On the far side of the crowd two men each held an arm of a light-grey Hugo Boss coat that I had been half-tempted to keep for myself. One of them was a large overweight man with a bushy beard. He towered over his rival, a smaller, leaner figure with his face almost totally covered by a balaclava.

But the larger man was the one who seemed afraid.

The man in the balaclava raised his free hand, the hand that did not claim possession of the Boss coat.

And he clicked his fingers.

Click-click.

Just once. It was enough.

The large man with the beard relinquished the coat.

The man in the balaclava put it on. It was a few sizes too big for him. He was heading towards the road out of the camp.

Edie was already following him.

Hanif was watching her. She turned to glance back at me and he saw the look that passed between us.

Hanif stiffened in his new Giorgio Armani coat, staring hard at me, as if seeing me for the first time. I jogged after Edie. There was nothing else to do.

‘It’s him,’ she said.

‘They’re on to us,’ I said.

‘I swear to God it’s him, Max.’

‘I know but listen to me, will you? They’ve twigged that we’re cops.’

‘No,’ she said, but without much conviction.

By the side of the BMW X5, Hanif was addressing a group of men in their nearly new coats. A boy in an oversized Berghaus was sprinting towards the shack of wooden pallets. Troy appeared in the doorway, his tattooed face grotesque in the sunlight. The boy pointed in our direction. We couldn’t go back.

‘Let’s get the bastard,’ I said.

‘What’s the plan?’

‘ID our man. Apprehend and arrest. Then call Europol.’

‘And if they refuse to hold him?’

‘Then he’s coming back in the boot of the car.’

She looked at me for a moment and saw I was not joking.

‘It’s not going to come to that,’ I said. ‘The driver of the lorry with twelve dead women in the back is on every Europol watch list.’

‘What about the CRS?’

‘I don’t trust them.’

‘Me neither. He’s clocked us, Max.’

The figure ahead of us broke into a run.

We did the same, sprinting by the side of the muddy country lane, the ditch beside us overflowing with garbage. I felt the sweat trickle down my back. A bottle exploded on the road behind us. Something thudded into one of the trees.

The men from the camp were coming for us.

Then Edie slowed and stopped.

‘You go on,’ she said.

I stared at her incredulously.

‘I’m not leaving you!’

‘I’ll be fine,’ she said.