‘About five years ago, I was part of Mandy Doyle’s team too,’ Lucy explained. ‘It was my first CID assignment. I had a dangerous suspect in custody. We’d locked him up for forcing entry to his elderly neighbour’s house, raping her and half beating her to death. It transpired that he’d already raped and murdered two other women. We didn’t know that at the time, but obviously he was still a high priority for us. In a nutshell …’ She sighed, always embarrassed at this admission. ‘In a nutshell, I allowed him to overpower me and get hold of a gun he’d stashed beforehand. As such … DI Doyle got shot.’

‘Whoa …’ Tucker sat slowly upright.

‘She survived but was crippled and had to retire on a medical.’

He leaned forward. ‘I defo remember it now.’

Lucy shrugged. ‘I copped most of the blame for it. Got kicked back into uniform. Thought that was it for me, but in due course I was advised that it hadn’t entirely been my fault. Doyle mismanaged things. She’d given me a hard time from the start – never understood her really. Strange kind of policewoman. She liked fellas. I mean in the team with her. Didn’t really want any other girls on the plot.’

‘What … she was some kind of queen bee?’

Lucy shrugged. ‘Not really. But … she liked to be in charge of blokes. She’d worked her way up through the ranks, and that was back in the days when women were second-class citizens in the job. It was a response to that, I suspect. Other policewomen – especially youngsters, like I was at the time, were just a distraction to her, an irritant. But a lot of the guys didn’t see it that way at all. They just thought she was great.’

‘And Gaskin was one of them?’

‘Yeah. He’d been with her a few years. Saw himself as her protégé, I suppose. He was only a young detective, like me. But whereas she put nothing but obstacles in my path, she was grooming him for great things. At least that was what he thought.’

‘And then suddenly his number one mentor is gone? And he blames you?’

‘Correct.’ Lucy gave a crooked smile. ‘And he wasn’t the only one. There are detectives scattered across GMP who still resent me because of what happened … who think I really bolloxed it and should be chucked out of the job.’

Tucker sat back. ‘You’ve obviously made up ground since.’

‘I like to think so. But only in recent years. And Lee Gaskin clearly doesn’t agree.’