Ben took a step towards the door. Which put him within reach of either guy, and technically in danger of getting hit. But that much weight, whether composed of muscle or lard, had a lot of inertia to overcome before they could properly start moving. They would be slow, and he was fast. If a punch launched towards him, he could casually take out his cigarettes and light one up before it arrived. And he already knew that it was the muscleman, as the actual or self-declared superior of the pair, who would move first.

It happened exactly as Ben anticipated. As he moved towards the door, the muscleman peeled himself away from the wall and a big knuckly fist flew towards Ben’s chest. A lot of drive behind it, no question. The guy had probably hit a lot of people before now, considering his line of work, and he had some crude understanding of how to inflict significant bodily damage on mostly unsuspecting, untrained victims.

But the rib-cracking blow never landed. Ben watched the big knuckly fist float towards him, then reached up with one hand as though he was catching a tennis ball gently lobbed his way. He caught the guy’s fist smack in his palm and deflected and twisted it at the same time.

It was the most basic of Aikido wrist locks. Ben brought up his other hand to trap the guy’s hand against his own. His fingers flowed over the guy’s wrist like water. It took barely any strength to lever the joint so painfully that the muscleman was forced down on one knee, letting out a grunt of surprise and agony. That was what these bodybuilder types didn’t seem to understand. You can spend a decade pumping your muscles up to the size of wholemeal bread loaves, but behind that suit of armour your sinews, ligaments and joints remain just as fragile and vulnerable to attack as when you were a skinny, pencil-necked fifteen-year-old.

Then Ben stepped casually around to the guy’s right, taking the trapped wrist with him, and drove him all the way down to the floor with his arm levered up behind his back. It would only have taken a couple more pounds of pressure to break the joint. Ben pushed it through all the way until he felt the crackle and snap. At which point the muscleman would have started screaming, if Ben hadn’t already been standing on his neck and crushing his face into the tiled floor.