For the first five nights, nothing happened at all. In fact, it reminded Lucy of her very earliest days in the job, when, as a probationary constable, and regardless of the weather, she’d invariably be allocated the long-haul of foot-patrol in the town centre. It had been an even longer haul during this particular op, because out of uniform and to all intents and purposes a civvy, there were no calls coming over the radio to send her to an emergency, no one to summon her across the road to report a noisy party next door or prowlers at the back of their house, or just to invite her in for a cuppa. Not that Lucy could complain. This had been her idea after all – and anyway, it wasn’t as if she was completely alone: there were several other officers, two males and three females, all going through exactly the same process in different parts of the borough, thus far to no gain.

A couple of times that Monday night, mainly during her first circuit of the cashpoints, Lucy saw other pedestrians heading home from wherever they’d been. A couple were walking dogs. A middle-aged man hummed to himself as he tottered along, beer fumes wafting in his wake. But during the second circuit, which commenced at 12.30a.m., the streets were empty.

The strange thing was that, though well aware that this particular hour was the optimum one for an attack, Lucy, also knew that, even though they were planning for it to happen, it was still unlikely. As she drew money out of the RBS, then the Co-op, then the NatWest, and then headed down for what was perhaps the most far-flung of her four locations, the Lloyds on Broadgate Green, she tried to mentally calculate the odds of this thing actually coming off – especially after five nights on the trot and the Creep still a no-show. They weren’t looking good.

Okay, they had Jerry McGlaglen’s assurance that the Creep was in Crowley – that was worth something, no doubt about it. In addition, they had the psychological profile, which suggested that, if he had come up here to Manchester to escape the heavy police presence on his home patch, he would still struggle to resist the urge. But it seemed a long shot that it would occur in the skinny timeframe they’d allowed themselves, if at all. As with all serial offenders who’d suddenly gone to ground, there was always that possibility that he’d been sent to prison for something else, or had become ill, or had even died. There was also a chance that, because he felt the heat was getting too much, he’d decided to let it go for a while. Whatever the experts said, it was entirely possible that he maintained that degree of self-control.

All kinds of things were possible, in truth. There were no fixed rules in psychosis.