He didn’t drop his sabre, but for a second was completely off balance. His head hinged backward as he toppled. He managed to throw a punch with his free hand. It missed Lucy, but only because she ducked it, striking the jagged brickwork with her shoulder but using it to stabilise herself as she edged around him. He’d clearly been hurt, now taking time to brace himself against the opposite wall. When he glanced up, the moonlight caught his face, and it fleetingly looked as if she’d inflicted a terrible injury. The whole of his right cheek, right eye socket and right temple had been crushed and now sagged inward. But as he clawed at it, she saw it coming away in pieces.

A mask after all, then. By the looks of it made from wax, and with a strip of sticky cellophane across the inside of the sockets to create those eerie, reflective eyes. Great for inflicting terror, no doubt, and maybe for keeping off the worst effects of CS spray (that cellophane strip again). But not much use against stone-throwers.

With half the waxen visage gone, Lucy could distinguish a dark pattern of blood and bruising on the right side of the Creep’s real face, though the eye on that side was not damaged; in fact, it widened as it fixed on her, perhaps blazing with indignation that she had dared to fight back. He barrelled towards her again, drawing the sword back as though to run her though rather than cut her down. But the advance was clumsy, his feet stumbling on rubble – at the very least, he was dazed.

She dodged the sabre, and it drove past her, plunging into the mildewed wood of the fire door, sinking to half its length and wedging.

With strangled grunts, the maniac wrenched at it, working it back and forth with both hands to try and get it free. Lucy retreated along the corridor. Her chance had come. All she needed to do now was run.

At the Creep’s back.

Over twenty yards, she hit full speed.

He never saw her coming – not even when she lofted into the air with a flying kick and struck him between the shoulder blades. The force of it slammed him into the door, which was so decayed that it erupted outward.

The next thing he knew, he was falling.

Because what he hadn’t known and Lucy had, was that there was no fire escape here. The drugs gang who’d utilised this corner of the building had removed it as a security measure.

He dropped fifteen feet, turning head over heels. When he landed, he did so in another skip filled with yet more rubbish bags. His impact on these was heavy, and some of the bags doubtless contained solid items, so they didn’t cushion his fall well.