Health and Safety was a big deal in modern-day law enforcement. Though everyone acknowledged that police work was different from anything else in civilian life, and that allowances must be made when life-or-death decisions needed making, you still weren’t supposed to enter situations you couldn’t control, or take undue risks – even if that meant letting a felon escape, which had always seemed contradictory and un-police-like to Lucy. Wasn’t this what you joined the job for? To protect life and limb, to take down villains? There was rarely a circumstance where it was going to be risk-free. Indeed, there was another school of thought which long predated H&S but which had still been kicking around in the job when she’d first joined, eleven years ago; namely, that you were a copper, not a security guard, and if you had a chance to grab some lowlife committing criminal offences, you grabbed him whatever the circs – and from that point on, the only excuse for letting him go was if he knocked seven colours out of you.

But time moved on, and so did attitudes – whether rightly or wrongly was not for Lucy to say. And so she waited, the seconds ticking by as she watched the first block of flats.

In the sodium-yellow glow of the street lights behind her, its pebble-dashed façade was eroded by weather, many parts of it crumbled, exposing the brickwork underneath. All its window apertures were blocked off with metal, but on ground-level, just beyond a clutter of battered, burned-out hulks that had once been cars, she spotted the front doorway – and that, unusually but maybe because the Creep had kicked it in – stood wide open.

Right on cue, Lucy heard a metallic clatter from somewhere inside. She advanced a couple of feet before stopping again, her sense of duty nagging at her.

He was still on the plot, then. Still within reach.

She’d half-assumed that he’d have taken full advantage of her waiting for support, and would by now have got clean away. But clearly, he hadn’t.

‘DC Clayburn to Foxtrot Alpha,’ she said quietly, sidling between the scorched, broken cars. ‘Danny … I’m going in.’

‘Lucy, stay put!’ came Tucker’s terse response. ‘We’ll be two minutes, tops.’

That didn’t win her to his cause. He and the other support units he’d summoned might only be two minutes away – but whereabouts on the Reddington Hall boundary would they arrive? All told, it was about a mile and a half in circumference, and it was anyone’s guess which side they’d approach it from.

Suddenly, there was no question in Lucy’s mind that unless she acted now, the Creep was going to elude them. She advanced, only hesitating at the gaping doorway.

‘Lucy?’ Danny persisted.

‘Received,’ Lucy replied. ‘Stand by.’