Lucy heard the scream loud and clear.

She was less than a hundred yards away. Not overly familiar with the road layout in what remained of the St Clement’s ward, she’d stopped at a junction of unmarked lanes and sat astride her parked bike as she used the sat-nav on her mobile to locate Canning Crescent.

Now she no longer needed it.

She rode the derelict roadway slowly, standing on her footpegs, visor raised as she scanned the verges.

A scream at night could mean anything, from someone being attacked to kids engaged in horseplay. But in this district the latter seemed unlikely. It demanded an immediate but cautious response. She was alert and ready, therefore, when, not far ahead, a pair of headlamps sprang to life and came rocketing towards her.

As she veered out of the way, skidding on the mossy cobblestones, a green transit van flickered by. She swung around, almost turning sideways as she slid to a thirty-yard halt, bewildered by the sight of one of its two back doors swinging open. It swerved out of view, not giving her a chance to clock its registration mark. But if this was who she thought it was, the VRM would likely be useless – just another fake plate. With its rear doors unsecured, it seemed unlikely the vehicle would be carrying a prisoner, or any other illicit cargo, but even so, the only thing to do now was pursue it, flag it down and perform a stop-and-search – if she hadn’t already lost track of it, because it had had a hell of a start.

At which point Lucy heard a second scream.

Not as shrill or as shocking as the first, but muffled, as if it had come from indoors. What was more, it had sounded from somewhere nearby.

Her gaze roved up the dilapidated frontage of the massive building lowering over her. Griggs Warehouse. Given the state of its current occupants, that sound didn’t necessarily mean that someone was being attacked. Of course, she wouldn’t be any kind of police officer if she didn’t investigate it.

She rode on towards the foot of the slope where the path beat its way up to what she’d thought of previously as ‘the arcade’. At which point, she heard another scream, this one even more muffled, but distinctly the sound of someone in grave distress.

Lucy braked and looked left, and saw again that entrance to the warehouse’s undercroft, or whatever it was, where the suspect van had apparently emerged when Fred Holborn was abducted. She veered towards it, accelerating as a fourth scream sounded, slowing down again as she spied a couple of items on the floor that she recognised: a brown leather satchel with a shoulder-strap that had snapped, its contents scattered, and a heap of ragged black material, which looked suspiciously like a nun’s cloak.