She nodded, her feelings about Tucker decidedly mixed, but otherwise delighted with the way the day had gone. However, halfway down the stairs, she met someone whose mere presence brought her back to earth with a bump. It was the last person she’d expected to see at five o’clock in the morning, though unsurprisingly, he was pale-faced and red-eyed with lack of sleep, his jacket and tie scruffy, his hair a dishevelled mat.

‘Harry!’ she said. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

He yawned. ‘That’s a welcome and a half.’

‘Tough. The question stands.’

‘Well … as I’ve been working these burglaries on my tod the last few days, I’ve been putting in some extra time so I can get the paper straight.’

‘I mean what are you doing up here.’

‘Well …’ He looked sheepish. ‘I was sort of looking for you. I saw your Jimny outside, realised you were still on. Soon as I got in, I heard you’d nabbed your suspect. Thought some congrats might be order.’

‘Well, cheers … ta.’

Lucy didn’t totally believe that explanation. It wasn’t impossible that he was simply being nice, but inevitably that old suspicion reared its head again; that he fancied her. That would be inconvenient enough, but if he started getting possessive about her too, then they’d have a real problem. So much so that she didn’t even want to consider it at this moment.

She walked on down the stairs. ‘I’m done here and I’m off to bed. Tell Stan I’ll be back in the DO this afternoon.’

‘Yo, Lucy!’ someone called from the top of the stairs.

They looked up and saw Danny Tucker descending. He was grinning broadly.

‘You won’t be going anywhere without these,’ he said, tossing her a set of car keys.

‘Bloody hell.’ Lucy shoved them into her anorak pocket. ‘Told you I was ready for the sack. Listen … see you all later.’ She continued down.

‘Hiya … Danny Tucker,’ she heard Tucker say to Harry. ‘Robbery.’

‘Harry Jepson,’ Harry replied, maybe with a grudging handshake. ‘I work with Lucy.’

‘Lucky you.’

Lucy didn’t glance back, just rounded the corner at the foot of the stairs and headed out.

Chapter 15

Lucy wasn’t required back in the divisional DO until eight on the Wednesday morning. She received a call from CID Admin to advise her of this just after nine o’clock on the Tuesday morning, and so after grabbing a couple of hours in the armchair, she managed to fight her way through the rest of the day, bug-eyed with fatigue but just about staying this side of the human/zombie divide, and finally got to bed at a normal hour.

As such, come Wednesday morning, she was able to go back to work, as Stan Beardmore was fond of saying, ‘full of piss and vinegar’.