I took out my cash and held it out. He took it and stuffed it into his pocket without counting. Then he gestured at the man in the Union Jack hoodie, who indicated that we should follow him.

Troy’s voice stopped me at the rainbow-coloured strips that covered the doorway.

‘You should unload the gear and go home,’ he said. ‘Don’t hang about for a bit of sightseeing.’ His hideous face grinned in the half-light of the wooden shack. ‘Because – no offence – you smell a bit too much like pig.’ His grin grew wider. ‘And they’re not big on pig around here.’

We followed Hanif to the BMW.

A group of men had edged towards the car but they seemed to know not to get any closer. They stood there, waiting for time to pass. In the distance I could see the children playing and the women in their headscarves, preparing their meals. But only men gathered around the car.

Everywhere you looked there was something that had been used up and tossed aside, resting in the mud. An abandoned car, an abandoned shopping trolley, abandoned people. Near the thin summer tents, a female photographer was taking a picture of a tiny girl who was clutching a doll.

I opened up the BMW and Hanif rummaged through the pile of coats until he found what he was looking for – a Giorgio Armani overcoat with a dark stain on one arm, possibly from a full-bodied Burgundy. Hanif slipped it on over his Union Jack hoodie.

‘Looks good on you,’ Edie said.

Hanif whistled and the rest of them came running.

Men and boys. A pack of them, more than twenty, and more were arriving every moment from the muddy track that led to the camp, from the coloured tents and the wooden cabin, their boots pounding across the metal walkways. The ones at the front reaching out with muddy hands to grab as many of the coats as they could carry, then spinning away as more hands reached out to rob them of their prize, the voices raised in furious Arabic.

We stood to one side of the car as Hanif smoothed the front of his new coat. Within minutes the coats had been torn from the car. Fists were thrown, curses were hissed and men yelled in each other’s faces.

‘Take it easy!’ I shouted.

A man on the edge of the pack bared his yellow teeth at me. He raised his hand from his jacket just enough for me to see the weak sunlight gleam on his knife.

‘They’re all carrying blades, Edie,’ I said.

‘They’re all front,’ she said.

I didn’t think so. What stops most people from committing crime is what they have to lose. And this crowd had nothing to lose.