McCracken stared at him. ‘Well … work it out. Anyone who’s so blinded by the amazingness of his two kids that he can’t see how fucking stupid they are is never going to give permission to have ’em topped, is he?’

‘So?’

‘So, he goes too.’

Shallicker looked incredulous. ‘Ripsaw and Wild Bill go right back …’

‘That’s why we don’t cough to it. Perhaps we can make it look like O’Grady’s crew.’

‘No one’d believe that. They’re small time.’

But from McCracken’s expression, he wasn’t worried what anyone else might think.

‘Listen. Frank.’ Shallicker dropped to one knee so that he could lean close. ‘Ripsaw may look like a fat retiree who mows his lawn all day, but he’s well organised. This won’t be easy.’

‘That’s why I want you to handle it. Pick a team who won’t fold under Bill’s questioning afterwards. Tell ’em they’ll all be on quadruple time.’

Shallicker stood back up. He looked troubled, but less so than before. Ultimately, it was Frank McCracken he owed everything to. ‘You absolutely sure about this?’

‘We’re in the frame for a double homicide, Mick. You maybe more than me. At least, I can argue I was in the operating theatre. Where were you … the guy who dumped me at the hospital, the guy who’d already engaged in a gunfight with one of the blokes who later got murdered?’

‘Okay.’ When Shallicker pondered it in those terms, it made perfect sense. ‘When?’

‘The sooner the bloody better. Just get it done. And like I say, take a team who know what they’re doing.’

Chapter 38

With the main door to the garage firmly closed, Lucy’s captor whipped the firearm out of her coat pocket. It was the real deal, a Browning BDA, and Lucy was now marched at gunpoint through a connecting passage into the main body of the house. It was only dimly lit, most of its Venetian blinds closed. However, the rooms were spacious and well appointed, and, from what she could see, they’d been furnished tastefully, laid with wooden block flooring, with rich drapes on the windows and handsome paintings on the walls. She was poked through into the largest and plushest of these, which seemingly was the lounge. A right-angled leather sofa faced an enormous flat-screen TV, while a thick rug lay in front of a huge granite hearth with an ornate real-flame gas fire. Another girl was waiting in here, standing behind a carved wooden chair, which looked as if it had been brought in from the dining room. Years had passed since the custody shot had been taken, but Lucy immediately recognised her as Alyssa Torgau.

‘Searched her yet?’ she said.