‘The Champagne Room is on one of the busiest motorways in the country,’ he said. ‘I’m only responsible for what goes on this side of that little red rope.’

‘So you don’t know anything about this lorry?’ I said. ‘You weren’t expecting a delivery from this Lee Hill? It’s got nothing to do with you?’

Steve Warboys looked at me levelly.

‘I should give you a good hiding, Detective,’ he said. He jabbed a finger at me. ‘Because you – I believe – are trying to stitch me up.’

‘You’re really not that stupid, are you, Steve? Give me a good hiding and the next policeman you see will be pointing a Glock in your fat ugly mug.’

‘Where the fuck have you been?’

Mahmud X was at his side. Steve Warboys was a large man but the giant doorman loomed above him even as he cringed with embarrassment.

‘We’ve got a problem,’ Mahmud said. ‘A big problem.’

And then we saw him.

The Middle Eastern man with the neat beard was standing at the bar, sipping a fruit juice through a straw, each of his arms in a sling.

Steve Warboys stared at him with disbelief.

‘Him?’ Warboys said.

‘No,’ Mahmud X said. ‘Them.’

And then we saw the rest of them.

The friends of the man with the neat beard, filing slowly into the Champagne Room, dressed far too casual for this place, all baggy jeans and sagging basketball tops, staring at the near-naked girls as if they could not quite believe their hungry eyes.

A carload of them at first, and then more, another carload, most of them young and bearded like the man sipping fruit juice through a straw, but a few older men among them, until there were more than a dozen of them lined up with their backs to the bar.

‘Do you know what I dislike about them?’ Steve Warboys said, and I couldn’t work out if he was speaking to me or himself. ‘The Pakis and the Iraqis, the Somalians and the Eritreans and the Syrians? It’s nothing personal. They were all wiping their arse with their hands last year but that’s not their fault, is it? But these are people from brutalised societies, Detective.’

Mahmud X handed him a cricket bat.

Steve tested his swing.