Ever since two years ago, when Lucy had first discovered that her estranged father was a senior lieutenant in the Crew, and especially since she’d made a deal with him that for both their sakes they would keep it secret, she’d been tormented by the idea that she now had one foot in the other camp. Throughout her ten years of committed policework prior to that, she’d prided herself on being an honest cop, on obeying the rules and doing the job to the best of her ability. But from the moment Frank McCracken had returned to her and her mother’s lives, she’d found herself withholding information from colleagues, getting into clandestine meetings and even turning a blind eye to certain criminal activities.

McCracken had told her that she should treat her fight against crime not as a job but as a war, in which all measures were acceptable. This was the way other, more senior and successful police officers had always behaved, he’d said … so why hesitate?

But that was her father all over: an amoral scoundrel.

Lucy had a different take on life.

Or at least she’d once had.

She tried to shut such ruminations out of her mind as she focused on the business at hand, following Shallicker along the A6 through Salford until it became Chapel Street and led into central Manchester. Five minutes later, just off Corporation Street, they came to the foot of a multi-storey car park, where, rather to Lucy’s surprise, Shallicker swung in. She followed him, collected a ticket and sat a few yards behind him as they ascended ramp after ramp, passing one largely empty level after another, until they were on the last floor before the top. Here, the upward ramp had been bollarded off with orange traffic cones. Shallicker’s Subaru slowed to a halt, and almost from nowhere, a car park attendant appeared. Without looking at the waiting vehicles, he moved several of the cones aside. The Subaru passed through. The attendant waited expectantly. Lucy eased her Jimny forward, also passing through. As she ascended the last ramp, she glanced into her rear-view mirror and saw that the line of cones had already been replaced. She shook her head, amazed by the sheer gall of the high-level underworld. Even as a serving police officer investigating serious crime, she couldn’t call on privileges like this.

The top deck of the car park, which was open to the night sky, was completely empty apart from a gleaming black vehicle at its farthest corner. Lucy recognised it as her father’s Bentley Continental. The man himself was standing alongside it, gazing over the top of the concrete barrier at the flat neon pattern of the city.