Becks was frozen to the spot as the clutch of people started to head towards the corridor that led to the back of the building. There was no way of warning Suzie and Judith that the whole office was about to leave the building right next to where they were breaking in.

But then, what Becks didn’t know was that at that precise moment, Suzie and Judith were failing to break into anywhere.

It had been Suzie’s theory that as long as Judith stayed sitting in the wheelchair to act as ballast, she’d be able to climb up onto the back of the chair and in through the window. However, practice was proving harder than theory. This was mainly because it turned out that Suzie had terrible balance, and Judith kept trying to shift position to help her, which made the wheelchair risk tipping over.

‘Stop moving!’ Suzie called out as she stood on the armrest, one hand holding a wheelchair handle, the other gripping onto the top of Judith’s head.

‘You’re hurting!’

‘I need to get up.’

‘Ow!’

‘Hold on!’

Suzie tried to step up, got one foot onto the back of the wheelchair and both hands firmly onto the windowsill. She was halfway there. Or was she? With her weight pressing down on the back of the wheelchair, it was only Judith’s mass in the seat that was stopping it from tipping over, and it was precariously balanced, they could both feel it.

In fact, the front two wheels on the old wheelchair rose gently into the air as the whole thing started to tip backwards, but Suzie was able to shift her weight so that it didn’t topple over.

‘You remember the end of The Italian Job?’ Judith found time to ask.

‘Don’t make me laugh!’ Suzie wheezed, and then they both gasped as a door at the back of the building crashed open and people started to emerge. Bloody hell, what was going on?

It was precisely the impetus Suzie needed to push down on the wheelchair and launch herself through the open window, where she landed with a whoof! of expelled air on the other side as the first office workers turned and saw Judith sitting on her own in a wheelchair under the open window of Andy’s office.

Judith smiled to them like the old lady she was. But then she saw Andy Bishop emerge, with Becks stepping out from behind him so she was blocking his direct view of her. Judith knew she had only seconds before Andy saw her, so she turned the wheelchair around and began to wheel herself away from the car park.