She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out what looked like a blue handgun with a bright yellow cartridge. A Taser X3. The X3 is compact, light and capable of firing three shots before it needs reloading.

‘What happens after you’ve shot three of them?’ I asked.

‘I’m not going to have to shoot that many,’ she said, and I hesitated for just a moment. She was right. When they saw one of their number twitching on the muddy road with involuntary muscular spasms, the rest of them were likely to find the fight draining out of them.

So I left Edie Wren and I went on alone.

I was running faster to keep up with the figure jogging ahead of me. I was hot now and he must have been hot too. Because, without breaking his stride, he removed his balaclava with a flourish, like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat, and when he looked back at me I saw the ragged ranks of scarring that ran down one side of his face.

Mr Click-Click.

Then he was leaping across the trash in the ditch and sprinting into the winter woods.

I looked back at Edie. The mob had stopped twenty metres away from her. She held her gun hand in the air, the blue-and-yellow Taser clearly visible, but I knew her voice would be calm and rational and making it clear that she would prefer not to dish out any neuromuscular incapacitation today.

I felt a surge of fierce pride in her.

Then I jumped across the ditch and went into the woods, losing sight of my man, but hearing the roar of the traffic ahead and knowing that he must be heading for the road. I caught sight of him again, moving nimbly through woods that he must have known well. He was getting away from me.

I slowed on the uneven ground of the woods, and I stumbled over the tangled roots and dead leaves and brightly coloured trash that was scattered everywhere, and I found that I could not keep up with him. Ahead, the road was a torrent of traffic, all three lanes booming with giant lorries heading for the port, and when I finally reached it he was already standing on the hard shoulder of the other side.

We stared at each other like two men on different banks of some mighty river that looked impossible to cross.

There were other men on either side of the road, all of them looking up speculatively at the lorries, all of them desperate for England, all of them waiting for a chance to cadge a ride. But the lorries moved too fast, the drivers casting wary looks at the packs of men by the side of the last road in France as they rumbled by. On the far side of the road, I saw that scarred face smile at me.

The lorry that hit him came out of nowhere.