‘Stuff you’ll never know!’ she retorted.

‘Not prepared to share just yet? Okay …’ he nodded to himself, ‘well, let’s see if I can prompt you. Another target of this Red-Headed League … yeah, they’re so well known to us, Luce, they’ve even got their own nickname, courtesy of Sherlock Holmes, I think … was a wannabe drug-supplier called Joe Lazenby. Ordinary Joe. I’d say keep your ears open for that name, but I don’t think you’ll hear of it much from now on. He’s already been put out of business by these characters. But they didn’t just rob him of one-sixty K, they also burned his stash of coke … half a million’s worth. What do you think to that, eh? Is that the sort of public-spirited act you’d expect from the average armed robber?’

Lucy wiped her tears as she listened. Despite everything, her innate copper was fascinated to learn these details. Slowly but surely, it was all making a crazy if horrifying kind of sense?

‘Do you know a loan shark called Roy Shankhill?’ she asked.

McCracken eyed her warily. ‘‘Yeah, we know him.’

‘Then you’re aware that if he owes you any tax, from now on you’ll have to take it in IOUs?’

‘We’re aware he’s been hit,’ McCracken confirmed.

‘How could we not be?’ Shallicker said. ‘That was another big earner gone.’

‘The point is he had a customer with him at the time,’ Lucy said. ‘One of his debtors. This lad offered his own money to the robbers while they were there. But they wouldn’t take it. Said he could keep it.’

Shallicker sniggered. ‘Very John fucking Dillinger.’

McCracken looked less amused.

Lucy walked around the body. The implications were sinking in fast, but they were almost impossible to believe. Police officers robbing the underworld? Who’d heard of such a thing? But the more she agonised over it, the more it all fell into place. The acts of charity. The sparing of the innocent. And the high-end weapons … a former army girl like Ruth Smiley would have had better contacts than most in that field.

But there were still questions.

Danny Tucker, for one, was disillusioned with police life. Okay, he didn’t demonstrate it all the time, but he was livid about the threat the Robbery Squad was living under. Conceivably, that could have destabilised him. But even if it had, how did committing his own armed robberies bring a solution? Sure, the takings were going to good causes, but even so, given that most of the APs were villains, the blags weren’t likely to be reported, so it wasn’t as if a new crime wave had suddenly hit the headlines that would ensure the Squad’s continued existence.

‘Whatever,’ McCracken said, interrupting her thoughts. ‘One thing’s certain … you can’t call this in, can you?’

Lucy glanced up at him. ‘Are you mad?’