‘Yes. But now we need to catch his bosses. The people who paid him to drive that lorry. So, for us – for the British police – it’s not over. But he is dead now. And I thought that you would want to know.’

He nodded.

I could see that he had believed the death of the man who drove the lorry in which his sister died would bring him some peace.

But it didn’t seem to be working.

He stared at the lights coming on in the meat market, not seeing them. I looked at my phone.

DEJAN JOVANOVIC – SERBIAN EMBASSY, it said.

My thumb hovered over the call button but I did not press it. My plan had been to turn the kid in and let his embassy ship him back to Belgrade. But I found that I didn’t have the energy. I slipped my phone into my jacket.

‘I’ve got to pick up my daughter,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to walk my dog. And before I do any of that I have to go to the gym because if I don’t go to the gym then I will not sleep tonight.’

He shook his head.

He didn’t understand what I was saying.

‘Go,’ I said, sounding like the foreman in charge of that two-million-pound hole in the East End.

‘Go where?’ he said, as we got out of the BMW.

‘I don’t know, do I? Go somewhere better than the back seat of a car with no wheels.’

Smithfield was the perfect place for an insomniac. This was, more than anywhere in the city, the neighbourhood that never slept. Young women and men were queuing outside the clubs on Charterhouse Street. The white lorries were arriving for the night shift at the meat market. It was a good place to find whatever you needed. But when we got out of the car, Nesha Novak followed me all the way to Smithfield ABC, keeping one hundred metres behind.

Fred was waiting.

‘You’re so lucky to be training,’ Fred grinned, as I headed towards the lockers. He nodded in greeting at Nesha, who had sat down on a bench.

Then we went to work.

One of Fred’s legendary circuits, guaranteed to possibly help you live forever and definitely get a good night’s sleep. Twelve rounds. Three minutes three times each on the heavy bag, the speedball, the upper-cut bag and the super-heavyweight bag. Ten burpies and ten press-ups during the minute break between rounds. No stopping, no rest.

‘Recover while you work,’ Fred said.

James Brown on the sound system. Fred punching the bags by my side, his old black gloves whipping against the Lonsdale leather with blinding speed as we were watched from the wall by Joe Frazier and Sugar Ray Leonard and Muhammad Ali and Jack Dempsey and Jake LaMotta. Fred’s hall of fame.