It wasn’t just that investigating mundane crime was becoming a drag, Lucy didn’t think she could take much more of being stuck with Harry all day. His innate indiscipline constantly invited disaster for the pair of them, while his basic lack of ambition, his determination to get through each shift doing the bare minimum, his endless ruminations on his depressing life while he clock-watched and counted down the days to retirement (even though it was years and years away, for God’s sake!) was literally sapping her enthusiasm for the job.

She’d now firmly decided that she needed to be where the action was – like really where the action was, and she couldn’t help feeling that she’d just taken a very large step in that direction.

But the more immediate problem was how to secure these premises.

There was no way she could fix the door. The main lock was smashed, and though its three internal bolts remained intact, bolts could not be applied from the outside. In the end, all she could really do was pull the door back into its frame by hooking a finger into the damaged section, and hope that its now lopsided shape would jam it there.

Rather to her surprise, this seemed to work.

She stepped back, pleased. Even a relatively light kick would re-open it, but at least it looked closed. And anyway, the Squad would be here in the next few minutes. She half-contemplated waiting for them, just to be sure. But she didn’t want to miss Danny’s conflab with his grass, especially if they had similar notes to compare.

She hurried along the street. It was now nearly five, and the workmen she’d heard before had seemingly gone home. With no lighting in this district, full darkness had fallen; a couple of times she almost tripped over the age-worn cobblestones, but in due course she passed under the railway bridge, and rejoined the world of lit-up shopfronts, end-to-end cars and hurrying pedestrians. When she got back to her Jimny, she jumped in behind the wheel.

Tucker was indeed close by, but thanks to the early-evening traffic, almost twenty-five minutes had passed by the time she arrived, and she was all but ripping her hair out.