As Lucy drove along Tarwood Lane, everything her mother had said, even though it had been said heatedly and in a wishful way rather than a thoughtful one, seemed to be coming true. Perhaps he was getting tired in his middle age, perhaps the pleasures of the glamorous but high-risk world he inhabited were palling. Perhaps he did miss the everyday affection he’d draw from a genuine, caring wife. And it wasn’t as if he and Cora hadn’t been close once. He’d only stayed out of Lucy’s early life because Cora had asked him to, not because he’d sought that.

Strange behaviour for a brute who’d supposedly never cared.

‘God almighty!’ she said, proceeding past Robber’s Row, bound for Penrose Mill, because she still had to get a statement from Sister Cassie (in truth, the last thing she needed now was to have to go searching for the ex-nun among the backstreets and fleapits again).

But no. Most likely, he was rekindling his interest in Cora because he wanted someone to look after him in his dotage. Where Carlotta Powell was concerned, once a high-class hooker, always a high-class hooker. But Cora would clean for him, cook for him, toast his slippers on the fire on cold winter nights, all that ridiculous, old-fashioned Northern bullshit.

‘He’ll still go and see Carlotta whenever he feels like it,’ she said aloud, not for the first time in the last few hours.

It was a simple equation. Bad people were bad people because they were bad. It was part of their DNA, it was hardwired into them. You couldn’t change it just by wishing they were different.

At which point, Lucy hit her brakes, going into a screeching skid.

Halfway down Adolphus Road, a figure had hurried across it ahead of her. But it wasn’t that she’d nearly hit him – he was still a good forty yards in front – it was because she’d recognised him. He was a young, thin guy with long, greasy red hair, wearing grey drainpipe jeans, black cowboy boots and a black leather jacket with biker tassels. The only difference since the last time she’d seen him was that he hadn’t bothered today with his stylish leather trilby. As he hit the pavement, he continued walking in the same direction she was driving, but when he realised she was following him, she expected him to bolt. So she stayed behind the wheel, slowing to walking pace and powering down her front passenger window as she drew up at his shoulder. At first, he didn’t react, and she soon saw that this was because he was wearing earbuds.