Lucy glanced further across the room, this time to where DI Blake’s own desk sat anonymously amid the work stations of her rank and file. The only thing to mark it out was that gallery of faces on the wall behind it, blown-up mugshots of some of the region’s most notorious armed robbers. Among them, she recognised Jason Demetrius, whose MO had been to inveigle his way into city-centre hotels and rob the guests in their bedrooms, Donny Costello, who had launched a solo crime wave in the Stockport area, robbing three banks and, in one case, shooting and crippling a young clerk, and Julius and Anton Vrozak, who’d lain in wait for a bookie at his Altrincham home, tied the guy up alongside his wife and then ripped the wife’s toenails off with pliers in an effort to get him to open the safe. All four of those hoodlums were among those who’d been crossed out in red, which clearly represented their apprehension, conviction and imprisonment.

It impressed Lucy no end. And yet, it confused her too.

‘DI Blake seems like a conundrum to me,’ she said.

‘How so?’ Tucker wondered.

‘Well …’

‘You mean because she looks like she’s just left a ladies’ finishing school?’

‘She’s a girlish figure, I suppose. Seems very refined too. Sounds more like a doctor than a DI. I mean, I know there are lots of college girls in the job these days, looking for a lucrative career. But DI Blake seems different.’

He chuckled. ‘She’s going places, that’s for sure. Destined for the top floor. But I’ve been in the job for nineteen years, and she’s the best boss I’ve ever worked under. How often can you say that you actually look forward to coming in to work? Because we do. She’s got a great management style … very efficient, very clipped, but affable, accessible, easy to get on with. But that’s only part of it. She’s also a real detective, if you know what I mean. She wants to rise through results, not because she’s always got one eye on the next promotion board. These characters up here.’ He indicated the photo gallery. ‘We call that “Kathy’s Hall of Fame”. She doesn’t put those pics up. We do. Every one of them a total bastard … never done an honest day’s work in his life, yet most of them minted through robbing and brutalising the innocent. But, as you can see, Kathy’s working through them like a whirlwind. And that’s something every mucker in this room is happy to go along with.’ He smiled. ‘Now you see where we get our real job satisfaction.’

And Lucy did. She was tired now, and yet she was enthralled by what she was hearing.