‘If you don’t quit that, we’ll put you in there while you’re still alive!’ Ivana snarled, lugging her backward and twisting the wire several times, forcing Lucy down into a painful squat, and bracing her there by jamming a knee into her spine. ‘You little bitch! We should do that anyway!’

Over by the second drum, Alyssa tittered as she stirred the brew, though her proximity to a much fresher supply of fluorosulfuric acid was having a real effect on her now. She was blinking repeatedly and coughing hard despite the cloth she’d clamped to her mouth.

‘How would you like that, detective?’ Ivana hissed. ‘A chemical grave … ouch!’

She hadn’t noticed that Lucy had sneaked something from her jacket pocket, flipped off its lid and jammed it backward into the fleshy part of her thigh.

Ivana jumped back from her victim, allowing the ligature to loosen, peering in disbelief at the syringe hanging from just above her knee. Lucy, though groggy with pain and asphyxiation, stuck her fingers under the wire and tore it over her head, before falling forward on hands and knees and scampering away like an exhausted animal.

Behind her, Ivana’s cry of shock and outrage became a roar of bestial anger.

‘Fucking bitch! What’ve you stuck me with?’

Lucy swayed to her feet. A few yards away in the corner, Alyssa hadn’t yet realised what had happened. She was too busy coughing and spluttering and dabbing her eyes with the cloth. But Ivana was coming fast from behind, so Lucy tottered sideways, blundering against the shelf where the trophies were kept. She spun around to fend off an attack. And just in time, because Ivana, having yanked a brutal-looking knife from her webbing, now charged, howling. The girl didn’t know that she’d been shot full of heroin, but it was taking effect rapidly. She stumbled suddenly, losing balance. Lucy threw herself aside and Ivana crashed chin-first onto the shelf – just where the beaker of acid was balanced.

It flew against the wall, bounced back and drenched her face and hair.

Lucy could only back away in morbid fascination. She was still unsteady, her throat aching abominably, but for a couple of seconds the fate of Ivana Torgau was the whole of her world. She’d dropped to the floor instantly, and now writhed and screamed, flopping over and over. Was this due to the heroin overdose, or the corrosive substance by which her features were already dissolving into a gluey red/green mask?

‘Vana?’ a confused voice said.

Lucy backed away all the more, as Alyssa, eyes streaming, mouth covered in phlegm, came staggering across the room.

‘Ivana!’ Her confusion gave way to utter horror as Ivana, or what remained of her, came to rest on her back, jerking spasmodically, ragged breaths wheezing from a mouth that was little more now than a melting, frothing hole.