No sooner had she come to a halt than a weird, whinnying laugh filled the dusty air above her. Lucy turned groggily from where she lay and saw the figure of the girl on a high point some twenty yards off. Possibly it was a loading platform of some sort. She’d clearly been crouching there, lying in wait, but now she stood up and was silhouetted against the rays of light penetrating the chute apertures.

Lucy disentangled herself from the fallen bike and scrambled to her feet, only to turn woozy when she stood up. Disoriented, she struggled to rip aside the broken visor but made sure to keep her helmet on. When she glanced up again, she saw that the girl had drawn something from her webbing; Lucy spied the outline of a heavy-bladed knife complete with a medieval-style cross-guard. The girl squatted again, as though to leap down from her perch, and perhaps come gambolling forward through the shadows.

Before she could do this, a car horn blared angrily from a distant corner of the depot. Lucy and her opponent turned to see that a vehicle with green bodywork had pulled up on the other side of the forklift entry doors.

The fugitive gave another hyena-like laugh and made her move – but not to come aggressively forward. Instead, she leaped down from the other side of the platform, and ran across the loading depot at speed, dodging nimbly around obstacles as she headed towards her getaway vehicle. Lucy tried to follow, but turned dizzy again, tilted over and landed on her hands and knees.

As she knelt there, a pair of feet thudded up a wooden ramp, a door opened and closed, and with a noisy crunching of gears the green vehicle revved away into the night.

Chapter 26

‘Fuck!’ the girl spat as she loosened the Velcro at her sweaty throat and yanked down the zip on her combat jacket. ‘Damn Maggie bitch put up more of a fight than I expected.’

The other girl drove the van steadily as they joined the traffic on the main road. ‘I told you she wouldn’t be run-of-the-mill.’

‘Maybe, but if that fucking cop hadn’t intervened …’

The driver, whose name was Ivana, frowned. ‘That guy on the bike was a cop?’

‘It was a woman.’

There was a brief, contemplative silence, and then Ivana cracked an amused smile. ‘A biker-chick cop? I’ve heard it all now.’

‘Yeah … well, I took care of her too.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Just busted her helmet open. Didn’t actually kill her.’ The passenger, whose name was Alyssa, scowled. ‘Fucking would have done if you hadn’t showed up.’

‘I drove round the back in case the nun came out. Is she dead?’

‘No. Like I say, that fucking cop …’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ Oddly, Ivana seemed relieved. ‘It’s a good thing actually.’

Alyssa glanced around. ‘What’re you talking about?’