Lucy again wondered about the wisdom of making such a person a key witness, not that she had much choice. Though it would be less of an issue if the DNA came through.

For the moment she had other things to think about.

She dropped her passenger at the entrance to A&E and looked for a parking space. As she’d surmised, St Winifred’s wasn’t bustling, and there was lots of room.

Her suspicion was that, if Frank McCracken was still here and not in the mortuary, he’d likely have been operated on and so would be in Intensive Care. A minute later, this suspicion was all but confirmed when she rounded the corner beyond which lay the entrance to the ICU and saw a patrol car parked by the door with a couple of uniforms standing next to it.

She thought about going straight up to them and asking what was happening; she’d already devised herself a cover-story for being here, so it wouldn’t look too odd. But a higher priority than finding out what state Frank McCracken was in was discovering where her mother was. She scanned the car park and eventually located Cora’s yellow Honda Civic about sixty yards away. That settled it; Lucy had to go in, and she had to do it now.

She strolled nonchalantly forward, heading for the IC entrance, trying to ignore the two officers, whom she recognised as PCs Tooley and Brentwood, divisional lads from Crowley.

It occurred to her, somewhat belatedly, that she perhaps ought to be more nervous about this than she was. She wouldn’t have expected a couple of beat cops to know who her mother was; Lucy had only had occasional contact with them herself. But that didn’t mean there weren’t others around here who would recognise Cora Clayburn, and maybe engage her in conversation. Priya Nehwal, for example. Lucy could only hope that if Serious Crimes were here, and if they weren’t it would only be a matter of time, they’d send someone other than their bolshy DSU.

She reached the entrance and glanced around. Tooley and Brentwood were too engrossed in conversation to even notice her, their chatter punctuated by bouts of raucous laughter. It was a good night for the cops when a high-end scrote like Frank McCracken got taken out of commission.

She walked inside and was confronted by a waiting room area, more of a corridor really, running twenty yards to the next door, its walls adorned with NHS posters, padded seating arranged down either side.

Her mother was sitting there alone, zipped tight into a blue anorak, hair mussed, white-faced with weariness, one hand clutching a tissue.