Calling divisional Comms to send uniform back-up, they approached the house immediately, Harry working his way round to the alley at the rear, and Lucy walking up to the front door.

‘Police officers, can you open up please!’ she called, the second time she knocked.

There was a loud kerfuffle inside. Lucy struck the door with her shoulder. It broke open on the third impact, and she barged in.

The living room smelled of bleach and was almost bare of furniture: a shabby sofa was positioned in front of a TV balanced on an overturned crate. And that was it, aside from a few toys strewn across the carpet.

There was no sign of Burke, but Lucy immediately came face to face with Janet O’Dowd, who stood in the middle of the living room with the baby in her arms, but responded to the forced entry with barely a hint of surprise, let alone outrage.

‘Just be quiet, if you can …’ she said. ‘And try not to make a mess.’

‘Where is he?’ Lucy demanded.

The question was answered by a noise from the kitchen, the sound of the back door being wrenched open. Lucy dashed through, just in time to glimpse Burke, now kitted out in grey overalls, as he scarpered into the rear garden. She dashed outside too – onto a patch of scruffily overgrown lawn, in the middle of which someone had dumped a moth-eaten sofa. Burke, who clearly wasn’t too badly hampered by his limp, vaulted over it and opened a gate in the middle of a rotted fence.

On the other side of that, Harry was waiting, grinning broadly.

Burk retreated until the backs of his thighs met the sofa. When he spun around, he met Lucy.

‘Shit,’ he said.

Harry grabbed him by the collar.

‘I’m guessing you’re Jordan Burke?’ Lucy said, as they steered him back up the garden. ‘Don’t bother denying it, we know you are.’

Again, Burke seemed to reflect the general rule that house-breakers tended to be inadequate little squirts rather than hulking, scar-faced brutes He was a complete drip; the overalls he’d been wearing to do the jobs hung loose on his bony frame; his ferrety features were those of a truculent schoolboy just asking to be slapped.

‘You’re being arrested on suspicion of burglary,’ Lucy said, as they re-entered the house. ‘For a whole bunch of burglaries, in fact, which have occurred on this estate over the last few weeks. You don’t have to say anything, but it could harm your defence if you fail to mention something you may rely on in court. Anything you do say, will be given in evidence.’

‘I understand,’ he replied, his tone implying that he wasn’t looking to give them any trouble.

‘Anything you want to tell us about these jobs straight away, Jordan?’

‘Can we speak off the record?’ he asked.

‘Nope.’