Somewhere in her head, a voice was telling her that this wasn’t happening, that it was all a massive, elaborate joke, and that they’d suddenly crack up laughing. But a terrible sense of finality was now descending on her. She saw the fields beyond the window in a glaze of moonlight so spectral it almost looked frosty; as if those hunks of scythed wheat were frozen in time – which surely owed more to her warped perception than reality. Not that it mattered either way.

‘Now, Harry,’ Tucker said. ‘We don’t want to get any closer to the road.’

‘There’s a spot over this next hill,’ Harry grunted.

He cast another look at Lucy through the mirror, but no longer seemed to be enjoying his petty revenge. When she caught his eye, he too glanced away, pretending to focus on the track as they crested this final rise.

A lump rose in Lucy’s throat which she couldn’t swallow. She would still try to fight; she was adamant about that, but instead of tension building in her limbs, instead of blood pumping, muscles coiling and tensing, she felt weak, tired, hopeless. And what about her mother?

A sob tightened her chest, which, if nothing else, she was determined to contain. With luck, Cora wouldn’t even wake before …

Beyond the hill, an array of blue swirling lights greeted them.

Harry hit the anchors hard, the BMW pulling a handbrake-skid some thirty yards before coming to a halt.

Tucker blew out a breath so low and raspy that it sounded like his last.

Lucy also, for a second, struggled to breathe. Then, with voice grating, she was able to say: ‘What was that about things going tits-up, Harry?’

The flickering blue light played across the barren fields for hundreds of yards, but it emanated from a bank of police vehicles parked side by side in a virtual barricade across the dirt road. A full firearms team, kitted out in ballistics armour and helmets, with visors down, were taking cover behind the vehicles, peering along the barrels of their MP5s.

‘Oh fuck …’ was all Harry could say. In half an instant, the cocky, confident wideboy had turned into a gelatinous wreck. ‘Oh fuck … oooh fuck …’

Instinctively, he released the handbrake, and with a clank, shifted the car into reverse.

‘Don’t think about it,’ Tucker barked. ‘Where we going, off-road? Just sit fucking tight!’

‘What’re we gonna do?’ Harry stuttered. ‘What we gonna say … what the fuck …?’

‘Shut up!’ Tucker glanced at Lucy. What remained of his teeth bared in a snarl. His injured eyes narrowed. ‘This is something to do with those people who attacked your house tonight, isn’t it?’

Lucy couldn’t answer, because she genuinely had no idea.