She was watching me with quiet amusement, head cocked on one side, and I thought, you can be as cool as you like because you’re going to be sleeping soon enough. By that point, members of the public were getting out of my way of their own accord and I had a clear run for the last five metres. Or would have, if Seawoll hadn’t come up the stairs and hit me in the face. It was like running into a low ceiling beam: I flipped straight over onto my back and found myself contemplating a blurry view of the roof.

Damn, but that man could move fast when he wanted to.

Clearly Henry Pyke could influence other people, even hard-headed sods like Seawoll – that couldn’t be good.

‘I frankly don’t care,’ brayed a woman somewhere to my right. ‘It’s just fucking men singing about fucking men.’

A voice announced that the performance would recommence in less than a minute, and that people should return to their seats. A young man with a Romanian accent and a waiter’s uniform told me that I should stay where I was and that the police had been called.

‘I am the police, you pillock,’ I said, but it came out muffled on account of the fact that my jaw felt as if it was dislocated. I found my warrant card and waved it at him, and to be fair, he did give me a hand up. The bar was empty except for the staff cleaning up. Somebody had stepped on the syrette, crushing it flat. I felt my face. Since I still had all my teeth, Seawoll must have pulled his punches. I asked where the big man had gone and the staff said he’d headed downstairs with the blonde woman.

‘Into the theatre?’ I asked, but they didn’t know.

I ran down the steps and found myself staring at the long marble counter of the cloakroom. The good thing about Seawoll is that he’s hard to miss and difficult to forget – the attendant said he’d headed for the stalls. I went back to the lobby where a polite young lady tried to block my way. I told her I needed to see the manager, and when she tripped off to get him I slipped inside.