She studied the Volvo estate, thinking that you probably couldn’t find a better kind of car if you wanted to smuggle bodies or prisoners, or both, into and out of a house in a built-up area. She glanced past it to the Audi, and for the first time noticed that its front nearside light-cluster had been broken and was now covered with cellophane.

Everyone’s car got bumped from time to time. Nicks and scratches were commonplace. But was it really too much of a stretch to – possibly, maybe – link this damage to the unresolved shooting incident in central Crowley the previous night?

Then someone stepped in front of her, blotting out her view of the property.

Lucy was so surprised that at first she couldn’t react.

Whoever it was, they’d stolen up from behind, and she’d been so absorbed in the house and the two cars that she hadn’t realised. She glanced up and saw a girl of about nineteen. She had spiky blonde hair with red highlights, shaved at the sides. She was wearing a large denim jacket over a summery dress, but both hands were deep in her jacket pockets.

‘House-hunting, are we?’ the girl said.

‘Sorry.’ Lucy tried a disarming smile. She was in plain clothes, so there was no reason for anyone to assume the worst. ‘Yes, actually. I was just checking the area.’

The girl didn’t return the smile. Anything but. Her blue eyes literally blazed. ‘Had a bump on your bike recently?’

Immediately, with a gut-thumping shock, Lucy realised her error: the helmet in the back seat.

‘Out!’ the girl hissed, her hands still in their pockets, but the right one pushed forward against the material, the metallic object she clearly held in there aimed directly at Lucy’s face.

Instinctively, Lucy’s hand strayed towards the pocket where she normally kept her radio – only to remember that, thanks to rushing to respond to the Malcolm Peabody situation that morning, she hadn’t yet thought to check one out.

‘Quickly and quietly!’ the girl instructed her. ‘Don’t think I won’t shoot! There’s no one round here during the day … I can do what I fucking want!’

Lucy felt like contesting that, asking why, if there were no potential witnesses here, the girl was concealing her gun, but there was something about that crazed expression that brooked no argument. So she complied, turning her engine off, climbing from the car.

‘Keys!’ the girl said, her left hand coming into view. ‘You fucking bitch.’

Hand shaking, Lucy handed the car keys over.

‘Across the road … up the drive and into the garage.’

This time Lucy resisted, until the girl stepped behind and prodded her in the spine with a cloth-covered muzzle, which indicated that she really did have a gun down there. ‘You want I should do it this way?’ she asked. ‘Sever your nervous system with a single shot?’

Sever my nervous system … Christ.