We ran through the garden, passing a couple of frightened club-goers crouching behind an empty bathtub, and navigated the next fence, and the one after that. I carried the trombone case above my head - it made running easier, and protected my eyes from the hammering of the rain. At the fourth or perhaps fifth garden, I gestured to Isabelle that we should move back towards the street. Manning’s car was directly opposite, and we headed for it. A few seconds after we emerged onto the road, the men following us reached it, too. They alerted their colleagues down by the club’s entrance, and we won a few seconds as they shouted about us to each other. Then some of the men by the entrance headed towards their cars.

Isabelle reached Manning’s car just before me.

‘Let me drive!’ she called out. ‘I know the city.’

I threw her the keys. She jumped in and started it up, and I ran round to the passenger side and leapt in just as she was moving off. She reversed a few yards, making the men behind us stop in their tracks, and then headed straight for the police cars now hurtling down the street towards us.

There was a succession of shots from both directions. Nothing hit us, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Struggling in the enclosed space, it took me a few seconds to get the rifle out of the case and find the ammunition. Then I wound down the window and leaned out to fire at the cars coming our way. I didn’t hit anything, either: it was a self-loading semi-automatic, and although it could manage twenty to thirty rounds a minute, it was designed for accurate shooting at close quarters - not against moving targets while moving oneself. Isabelle pushed the accelerator down as far as it would go, and several of the cars veered out of the way. We caught two of them as we passed, and for a few yards we skidded on the wet tarmac and I thought we were going to end up in one of the storm drains that lined each side of the road, but she brought it round and pulled us back into the centre at the last moment.

Some of the group who had chased us through the gardens had reached their cars and were now coming up fast behind us. The man in the car closest was leaning out of the passenger window and firing his Kalashnikov, and he aimed well because there was a dull crack and thousands of tiny tributaries suddenly filled the rear window, before the whole surface gave way and fell into the back seat like a sheet of crushed ice.

As Isabelle took a sharp left turn, I carried on firing, but my knuckles were under assault from the relentless needles of rain and there were no streetlights, making my view through the sight next to useless.