Strangers. Paul Finch

was a dumbfounded silence in the room. If there’d been any doubts in any minds about the necessity of this action-plan, they’d been expunged now.

      ‘They may be ours, they may not be,’ Slater said, ‘but … well, they probably are. All the signs are there. If so, that makes it six victims and counting. Ladies, this assailant is absolutely relentless and the public is getting wind of it. When this next two hit the headlines, there’ll be a total circus, which’ll mean extra pressure on the investigation team, more stress, more mistakes. We need to pull together and get it sorted. So go out there and do your job, but watch your backs as well, and I mean watch them closely. The more men die at the hands of Jill the Ripper – sorry, I hate using that name but I don’t see what difference objecting to it will make now – the more vulnerable you people are going to be.’

      Lucy would find out for herself what Slater meant by this approximately one hour after arriving at her designated pitch, which was a small picnic area – in reality little more than a thinly treed grass verge – just off the stretch of the A580 dual carriageway, better known locally as the East Lancashire Road or ‘East Lancs’, that ran south-west from Boothstown towards Lowton.

      Her guardian angel that evening was PC Andy Clegg, a TSG officer in his early twenties. He was a bullish lad, well built around the chest and arms, but whose regulation-cut dark hair, ruddy, chubby features and permanently grave expression only served to underline his youth. Lucy wasn’t sure whether to be encouraged by this or unnerved. When they chatted before setting off, Lucy seeking nothing more than an informal introduction, he responded to her questions in taut monosyllables, which suggested that he was either very focused on the job, which was good, or that he was tongue-tied and abashed in the presence of a female officer who happened to be showing leg and cleavage, which wasn’t so good. There was a time to be embarrassed, and this wasn’t it.

      Clegg would be sitting in an unmarked car on wasteland on the other side of the East Lancs – a battered old relic of a Ford Focus, equipped with a pair of night-vision binoculars. Without doubt he’d have the physical ability to help her, and the willingness to get stuck in – young male coppers were nothing if not reckless in their efforts to prove themselves. She just hoped he had the judgement to go with it.

      And this was to be tested as soon as they arrived at her pitch.

      Lucy was dropped off at the picnic site by an unmarked van with fake company logos on the sides. The hoped-for impression was that she’d just successfully serviced a bunch of navvies. The TSG lads inside the van assisted by beating on its sides and whooping aloud as the vehicle roared away. Following this, she stood out in the open, which wasn’t difficult given the proximity of the streetlights and the semi-leafless state of the autumnal trees, brandished a fistful of twenty-pound notes, and commenced a slow, deliberate count.

      It had the desired effect.

      Two girls were waiting nearby, only half discernible in the dank shadows. One of them was black, one of them white; both wore leather jackets, short skirts and heels. They sauntered towards her side-by-side.

      ‘Who the fuck are you?’ the white girl wondered, her accent strong Scouse.

      ‘Who’s asking?’ Lucy replied, tucking the money up the sleeve of her mac.

      The black girl leaned forward menacingly, an impression enhanced by an old scar that diagonally bisected her mouth and was still clearly visible despite a preponderance of emulsion-like lip gloss. ‘What the fuck’s it got to do with you, you gobby bitch!’ she snarled. ‘This is our pitch and you’re fucking trespassing!’

      Lucy shrugged, but her spine was already tingling. ‘Don’t see a signpost, love.’

      The black girl snapped her hand out, and a gleaming blade sprang into view. ‘I’ll slice your fucking tits off, you cow!’

      ‘Or alternatively, you can pay up,’ the Scouse girl said.

      Lucy gazed from one to the other, affecting dimness. ‘What?’

      ‘We share everything here. And we know you’re not short of cash given that road crew you’ve just balled … so cough up.’

      Even from across the dual carriageway, Lucy heard a thud from the back of the Ford Focus, as if Clegg was already getting set to intervene. That’d be great. She could just picture him clumping across the blacktop in his army surplus trousers, hoodie top and baseball cap. He’d save her of course, but it’d be quite a coincidence – that the moment the new girl was threatened, a tall, dark stranger stepped in.

      But by a miracle, perhaps suggesting that he was smarter than she’d thought, he held off.

      ‘So I have to pay you two for the privilege of standing here?’ Lucy said. ‘On this stretch of public highway which anyone else can use free of charge?’

      ‘See,’ the Scouse girl said to her mate. ‘Told you she was clever.’

      ‘You’ve got to be joking,’ Lucy said, suspecting they were bluffing but now knowing she had to call that bluff.

      ‘This look funny to you?’ The black girl offered the blade again.

      Though its glinting steel tip was now right under Lucy’s nose, less than an inch from severing her septum, she was determined to remain composed. That was all you could ever do in this job, pretend. It didn’t mean that, deep inside, her heart wasn’t going like the clappers.

      ‘Go on then,’ Lucy said. ‘Cut me up. I wonder what would make Mr Merryweather angrier? That … or the fact I had to share his hard-earned to buy you two off?’

      The two prostitutes didn’t exactly flinch, but the blankness of their expressions said more than words ever could.

      ‘You don’t work for Nick Merryweather,’ the Scouse girl finally replied.

      ‘Not directly,’ Lucy agreed, ‘but we know whose pocket you’ll ultimately be picking, don’t we!’

      She was onto a winner; she could tell. No one would believe that she had some kind of hotline to the Crew’s whoremaster-in-chief, but the mere fact she knew who he was would indicate that she was no novice, that she wasn’t just playing at this.

      ‘So go on, cut me!’ she urged them. ‘Or maybe you can put the sodding blade away … and just to show there’s no hard feelings, because yeah, I am trespassing a little bit, I can give you something to be going on with.’ She filched two twenties from under her sleeve, and offered one to each of them. Oddly enough, probably because this kind of thing had never happened before, they were hesitant to take them.

      ‘I’ve never seen you round here,’ the black girl said, still snarling, but the blade now lower. ‘Who the fuck are you?’

      ‘I’m Keira,’ Lucy said.

      ‘Keira?’ The black girl hooted. ‘Jesus wept, couldn’t you think of anything more fucking original?’

      ‘Who are you?’ Lucy asked her.

      ‘I’m not telling you my fucking name.’ The girl pocketed her switchblade, but snatched the twenty and backed away. ‘Just piss off, you silly fucking mare.’

      The Scouse lass gave Lucy a long, searching look – as if somehow suspecting this thing still wasn’t right – then helped herself to her own twenty, taking it almost gingerly between thumb and forefinger, before turning on her heel and hurrying to catch up with her mate, the pair of them dwindling off along the leaf-cluttered verge.

      Lucy watched them as she slowly calmed herself down, wondering if any kind of bridge had been built there or perhaps if it was quite the opposite.

      ‘You won’t make friends that way, love,’ a voice said from somewhere to the right, seeming to answer the question for her. ‘They’ll just mark you as a soft touch and try and scam you again.’

      Lucy turned to the trees and had to squint through the darkness under their half-naked boughs. The dull yellow glow of the streetlights didn’t penetrate