Pressed up hard against the side of the tub, there was nowhere left to roll. So I covered my head with my arms and brought my knees up to my chest as the hammer came down again, banging hard against my left elbow, sending an electric shock through my arm, and coming down again, smashing the tiles by my right ear.

There was a fleck of white froth at the corner of Troy’s mouth.

The dreadlocked goon was shouting his name.

Troy had missed something.

He had missed the sound of the front door being kicked down.

But now we heard them out there. It was very loud and just the other side of the door. Women were screaming and men were shouting, there were cries of fury and pain, the unmistakable sounds of breaking glass and breaking bones.

The door to the room opened and a heavy-set Chinese man in his forties suddenly stood there. He hit the dreadlocked goon across the face with his forearm and the goon went down with his lights out before he hit the ground.

Another Chinese man entered the room, this one twenty years younger, tall and lean, and he bent over the girl on the bed, talking to her in Cantonese, the tongue of Chinatown.

Then Keith Li was there, moving slowly into the room as if he had all the time in the world, taking it all in – the young woman in a wedding dress on the bed, the unconscious goon, Troy with his hammer and me cowering naked in the bath, spitting fragments of smashed tiles out of my mouth.

There was a moment when everything seemed to stop, and Troy and I stared at Keith Li, neither of us understanding what he was doing here.

‘Did Edie call you in?’ I said.

‘Nobody calls me in,’ he said.

The head of the Wo Shing Wo moved as casually as if he was taking a stroll down Gerrard Street on Spring Festival, so relaxed that at first I did not notice the machete he held by his side.

He looked more carefully at the young woman on the bed and I saw his body stiffen with anger at the bruising around one eye and the splatter of blood across the shoulder of the wedding dress.

He barked an order in Cantonese.

The two Chinese men seized Troy’s arms, and I heard the hammer clatter between my feet.

Keith Li murmured some brief instructions. The younger Chinese man shoved Troy’s left arm halfway up his back while the older one slammed down Troy’s right arm as if it was a roast duck going on the chopping block.

Troy’s fingers flexed and tensed by my face.

‘Now wait a minute,’ he said.