Not only that, there was a light-show. A blue radiance was suddenly swirling on the lake in a repeating pattern.

Alyssa dashed past Lucy towards the parapet, which creaked loudly when she halted on it.

Lucy glanced up and around, startled.

‘No!’ Alyssa screeched, her shoulders hunched with disbelieving rage. ‘No! I don’t believe it! I don’t …’

The aged bricks beneath her feet creaked again. Then one of them noisily cracked.

‘Alyssa!’ Lucy shouted.

The bricks gave way.

With a squawk of terror, Alyssa tottered where she stood, half turning as mortar and masonry visibly crumbled under her – and then fell from sight.

Amazement lending her extra strength, Lucy sat bolt upright. Breathing hard, she scrambled towards the roof’s edge on all fours. The first thing she saw when she reached it and gazed down, was her own Jimny – halted about thirty yards along from the main building. Its blue lights still swirled, but its siren had ceased.

‘Sister.’ She almost laughed. ‘Oh, my lovely Sister Cassie.’

‘You cow …’ came a choked rasp.

Lucy glanced downward, and to her astonishment, saw the Torgau girl hanging one-handed from the head of a gargoyle. Even as Lucy watched, the clenching fingers slid through bird-filth, losing their grasp.

‘Quickly … here!’ Lucy flattened her body against the roof and thrust her own right hand down. ‘Grab hold.’

Alyssa reached up, and struck at the extended arm with her knife, slashing a deep wound across the back of the hand. Lucy yanked it back with a yelp both of pain and astonishment.

‘You slag!’ the deranged girl snarled, her face a mass of sweat and straining muscle. ‘You cop slag!’

She slipped loose, but even as she descended, at incredible speed, she flung the knife upward. It twirled past Lucy’s head, missing it only by inches.

A split second later, there was a crunch of bone and flesh.

More numb and exhausted than she’d ever been, Lucy rose slowly to her feet. She couldn’t take her eyes off the gory spectacle down on the drive.

‘Like you said, love,’ she muttered, ‘quicker than what we’d have planned for you.’

When Frank McCracken sat down at one end of the boardroom table, the room itself was empty, aside from Wild Bill Pentecost, who was already seated at the opposite end. The Chairman was even greyer-faced than usual, and uncharacteristically ruffled.

‘All this over a breach of protocol, Frank?’ he said.

Gingerly, McCracken adjusted his sling. ‘If only it were, Bill … I reckon we could shake hands and walk away again.’

Pentecost pondered that, but not for long. ‘Just tell me what’s really going on.’

‘You obviously haven’t heard yet. But you will soon.’ McCracken regarded him long and hard. ‘Detective Constable Lucy Clayburn. You know her?’

Pentecost frowned. ‘She gave me some grief at the hospital.’

‘And you put a contract out on her last year.’