Though she’d worn a uniform for the first decade of her career, Lucy Clayburn had now been a detective constable for two years, but in all that time she had only ever worked her home patch of Crowley, Greater Manchester Police’s legendary November Division.

The one-time industrial town – though these days it was more a post-industrial wasteland – had an infamous reputation for villainy, though it probably wasn’t any more deserved than those bad reps attached to other northern English cities where full employment was a thing of the past and drugs and alcohol had flowed in to fill the gap.

The problem with being a police officer – anywhere really, not just in a place like Crowley – was that you knew what went on behind the sometimes paper-thin façade of the local community. So she wasn’t entirely surprised that night of Wednesday, September 12, to look down the list of prisoners waiting in the traps at Robber’s Row police station, November Division’s HQ, and see that they included professional men with sedate family backgrounds: a senior civil servant, a local journalist, an estate agent, even a bank manager. There were louts and scallies among them too, all the usual suspects; but respectability was a keyword where several were concerned, or superficial respectability at least. Maybe, to an extent, she should have anticipated this, because dog-fighting wouldn’t have existed at all, even as an illegal sport, without the hefty cashflow it generated. It was only ever about gambling, and if you didn’t have the readies for that, you couldn’t participate.

‘Worrying, isn’t it?’ Lucy said, scrolling down the file on the screen belonging to Sergeant Joe Cullen, the Robber’s Row custody officer. ‘Lots of these guys come over as perfect citizens … so able to create the impression they’re normal that they can function easily in everyday society. They do jobs efficiently and make them pay. They impress socially. They have friends, families. But deep down, they’re so disturbed that they derive pleasure from watching innocent animals rip each other apart. Either that, or they’re so indifferent to it that they don’t care so long as they make a few quid.’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the thin end of the wedge, to be honest,’ Cullen replied. He was a foursquare old-schooler, with a weathered hangdog face and a brush of thick grey bristles on his head. ‘If they’re prepared to do this, what else are they up to? Like you say … they’re not normal.’

‘Mahoney’s solicitor here yet?’ Lucy asked.

‘Doesn’t want one,’ Cullen replied.

She arched an eyebrow.

Cullen shrugged. ‘Asked him twice, but he insists he’ll be fine. Confident little toe-rag, I’ll say that for him.’

‘So, Mr Mahoney,’ Lucy said, ‘you understand that you remain under caution?’