It was only a matter of time before the truth came out, anyway; of that she was certain – especially the way her mother was behaving.

But she couldn’t allow more situations like that at the hospital to arise, where she’d known full well what had happened the night before and yet had said nothing while the man responsible feigned innocence with the SIO. Let alone an incident like this – an armed home-invasion and mass shooting – and she again keeping her mouth shut, even though she had a very good idea who’d ordered it.

It wasn’t just that things were getting complicated, or more tangled, or more likely to catch her out. It wasn’t simply that Lucy was now tortured by fear and doubt whenever her father’s name was mentioned, and that this was spoiling her quality of life. It was the sheer, unadulterated immorality of it. She wasn’t actually in limbo, as she’d so often told herself, in some kind of midway place between the law-enforcers and the law-breakers. It was much, much worse than that. She was supposed to be a police officer, so her failure to act, her refusal to shop the underworld on the various occasions when she could have done, was the most bare-faced kind of treachery. For all her protestations to Mick Shallicker, it absolutely made her one of the villains.

And that couldn’t go on.

Lucy had joined the police as one of the good guys. That had been her sole motivation, and now it was time to ensure that she left them the same way.

‘I never knew my father,’ she said, slumped behind the steering wheel.

Priya Nehwal, in the front passenger seat, looked nonplussed. ‘Nothing to be embarrassed about these days …’

‘Until I met him a couple of years ago …’ Lucy swallowed; fresh tears stung her eyes. ‘And found that it was Frank McCracken.’

Over the years, Priya Nehwal had earned a reputation for being the toughest woman in the job but despite that, the first lady of hardcore policing still looked utterly shell-shocked by what Lucy Clayburn had just told her.

‘Lucy …’ She could barely get the words out. ‘Lucy, you’re a police detective.’ Even then it was a whisper.

Lucy nodded. Again dumbly.

‘And Frank McCracken’s an underboss for the Crew.’

‘I know.’

‘We suspect him of authorising –’ Nehwal shook her head, dumbfounded ‘– God knows how many murders, woundings, beatings … he may well have carried out a number of those crimes himself.’

‘Ma’am, I know.’ Lucy struggled to halt the tears.

‘And you’ve been sitting on this for two whole years?’

‘I can’t sit on it any more. Not after today.’

Nehwal gazed through the windscreen, speechless. Lucy did the same. For a minute at least, the figures moving about outside were a blur to both of them.

‘You’re saying this was a Crew hit?’ Nehwal finally said.

‘I’m pretty sure, yes.’