The punch to the heart needs precision and a little bit of luck. It can very easily go wrong if you slip off a pavement or your target turns away or someone unfortunately comes at you from behind and hits you across the back of the noggin with a lager bottle.

But this punch was perfect.

Mahmud X reeled backwards, eyes wide with terror as his heart hammered in his chest from the shock of the blow, his hands grabbing at the front of his cheap tuxedo as he fell backwards over the velvet rope as if he was a falling redwood.

He came to rest on his butt, his mouth lolling open. He could not quite work out what had happened to him. But he suspected he might be dying.

I bent down beside him.

‘I told you to leave it, Peter,’ I said.

‘Orders,’ he gasped. ‘To keep you out.’

‘Breathe deep,’ I said. ‘You’ll be all right.’

I patted him on the back of his Crombie and went inside, standing stock-still for a moment as my eyes adjusted to the darkness and my ears attuned to the noise. I saw men in suits and ties and women in nightwear and heels. No sign of Steve Warboys.

But Bianca appeared out of the darkness.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

I had no idea what she was talking about.

‘I was going to lie about you,’ she reminded me. ‘I was going to say that you had a Southend shoeshine when you did not have a Southend shoeshine.’

I laughed.

‘Don’t worry about it. You were just doing your job.’

She seemed stunned that I wasn’t angry with her. She was a woman who was accustomed to men becoming angry with her.

‘You need to get out of this place, Bianca,’ I said. ‘This is a bad place. These are bad people. I don’t know quite how bad. But if anything happens – if you see anything – if you’re ever in trouble – then you call me.’

I slipped her my card. She gasped as if it was a bouquet of roses, clutching it to her small breasts.

‘Thank you,’ she said, her eyes half-closed.

Then Steve Warboys was there, incandescent with rage at the sight of me.

‘We picked up a lorry driver,’ I told him.

‘And what’s that got to do with me?’

‘A fat man with a West Country accent,’ I said. ‘Lee Hill. I thought you might know him. We pulled him not far from here. He had a lorry full of Afghan migrants. That ring any bells?’

He was struggling to keep his temper.

‘What am I meant to do with a lorryload of unwashed Afghans?’ Steve Warboys demanded. ‘Stick them in a thong and shove them up a fireman’s pole?’

‘This lorry driver was meant to drop them off in your car park,’ I said.

He shook his head and sighed.