An instant later, Horton inclined his head to listen to the radio in his breast pocket. Then he looked up. ‘We’re on!’ he said, gleefully, and sprinted back towards the car, followed by Grace and Davey.

9

Tuesday 27 November

Horton accelerated as Grace and Davey struggled to clip on their seat belts, then turned the car around, racing back down to the intersection with the main road, where he waited. ‘Little fucker on a red moped, green helmet, just threw acid in a man’s face and grabbed his mobile phone. Heading north down this road. Part index, Charlie Alpha Zero Eight—’

At that moment, a bright red moped raced across their path.

‘That’s him!’

In a long-rehearsed move, Paul Davey, in the front passenger seat, leaned forward and punched on the blue lights and siren, as Horton pulled out in front of a line of traffic and accelerated hard. The car, whup-whup-whupping, raced past several vehicles, gaining speed, seemingly oblivious – to Roy Grace in the rear seat – to the oncoming traffic, which melted away as Horton swerved through an impossible gap between a bus and a taxi.

The moped rider appeared ahead between a van and a minicab, a hundred metres or so in front.

They were gaining on him.

Horton swung out, overtaking the van. A red traffic light was against them. The moped ran it. Taking a risk that Roy Grace would not have done in Brighton, Horton barely slowed, following it straight over the lights, cars braking sharply to their right and left. Grace held his breath. His buddy Glenn Branson’s driving used to scare the shit out of him, but Glenn drove like a dawdler compared to this guy. Although he had to admit, Horton was a brilliant driver.

They were gaining.

Twenty metres behind the moped now.

Of all the methods employed by muggers, those using acid – mainly sulphuric, car-battery acid – were the ones Grace hated the most. The young guy, whoever he was, who had just had the hideous stuff thrown in his face for nothing more than the pathetic value of a black-market mobile phone, was now going to be facing life-changing injuries. Perhaps blinded. Years of agonizing plastic surgery. Whatever looks he might have once had destroyed. And probably terrified to ever go out in public again.

Still gaining.

Ten metres.

‘There’s an alleyway coming up in five hundred metres, guv,’ Horton cautioned, and Paul Davey nodded in confirmation. ‘He swings left down that and we’ve lost him. Permission to take him down?’

Like an armed officer faced with a gunman, who had a split-second to decide whether the gun pointing at him was real or fake, Grace was aware he had only seconds to make the call.