I saw Billy’s disappointment. It was so easy to hurt his feelings. He was such a gentle soul. And although I wasn’t completely confident that he could survive another night in the Champagne Room without losing his trousers, the truth is that I was glad to have Billy Greene with me. He needed the air miles and I needed a colleague who made me look less obviously like a cop. Some ops work better with a man and a woman, and some work better with two men. Strip joints especially.

‘I need you to watch the car park for me,’ I said, smiling to take some of the sting out of it. ‘And besides – you’re too popular with the ladies.’ Then I got deadly serious. I remembered the sight of Steve Warboys wielding his cricket bat and I suspected that he was stupid enough to raise it to a cop. ‘If I’m not out in ten minutes, call it in and come and get me.’

I headed for the entrance, overtaking a group of City boys who were already reeling from some Liverpool Street pub.

Mahmud X was on the door. Standing on the far side of the little velvet rope, guarding the Champagne Room’s ridiculous patch of red carpet.

He held up his massive hands to block my path. I felt my blood rising at the realisation that he was actually going to try to stop me coming in. Who did these Essex hoods think they were?

They had held me back once. They were not going to do it again.

‘Don’t,’ I warned him.

But he did.

Even though I had specifically told him not to.

The big doorman stepped forward over the little velvet rope to stop me and I remembered something about him now from when he was heavyweight prospect Peter Chivers, slowly moving around the heavy bag at Fred’s gym.

He always kept his guard way too low, those great beefy paws held down by his hips. And that’s perfectly fine if you can dance like Muhammad Ali. But it is not so good if you are a great big lump who moves in slow motion.

So I punched him in the heart.

Just one punch that started down in my shoes and rose up in a sliver of a second through my pivoting body – legs, hips, shoulders, arms – and ended with my knuckles slamming hard into his sternum, me having to reach up and aim almost diagonally because of his freakish height, the shock of impact running back up my arm as my fist connected with the bone and cartilage directly in front of his ticker.

It is a punch that doesn’t always work.