She took a step away from him, putting more space and hill between them, and waited for him to leap at her again. When he didn’t, Anna moved to the side, stepping out into the road. He still refused to attack, which was exactly what Anna wanted. She took another step, then another, curving round until they were on the same level of the slope. Then she feinted a left hook and, as he instinctively glided out of her fist’s path, she turned and sprinted into one of the small, tight lanes that ran off Southampton Street.

Anna had decided she wouldn’t be able to beat the man out in the open. She needed him pinned in close quarters where he couldn’t get away from her so easily. She kept running, then, when she was sure he was following her, she ducked into an even narrower alleyway.

It was a short distance to the bright lights of the Strand, but Anna crouched in near total darkness as she held her breath and waited for the man to appear. After a few seconds she heard him panting quietly, but he was being careful, pausing just beyond the entrance to the alley and waiting for his eyes to adjust.

Anna waited too, and when he finally stepped into the black, she struck. She came up from the ground inches from his body, driving her knee into his crotch as her fist at last connected with him as she slammed an uppercut into his chin.

The man pitched backwards against the alley wall, stunned and groaning, as Anna’s mind instantly went all the way back to her close-contact combat lessons at Bernau.

She held her hands out, stiff like blades, and jabbed at his sides and neck, hunting for the pressure points that would cause maximum pain. But as he came out of his daze, he wrapped his arms around Anna and drove her backwards, slamming them both into the opposite wall with enough force to add a few more cracks into its old tiles.

Anna winced in pain. However, worse than the sensation of her head bouncing off hard wall and having her lungs crushed, she felt the man starting to stab at her with his thick fingers and realised he was searching for the same spots on her body that she’d been trying to find on him.

She understood two things in very quick succession. First: they’d had the same training. And second: if she was going to win this fight she needed to improvise.

She made a couple of purposefully sloppy moves, flailing under his heavy grip, then, just as he tipped into overconfidence, she head­butted him, slipped down out of his arms, came up on the side of him, grabbed the back of his hair and open mouth, and gave his head a sharp, brutal twist that snapped his neck.