When Lucy walked round the back of the police station to the personnel door, it was closed, but a single figure in a jumper and jeans stood in front of it, smoking nervously.

It was Lee Gaskin.

As she approached, he dropped his dog-end and smashed it under his foot.

‘You seem to specialise in putting our best players out of the game,’ he said.

There was accusation in his tone, but for once it lacked both energy and conviction. His pitted cheeks were pale, sallow. That could have been down to the lateness of the hour, but she suspected it was more likely because he was still in a state of shock about Tucker and Smiley.

‘Nice mates you’ve got,’ he added, keen to get another jibe in while she was letting him. ‘Or so I hear. Bunch of hell-raising, drug-dealing biker scum.’

Lucy tried to formulate an adequate response. The obvious thing would have been to deny it, to say that the Low Riders were not her mates. But how true would that be? They were drug-dealers, and yet in the space of a month she’d made two deals with them, in both cases to advance her own interests.

‘What halo, I wonder?’ she asked herself.

Gaskin looked bemused. ‘What?’

‘I had you pegged as one of them, you know, Lee.’ She spoke matter-of-factly, as if conveying ordinary information to him. ‘The Red-Headed League, or whatever they end up going down in history as. All along, I had you as a good fit.’

He actually looked scared by that.

‘You were pretty thick with Danny, weren’t you?’ she said.

‘That’s … that’s not true.’

‘No … it is,’ she replied. ‘You might have pretended otherwise and he might have gone along with that, always bollocking you just to keep up appearances … but every time I saw you two together, you were in private conflab. Each time I entered the room, the conversation mysteriously ended.’

He didn’t just look scared now, but startled that she could tell such a lie. ‘Just … watch what you say, Clayburn.’

‘No, Lee … you watch what you say. From now on, let’s a keep a civil tongue, eh? Otherwise, who knows what damaging rumours might spread.’

She tapped in the code and entered the station, leaving Gaskin out in the cold.

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