She switched her torch off, no longer needing it. Because another of those portable bulbs, this one bright scarlet, hung from a hook in the middle of the central arch. At the far side of the cellar, it showed her a further door standing open, and a few yards beyond that what looked like a cradle draped with dirty but semi-transparent cloth; not just down its sides, but over its top too, the material suspended from a kind of peaked framework, making it look like one of those tented cribs in fairy stories. By the increased volume, the crying child was in there.

Lucy advanced, glancing left and right. There were many niches and nooks down here where someone could hide. Frightened as well as bewildered, but focused on the cradle, she pressed on through the open door and immediately was assailed by a grotesque stench, both organic and chemical in its content. Immediately, it got into her nose and throat, and made her want to retch. She resisted, crossing to the cradle, trying not to look at the greasy black soot that caked the brickwork above and around her.

Below the dingy, gauze-like cloth, she saw the outline of a diminutive human form. No bigger than a new-born child, it wailed with anguish – and yet it didn’t move. Lucy reached out a trembling hand. As she pulled the cloth away, she thought she sensed someone behind her, but it was too late, and she was too fixated on the child.

With a rustle, the material slid free – and she saw the eyeless, dirt-encrusted doll that had hung in those dead branches out on the landfill. Next to its head, there was an iPhone, and alongside that, as though to keep it snug, a boombox, out of which an unknown child continued to bawl.

Sensing the movement behind her again, Lucy tried to duck away, but not quickly enough.

The wire loop slipped over her head and tightened, encircling her neck. The next thing, it was biting into her, chewing through flesh and sinew as two tight-muscled arms began to twist and twist and twist.

‘Benny’s back, boss … he’s on his way up,’ Spicer, one of Bill Pentecost’s thicker-necked, more bull-headed goons, said from the doorway connecting the Head Office to the boardroom.

The Chairman looked up from the Manchester Evening News. ‘Is he alone?’

‘Nah. Got company.’