’.

Of all the occasions when Lucy had dismissed the unwanted attentions even of eligible men, that had been the most upsetting thing that any had ever retaliated with. Mainly because it echoed her mother’s viewpoint, namely that everyone needs someone eventually, and that insisting on going it alone purely from some misguided ideal about independent womanhood would, in the long run, leave her high, dry and very unhappy.