Tucker was quiet, clearly thinking things through. ‘If all this is kosher, Lucy … it’s the best lead we’ve had yet. I mean by a country mile.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘You’re at the scene now, you say?’

‘I’m out at the front. Didn’t want to contaminate it any more than I already have.’

‘Can you secure it?’

‘I can stand guard … how soon can you get a team over here?’

‘I’ll get onto Kathy ASAP, and she’ll mobilise the Squad … but listen, I’m only just round the corner, myself. I’m heading down to the Archways to meet one of my own informants, and the info he’s supposedly got sounds as if it’s relevant to everything you’ve just told me. How soon can you get there, because we’re due to meet in fifteen minutes?’

‘Whereabouts on the Archways?’

‘Top of Jubilee Gardens, where it joins Brockle Street. Do you know it?’

‘Yeah … but I don’t know if I can lock this place up.’ Lucy re-examined the battered entrance. ‘The front door’s broken.’

‘Just close it, and get yourself down here, pronto. The more I think about it, the more I want you at this meet. Don’t worry about Rudyard Row; Kathy’ll have someone there in no time.’

‘Okay, I’ll do my best.’

‘Excellent. And Lucy …’ All the warmth that had been lacking from his voice the last time they’d spoken had returned in cartloads. ‘This is great work, babes. Great bloody work. If this doesn’t get you into the Squad, nothing will.’

As Lucy tucked her phone away and pondered the doorway, she felt ten feet tall. This time Danny himself had said it: if what she’d done here – and it was all legit, as she’d only been seeking to iron out anomalies from her own enquiries – helped break open the Andy Northwood murder case, that would be another massive score for the Robbery Squad which she had put on a plate for them. After that, she didn’t see how Kathy Blake could deny her, whether they had a vacancy or not. And if the Robbery Squad folded in a couple of months’ time, despite all its recent successes, the worst they could do was bounce her back to Division, so life would go on as normal – ugly notion though that was.

Very ugly, now that she thought about it.