They wore their hair in different styles and dressed differently, and one had marks on her face, but they still resembled each other. That said, the one with the gun, Ivana, had more of an air of authority. She gestured with the Browning at the dining room chair. Lucy did as she was told, sitting down in it. Alyssa slid around to the rear, twisting Lucy’s hands behind her back, pulling them through the spindles in the chair’s backrest, and locking them together with her own handcuffs. While this was happening, Lucy heard heavy feet descending the staircase, thudding impacts that resounded throughout the house.

‘Watch her,’ Ivana said. ‘I’ll go and speak to him.’

Alyssa nodded and moved to a corner of the room, near the front window, where she picked something up that Lucy hadn’t noticed previously. It was another gun, a battle-rifle with a large magazine attached. Despite everything, this shocked her. Originally, she’d wondered if they were dealing with some kind of ultra-dysfunctional family here, a bunch of sexual sadists and thrill-killers. Okay, the murder of Miles O’Grady, and the gangland connection that suggested, put it into a slightly different league, but she hadn’t expected heavy firepower like this. Ivana, meanwhile, moved out into the hall, half-closing the lounge door behind her. A muffled conversation followed. Alyssa approached slowly, clutching the rifle in both hands but, as per the manual, keeping it dressed down.

‘You ride a mean bike, I have to say,’ she said.

‘And yet you outran it,’ Lucy replied. ‘You must be fit as a fiddle.’

‘We train a lot.’

Ivana came back into the lounge, still talking. ‘She’s made no calls to anyone but her mum since this morning. Plus, she’s got no radio. She’s only local fuzz too. She’s not Murder Squad …’

A man entered the room behind her.

‘The route’s clear, by the way,’ Ivana added. ‘Alyssa checked it first thing, as usual.’

The man said nothing. From the sound of his footfalls, Lucy had been expecting someone larger and heavier, but as it turned out, the biggest thing about him was the travel bag he was carrying. He dropped it, and it struck the floor a reverberating blow. She eyed it quickly. Police grab-bags tended to be a lot lighter, but then detectives only usually needed overnight stuff, because they’d be home again soon. For hoodlums on the run, the future was less certain. Not that Martin Torgau – because this was the same guy she’d seen in the custody shot from 2002 – looked much like a hoodlum. He was about five-foot-nine, with a slightly portly build, which wasn’t enhanced by his chosen attire of jersey and tracksuit trousers. She put him somewhere in his late fifties.

‘Seems we may have panicked over nothing,’ Alyssa said.

‘No one’s panicking,’ he replied, not looking at her. ‘Go upstairs. Watch the road.’