Question

the thief......before the police arrived (has escaped/had escaped)​

Answer 1

Explanation:

The answer is had escaped.

Answer 2

had escaped

Simple past tense:

It denotes that we are talking about something that happened in the past. The simple past tense emphasizes the completion of the action, as opposed to the past continuous tense, which is used to express events that occurred across time. The third person singular is represented by the word 'has.' The past participle and third-person singular past tense of 'have' is 'had.'