However, Alex’s unease had transferred itself to Lorna a little. He wasn’t being overly protective; she knew there was some sense in his words of caution. A woman jogging solo after dark … well, you couldn’t be too careful, could you, whatever night it was? Which was why, over the previous year, she’d devised this particular route and now followed it religiously. The first part, which she’d almost completed, led mainly through middle-class housing estates, where it seemed unlikely there’d be anyone hanging around looking for trouble. After that, she’d be out of sight completely, so there’d be no one at all to bother her – and she was almost at that point now.

Her breathing steadied, her pace increasing, as she circled around the top end of Queen Alexandra Park and joined Leatherton Lane. This was one of the busier roads in Lorna’s part of town, but even here only a single vehicle flitted past, a blue transit van, its two occupants paying noticeable attention to her, though that was no surprise. Lorna had a tall, coltish figure but was freckled and pretty, her copper-red hair cut in a fetching pageboy bob.

It didn’t matter anyway, because she now diverted from the pavement, vanishing into a passage between two maisonettes. It was an unlit cut-through, which, once it passed the back of the maisonettes and their rear gardens, sloped downward for fifty yards before joining the towpath on the north side of the Bridgewater Canal. Still sticking to her normal route, Lorna followed the towpath east, lengthening her stride alongside the night-black water, her feet thudding on the dry cinders. It was quite dark along here, the only light filtering down from streetlamps on bridges or over the tops of factory walls, but she had come this way so often in the last few months that she felt she could have run it blindfolded.

Some of her friends thought that she was extra-brave for coming this way. This was possibly the quietest stretch of the canal, with no residences, no houses or narrowboats. If pressed on the matter, Lorna supposed that, yes, it would be an ideal place for some weirdo to launch an ambush. But firstly, why would some predatory individual hang about down here, where he wouldn’t expect to find anyone? And secondly, she had faith in her physical abilities. She was now two miles into the run and still travelling at a pace well above jogging speed. She might be hot and sweaty, moisture pooling on her brow, but she had plenty of energy left. Her lungs were going like the clappers, her hamstrings and the backs of her calves steadily tightening, but she was fit, and actual fatigue was still far away – she could keep going for hours yet and was certain that she could easily outrun the average person.