She dashed back outside, jumped into the Jimny, threw it into reverse and swung it onto the road.

The Torgau girls could be anywhere. They could have another vehicle, another lock-up, not to mention all kinds of well-resourced associates that no one in the police knew about. But most likely the latter did not apply. Martin Torgau had been successful for so long because he’d kept everything in-house. He’d flown under the law enforcement radar, shielded by a façade of decorum. By playing the good neighbour, socialising only with respectable people, he’d done nothing whatsoever to draw police attention to him – which also meant that he’d kept his fraternising with fellow criminals to a minimum. Even if that hadn’t been the case, the Crew had tried to wipe both him and his daughters out. So how many hoodlums would seriously be willing to offer them refuge? And yet those two girls had taken off like bats out of Hell, like girls with a real purpose.

And that purpose wasn’t just to ride the roads until they ran out of fuel. They were headed somewhere they could hole up, somewhere they could lie low and reorganise, somewhere no one outside themselves and their father knew about.

With one possible exception.

Lucy turned her vehicle in the direction of St Clement’s.

This enquiry had seen her gamble on some genuine long-shots, and yet this would be the longest shot of all. It was tenuous as a strand of chewing gum, but just at present, as her entire career was hanging by it, she’d take any chance that came her way.

‘Oh dear, look what I’ve found,’ Lucy said, after kicking open the door to the only cubicle in the row that had a door attached.

It was obscenely filthy in there, the walls covered with brown smears and scrawls of vile graffiti, the stench thick enough to knock a person down. But unlike all the others, this toilet had a seat and a lid on it, though the lid was currently closed, Sister Cassie’s satchel lying on top, and on top of that her a slim metal box lying open on several key items: a foil wrap, a cigarette lighter, a blackened spoon and a small plastic syringe cap.

The ex-nun herself was on the floor, crammed into the niche alongside the porcelain throne, her left sleeve unfastened and rolled back, and a cord tied around her upper arm. In her right hand, a syringe filled with clear fluid hovered over one of several ugly bruises.

‘If it isn’t someone in possession of controlled drugs!’ Lucy declared.

Sister Cassie’s face looked pinched and pale. Now it turned peevish. ‘My child, let’s not be foolish. You know that I’m purely a user. I never distribute this material.’