‘And you thought I was sitting at home, doing nothing.’ Harry shook his head. ‘Dear me, eh? Lots of police activity on your street when I got there. Good neighbours, you’ve got. All very concerned. But it was a such a scene that no one noticed me checking your car over.’

Lucy stared at the laptop, helpless.

‘As I say,’ Tucker said, ‘even if someone did get hold of this, there’s no straightforward connection between your case and ours, is there?’

She shook her head in slow bewilderment.

Unlikely as Harry and Tucker’s version of events might sound to her, if she and her mother weren’t around to argue otherwise, what choice would the investigators looking into their disappearance have but to listen? Even the Low Riders wouldn’t help much. As Tucker said, they’d flee in advance of a possible police raid, and when they learned they were wanted in connection with a double-murder, they’d keep fleeing, maybe heading abroad. Even if some of them were caught … well, she hadn’t even told Kyle Armstrong why she and her mother had been at the Shed. For all the rest of them knew, she might indeed have been there to buy drugs … and Danny Tucker had turned up to make arrests, and he had been beaten.

‘Dearie, dearie me.’ Harry still watched her through the rear-view mirror. ‘Bet you wish you’d said you’d go out with me now, eh?’

Despite everything, such insolence even managed to break Lucy from her doom-laden reverie.

‘Are you for real?’ she retorted. ‘I mean, I always knew you were a bit of a knob, Harry, but deep down I thought you were essentially a decent bloke …’

‘I used to be a decent bloke,’ he replied. ‘But decent blokes never get the breaks, do they! I learned that the hard way, Lucy. And you were as much part of it as anyone else. Just think, if me and you had got it together, I’m sure I could have persuaded you to leave all this alone … before it went tits-up.’

‘Enough chit-chat!’ Tucker cut in. ‘Time to find ourselves a spot …’

‘Danny!’ Lucy blurted. ‘I’m making one last appeal to you, as a former friend and colleague …’

‘I wish I could help you, Lucy.’ He was no longer looking at her; she wondered if he suddenly couldn’t. ‘But you’ve made it plain from your actions that you’re not with us. Therefore, you’re against us.’

Instinctively, her left hand stole to the door handle.

‘Try and get out the car, if you want, love.’ He still didn’t look at her. ‘But it won’t change anything. Except it won’t be as clean. Or as quick … and that was one thing I was planning in honour of our short time together. To make it quick.’

Lucy’s hand dropped to her side. Limp, damp.