She shrugged. ‘Just got a sniff of something. I hear there’s been a shooting.’

‘That’s correct. Do you have an interest in it?’

‘Not really.’ Now that she was face to face with him, she struggled to think of anything to say. Just claiming that she’d been dropping an assault victim off at A&E didn’t feel remotely strong enough. ‘But, I hear, erm … oh, I heard there was a van involved. That it was an attempted abduction by van.’

Beardmore shook his head. ‘No. Who told you that?’

‘Just gabbled messages on the radio.’

Rather unexpectedly, though perhaps because he was tired – he’d almost certainly been called in and he looked haggard – he seemed to accept this. ‘Well … there was a van involved. But there was no attempt at abduction. It was a double shooting in the car park at Crowley Old Hall.’

‘Fatal?’ she asked, attempting a casual air.

‘Not yet.’ He scratched his bristly chin. ‘One of them could turn fatal. The girl.’

‘Anyone we know?’

He arched an eyebrow. ‘I thought you didn’t have an interest in this?’

‘Like I say, I heard about the van … I was over here anyway, dropping a mugging victim at A&E.’

‘We haven’t traced the van yet,’ Dave Baker said, joining them. He was a big, heavily-built bloke in his mid-forties, though his thick hair and bushy beard were running to grey. He too spotted Cora, who was tactfully absorbed in her phone. He didn’t know her either and had no reason to assume that she was earwigging but spoke more quietly anyway. ‘It brought the two casualties here. Dumped them on the hospital car park, rocketed off again.’

‘Wasn’t a black or blue transit anyway,’ Beardmore put in. ‘As far as we know, it was brown. We’ve got the VRM, but it was stolen months ago. We’re going through footage from the surrounding streets to see if we can pick up its trail.’

‘Did the CCTV catch sight of anyone in particular?’ Lucy asked.

‘No.’ Beardmore shrugged. ‘Whoever it was, they knew where the cameras were and where they weren’t. They chose a blind spot to dump the wounded.’

‘No way to treat celebrity crims, to be honest,’ Baker said. ‘Frank McCracken, would you believe?’

‘No?’ Lucy replied. ‘That nutter from the Crew?’

‘And his girlfriend, Carlotta Powell,’ Beardmore added. ‘Think you’ve had dealings with both of them, haven’t you?’

Lucy nodded. ‘Powell was briefly a suspect in the Jill the Ripper case.’

‘Well, the boot’s firmly on the other foot tonight. She’s being operated on as we speak. Sounds like it’s touch and go … the slug went through her left lung.’

‘What about McCracken?’ Lucy asked.