‘I’m fine,’ she called back.

‘This him?’

‘This is him.’

Tucker advanced quickly – to the point where both she and the suspect could see the pistol he was training on the suspect.

‘Don’t you fucking move!’ Tucker warned. ‘Not one fucking muscle.’

The suspect glanced back at Lucy, his wounded face beaded with sweat, eyes bright with fear.

‘Yeah, try it,’ Tucker said, drawing closer. ‘Make a break for it … but I warn you, I’ve never been good with leg shots.’

The suspect was clearly half-considering it. Perhaps if he ran straight at the young policewoman, he’d make it difficult for the armed officer to chance a shot, and maybe could trust to his bulk to bounce her out of the way. But if that was his line of thought, he gave it up when a second policewoman appeared at her side.

It was Ruth Smiley, and she too was wielding a firearm.

Slowly and resignedly, the suspect raised his hands in surrender.

The officers closed in over the last few yards, grabbing him all together, slamming him backward against the brick wall facing the skip. Tucker took a step back but pinned him there by jamming the muzzle of his Glock into his collarbone, while Lucy and Smiley patted him down. The Creep slumped where they held him, eyes downcast, mouth trembling.

In the background, Lucy could now hear the shouts of other support units working their way across the estate. ‘How do you fellas want to proceed with this?’ she asked, breathing hard.

‘Hey … your call, love,’ Smiley said.

‘Totally,’ Tucker agreed, a pearly-toothed grin splitting his handsome, ebony face. ‘Your case, Lucy … your collar.’

Chapter 13

‘It was very difficult,’ the prisoner said in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘to keep resisting the urge. I’d come up here to Manchester to lie low. At first, it was to help my brother do up his new flat … he’s lived in Crowley for a while, but it wasn’t long before I realised that was an excuse. I knew that if I kept at it in Birmingham, I’d get nabbed eventually.’

‘When you say “kept at it,”’ Danny Tucker asked him, ‘you mean if you kept robbing people at sword-point and then attacking them with the sword afterwards?’

The prisoner nodded. ‘That’s correct.’