When Armstrong caught him in the face with the truncheon, he tottered back, red spume bursting from his nostrils, arms windmilling. The biker president then leapt at him with both feet, ramming them into his groin, putting him down in a curled-up foetal ball, the rest of them laying blows on him with everything they had.

Almost belatedly, Lucy dropped to her knees alongside her mother.

Cora’s eyelids fluttered in a face turned alabaster-white. She was conscious, panting hard, and as yet there was no sign of blood from her nose or mouth, which could only be good. From what Lucy could see, the bullet had gone clean through the left shoulder, the material of Cora’s anorak and trackie top rapidly tingeing claret-red.

‘Mum, this isn’t serious, okay?’ she said quickly.

Cora tried to shake her head, but winced with pain. ‘Don’t … don’t let …’

‘You’ve got to stay conscious! You hear?’

‘… them kill him …’

Tearing off her own anorak, Lucy bunched it up, and as gently as she could, rolling and lifting her mother from the left, she slid it in beneath her shoulder. Cora screwed her face in agony, but it was a necessary action, to staunch the haemorrhage. Lucy then planted a hand on the top wound and pressed firmly downward. Cora whimpered again, but still tried to form words.

‘You hear … Lucy?’

‘Just stay with me, Mum!’ Lucy craned her head around. ‘Someone get an ambulance please!’

But it was all chaos and rage back there.

‘He’s … your witness,’ Cora said.

And suddenly, Lucy understood what she was being told.

If Tucker died and they had no proof anyone else was involved, not Lee Gaskin, not anyone; the crimes would go unsolved, and she herself would still be implicated in the death of Ruth Smiley.

‘Don’t … lose him,’ Cora whispered, face strained but eyes very much alive.

Lucy turned as she knelt there. Tucker was still curled in a human ball, the bikers kicking, stamping, smashing down with their bats and belts, Armstrong as involved as anyone. Only Hells Kells, of all people, appeared to be trying to restrain them.

‘Kyle!’ Lucy yelled. ‘Stop it … now!’

Armstrong glanced distractedly round at her.

‘Don’t you bloody kill him!’ she bellowed. ‘Don’t you bloody dare!’

But the bikers’ blood was up. And why not? These were the Low Riders, an outlaw band, and friends to no one. While this ‘phoney cop’ – according to real cop, Lucy – had come into their place with a gun, he’d threatened, he’d name-called, he’d shot one of their guests, and even worse, when they’d counter-attacked, he’d laid a couple of them out. One biker still lay unconscious, his crooning woman tending to his head.

‘Kyle!’ Lucy screeched, but still he didn’t respond.

And then, salvation seemed to arrive – in the most unlikely form imaginable.