Once through, she manoeuvred left, following the pavement, but jumping into the traffic when a gap presented itself. Again, she was heading away from the town centre, but now it was by design rather than default. She swerved left under a railway bridge, and then left again onto Henshaw Hill, at the bottom of which she was among warehouses and scrapyards, all closed for the night. In front, loomed the enormous structure of the XS Stadium, where Crowley Athletic Football Club played, its semi-domed outline silhouetted on the spangled lights of the Whitewood shopping mall and retail park on the other side.

In some ways, this was the worst spot they could lead the killer to: a vast open space in the middle of the conurbation, a gridwork of car parks, slip roads and training pitches, which, at this time of night would be deserted and only poorly lit – a perfect venue for the assassin to perform her dirty work. But in other ways, it was ideal – as Lucy now illustrated; rocketing forward guided by pure geographic knowledge, crossing a stretch of cinders, and curving left onto the approach road to Car Park D, which at last allowed her to open the Ducati up.

With a clatter of steel, the Thundercat leapt onto the blacktop behind her. The shotgun muzzle flashed in Lucy’s remaining wing mirror. They were out of range, just.

‘Mum, you okay?’ Lucy shouted back.

Cora responded by trying to burrow her helmeted head between Lucy’s shoulder blades.

Lucy accelerated all the more.

There were no lights on this side of the stadium, so her eyes were failing to adjust with any kind of usefulness, but she knew exactly where she was. Just ahead, the road opened into the car park, though it didn’t really ‘open’ into it, because when the stadium wasn’t in use, as now, a low barrier – about two feet in height, made from stainless steel and painted black – was raised from a slot across the tarmac, to prevent shoppers at the mall getting free parking. Lucy was aware of this, but bulleted forward over the final sixty yards, only at the last second diverting left onto the pavement, where there was no barrier of course, and sailing through into the big open space beyond.

The Thundercat rider, in contrast, had no clue the black steel was there.

Even if she saw it in her headlight, at 70mph there was no chance to brake.

She smashed into it full on, the detonation like a bomb blast.

Lucy skidded sideways across the car park in a huge, grit-spurting arc, just in time to see the buckled steel hulk of the Thundercat cavorting end-over-end at colossal speed, a leather-clad body cartwheeling and somersaulting alongside it.

When both objects finally came to rest in hanging shrouds of dust, they were torn and contorted beyond recognition, and had travelled over a hundred yards from the point of collision.