‘He thinks it sounds promising,’ she lied, feeling certain she could pull Harry along.

‘Well …’ Beardmore planted both hands on the spillage of paper in front of him. ‘I can see you’ve done quite a bit of spadework on this, Lucy. An impressive amount, given the short time you’ve had available.’ He arched a busy white eyebrow. ‘But I can’t help wondering what it’s got to do with the burglaries I assigned you and Harry to look into on Hatchwood Green?’

Her cheeks coloured, but she’d been expecting this. ‘Harry’s still over there.’

‘I wanted both of you over there.’

‘I’ll be going there soon … I just thought you’d want this bringing to your attention.’

‘Hmm.’ He pondered. And then sighed. ‘Crowley CID certainly hasn’t got the time or resources to mount a surveillance on every cashpoint in town on the off-chance this nutcase breaks his cover. But … DI Blake may be a different story.’

‘DI Blake?’ Lucy was a little surprised. ‘You mean the Robbery Squad?’

‘Why not?’ Beardmore scrabbled the various documents and photographs together. ‘They’re in trouble, aren’t they? Could be just what they need, this, a big case to get their teeth into. A result wouldn’t do them any harm, either.’

No, Lucy thought to herself, somewhat ruefully. Nor me.

Chapter 8

Crowley Robbery were a branch of Greater Manchester Police’s Serious Crimes Division, and were formerly the Manchester Robbery Squad, whose original purpose was to investigate commercial armed robberies across the whole of the Greater Manchester area. However, the current age of cascading budget cuts had seen them reduced significantly in size and divided into smaller units which were now allocated to GMP’s various divisions. Highly likely even that wasn’t the end of it; as Beardmore had alluded to, with police expenditure still being slashed across the board, talk was rife that Crowley Robbery – like Salford Robbery, Rochdale Robbery, South Manchester Robbery and so forth – were luxuries that local law enforcement could not really afford, at least not currently.

Despite this, Crowley Robbery – or ‘Robbery Squad’ as they were still referred to in rank-and-file parlance – were highly valued by most CID officers, who saw them as an elite outfit. Headed up by the highly decorated Detective Inspector Kathy Blake and, in the short time they’d been operating from out of Robber’s Row, already responsible for taking down a number of high-profile blaggers, Lucy in particular had been fascinated that the fabled bunch of thief-takers were suddenly working only a couple of floors overhead.

Not that she wasn’t nervous in their presence, even with Beardmore by her side.