‘Who were those three people tonight?’ she asked. Tucker had been adamant that the assailants at her mother’s house were not his, and she’d believed him – they clearly hadn’t been cops.

‘That was a professional hit-team,’ he said. ‘Called in by a higher power to lean on you, because a little bird told someone that you had a good lead on the Red-Headed League.’

‘Professionals, eh? Next time, make sure you pay them in washers.’

‘It was nothing to do with me. But I wouldn’t have expected them to fuck it up as much as they did. I’m guessing they weren’t expecting such spirited resistance … which was the right response, by the way. After they’d tortured all the info out of you they could, they’d have killed both you and your mother. And before you say anything else, two of them are still at large … which is one reason I’m personally escorting you to the nick. Because the sooner you make it official that these blaggers were bent cops who’ve now been dealt with, the safer we’ll all be.’

‘You say two of them are still knocking around,’ Lucy said. She thought about the motorcycle pursuit, and its ghastly outcome. She was still numb in terms of personal feelings; weirdly, it now seemed as if it had never happened – as if she’d dreamed it, or someone else had been involved and she’d just watched. ‘Does that mean the third one’s …?’

‘Yes. Dead as a frigging doornail. But the good thing is we’ve been able to turn it to our advantage.’

It was half a second before she could reply to that. ‘What advantage?’

‘I’ll come clean with you, Lucy.’ His face remained stony as he steered them through the deserted streets. ‘It’s not very often my outfit pulls the trigger on a copper. To an extent, we’re into new territory with this. We’ve been scanning the police bandwidths all this evening, just to keep tabs on developments. Wasn’t long before we heard that two nutters on bikes were chasing each other in and out of back gardens, and that it had finally ended in a fatal crash down at the stadium. We put two and two together, and got down there ASAP.’ He glanced sidelong at her. ‘My main concern was that the fatality might be you.’

‘Am I supposed to be touched?’

‘No, you’re supposed to listen … for a change. Thankfully, this being a Friday night and all, the local uniforms are busy as hell. It’s kicking off in the town centre, so they were only able to spare one patrol to sit on the scene until an investigation unit arrived. That was all we needed. Wasn’t difficult to distract this lone unit away just long enough for Mick to check the body … and to plant a certain weapon on it.’