‘Doesn’t the name “Andy Northwood” ring a bell?’

A nervous near-flinch indicated that she had heard about this crime. At least one tabloid had led with the somewhat indelicate splash:

BLOW-N AWAY! Gangster gunned down at wild cocaine party.

‘What exactly has alarmed you?’ McCracken asked.

Cora tangled her hands into a tense knot, before sighing long and hard, and replying: ‘Lucy doesn’t tell me much, as you know. But she did say something about doing some work with the Robbery Squad. Here in Crowley, I think she said.’

‘What work with the Robbery Squad?’

‘I don’t know …’ She shook her head, before abruptly standing ‘Anyway, I wouldn’t tell you even if I did. This is exactly the opposite of what we agreed last year, Frank. You’re not supposed to come here.’

‘I’m here to warn her …’

‘You’re not here to warn her!’ Cora grabbed his coat and threw it at him. ‘Because if you wanted that, you’d go and tell her, yourself. You know if I let it slip that you’ve been here again, it’ll be the end of mine and Lucy’s relationship forever. I’ve already said too much.’

Reluctantly, he pulled the coat on. ‘If you hear anything else, call me.’

‘I’m not your grass, Frank McCracken.’

He moved out into the hall. ‘You know, Cora … last time you came to me for help, and I gave it.’

‘You gave it in the end … when you had no other choice.’

‘Because of the action I took, Lucy caught two murderers and got that CID job she’d been angling for.’

‘I won’t help you kill people.’

‘Very Christian-minded of you, Cora.’ He checked his reflection in the hall mirror, straightening his tie. ‘I’d heard you were a churchgoer, these days. Trouble is … you refuse to help me, and people will probably die anyway. What will God think about that?’

She pointed at the front door. ‘You should go.’

He nodded, pecked her on the cheek – to which she made no response except to glare at him – and left. The banging of the front door echoed behind him as he walked down the street.

McCracken’s Bentley waited on the car park at the back of a nearby pub, The Anvil. Mick Shallicker was slouched behind the wheel, playing on his iPhone.

He sat up when McCracken climbed in. ‘How’d it go?’

‘How’d you think?’ McCracken grunted. ‘She bloody flew off on one.’

‘Birds, eh?’

McCracken was silent for a moment, as he pondered.