‘They have experienced war, poverty, mass rape, slave markets – things that the average person in this country thinks will never touch them,’ he said. ‘They have been changed by these things. And then we invite them in. Or – like your Afghans – they come in hidden in the back of a lorry and we can never send them home because it violates their human rights. Or because it’s dangerous where they come from. Or because some senile old judge thinks it would violate their right to a family life. Or some such old bollocks. So now we have all those people with a direct experience of horror in Lagos and Baghdad and Eritrea and Kabul knocking around Ilford and Southend and Brentwood and Croydon, and even if they’re picking their dinner out of dustbins, it’s still like a lottery win compared to what they left behind. And then we wonder why our country is changing.’ His bat swished through the air. ‘Know what I mean, Detective?’

I watched the men with their backs to the bar and I thought it was very likely that someone would die in the Champagne Room tonight. The man with each arm in a sling had finished his fruit juice. Another man who could have been his younger brother took his empty glass and casually hurled it at the rows of bottles behind the bar.

Women screamed in the sudden shower of broken glass.

The men at the bar fanned out in a wave of destruction.

Steve Warboys waded into them, his cricket bat connecting with neatly bearded faces. Mahmud X grabbed two men by the scruff of the neck and brought their skulls together. A half-full bottle of sparkling wine flew through the air and hit a half-cut City boy in the centre of his face. His companions howled with rage and threw themselves into the fray. Soon the Champagne Room was full of flying fists and broken glass. The music never stopped. Something about taking me to the sky above. One of the good old songs.

I slipped outside.

Billy Greene was standing by the X5, his phone in his hand. He was calling it in. I held up my hand and he stopped. Because the secret truth is that we are never in a mad rush to stop two groups of villains from doing serious harm to each other. Vehicles were streaming out of the car park, suddenly anxious to be elsewhere.

‘You had a message from the boss,’ Billy said.

I waited.

‘DCI Whitestone heard from your CI. Lee Hill? He’s in Dunkirk with his lorry.’

I expected the usual diet of jam tomorrow that these Criminal Informants feed you, the promise of a major breakthrough that’s going to be happening the day after tomorrow.

The usual baloney.

But Billy surprised me.

‘The scar-faced man who brought the girls in,’ Edie said. ‘Mr Click-Click? Lee Hill has found him.’

13