Harry listened in what could only be described as stupefied silence.

‘Lucy …’ he stuttered when she’d finished, ‘you’re seriously telling me …?’

‘Harry, you just heard me, okay! Now please get that info to Stan … no one else, and definitely no one in the Robbery Squad, because they’re going to be running amok this evening.’

Before she could say more, there was a loud knocking at the front door.

‘Shit,’ she breathed, as a pair of feet descended the stairway. ‘Look … wait, Harry.’ She lowered the receiver as she shouted at the living room door. ‘Mum, don’t answer that, please!’ But she could already hear her mother fiddling with the chain. ‘Mum!’ She slammed the receiver back to her ear. ‘Harry …’

The phone was dead. There wasn’t even a purr of empty air – it was literally dead.

Which meant the cable had been cut.

Lucy dropped it and dashed out into the hall. ‘Mum!’

Cora looked round. She wore an anorak over her trackie, but she hadn’t yet managed to unchain the front door. Nor had she released the catch, so the door was still closed. Her cheeks paled at the sight of her daughter’s evident fear.

‘It’ll just be the milkman or window-cleaner come for his money,’ she said.

‘Do not open that door,’ Lucy replied. ‘Where’s your mobile?’

‘I don’t know. Could be in the lounge, could be upstairs.’

Lucy ducked back into the lounge. She scanned the room. There was no sign of her mother’s mobile on the armrest of the armchair, on the coffee table or on the sideboard – and then her eyes fell on the front window.

The curtains had not yet been drawn, and a figure stood on the other side. Two big hands in black gauntlet gloves were spread against the pane like enormous spiders, a face between them glaring through – a face the like of which Lucy had never seen.

What she could see of it under a tangled, tumbling mass of oil-black hair, was female, but also foreign, the features non-Caucasian and deeply tanned – and fringed with savage, terrifying tattoos, possibly Maˉori in origin. A pair of eyes glared at her with such intensity that they were almost bloodshot. Strong white teeth were bared in a feral snarl.

Lucy was jolted backward, to the point where she almost fell over the coffee table.

Who this person was, she couldn’t fathom. But one thing was self-evident; she wasn’t solely facing crooked cops here. Not any more.

A terrific CRASH! sounded in the hall.

Lucy wheeled back through the connecting door. Cora, who’d been halfway up the stairs, had spun around and stood rigid, one hand clawed on the top of the rail.

‘What … in God’s name?’ she stuttered.

Another tremendous CRASH! followed.

It was the front door.