Lucy tensed, as the first one worked the slide on his weapon – clack/clunk – and she sensed him squinting down the barrel at her head.

‘Please … please …’ she whimpered. ‘I’m not, I’m not one of—’

‘Wait!’ a third voice bellowed. ‘Not that one.’

Slowly, hardly daring to believe it, Lucy opened her eyes.

Again, sweat blurred her vision, but she was still able to focus on this third person, who had also come down to the bottom of the cellar stair. He too was armed with a shotgun, and clad in black from head to toe, but he was distinct from the others because while they were average-sized, he was a giant, towering almost to the ceiling.

There was no argument. The two gunmen ignored Lucy, sauntered back along the passage with weapons by their sides and tromped upstairs. The giant stood to one side, watching her as she knelt amid the smoke and blood. Lucy couldn’t make eye-contact with him. There was too much distance between them, and she was too tired and hurt to scrabble any closer. But she knew Mick Shallicker when she saw him.

All her police life, she’d never thought she’d be so relieved at the sight of that towering, ruthless maniac.

Her head sank down for a second, her neck too weary to hold it upright.

When she finally managed to look again, he’d gone.

Cedar Lane was filled end to end with police and CSI vehicles – aside from the area immediately in front of No. 27. That and the house itself, including the drive, garage and front garden, were doubly taped off.

Curtains twitched continually as neighbours regarded every coming and going with utter astonishment. Lucy Clayburn, though, was less captivated. She watched it with dull, tired eyes, barely registering the Tyvek-covered examiners on the other side of the tape, some in conflab with Serious Crimes officers, others taking photographs, others on hands and knees as they examined the ground. Only when Detective Superintendent Nehwal emerged from the entry tent, having stripped off her own Tvyek and thrown it into the dirty-box, did Lucy straighten up.

She’d been leaning against her car, which remained where she’d parked it earlier. A sheet of survival-foil hung from her shoulders, where a medic had previously placed it. He’d wanted to take her away in the ambulance because he felt that she was going into shock, but Lucy had replied that she was fine, and rather snappily, had told him to stop fussing. It wasn’t her normal style, but her inner turmoil was becoming too much, overwhelming all sensibilities, all inhibitions. Beyond this point there lay nothing but serious damage.