She went across the traffic island, bounced off a hatchback, and ran right over the bonnet of a Ford Mondeo before sprinting past the Rainforest Café, bowling tourists aside as she went. I went around the cars to a chorus of hooting and headed after her, but I groaned out loud when she did a sharp turn into the Trocadero Centre. The only way in was a set of escalators going up a floor. Chasing someone up stairs or escalators is always a nightmare because there’s a chance they’ll be waiting in the blind spot at the top to kick you back down again. But I couldn’t risk losing the Pale Lady, so I ran up the down escalators on the assumption that if she was waiting for me it would be on the wrong side. It was a good theory, and had she been waiting for me I’d have been well pleased with myself.

The Trocadero was a five-story bastard child of a building built in the Baroque style in 1896 and sorely used over the centuries as everything from a music hall to a restaurant and a waxworks. In the mid-1980s the interior was completely gutted and replaced with the sets from Logan’s Run—or that might be just the way I remember it. It’s got a cinema and a multilevel amusement arcade that I remember well, because my mum used to clean it. And one of my uncles knew a trick to blag free turns on Street Fighter II.

I caught a flash of salmon pink as I crested the escalator and saw the Pale Lady jump the short flight of steps that led down to the mezzanine level. A bunch of plump white girls in black hoodies scattered as she landed among them. As I chased her I was praying Please God don’t go into the cinema because short of a minefield, a multiplex is the last place you want to chase a suspect. She skidded on the waxed floor and went left.

I yelled “Police!” at the plump white girls, who scattered again.

One of them yelled “Wanker” as I jumped the stairs and followed the Pale Lady along the mezzanine. She went past a café with a drift of aluminum chairs and tables half blocking the way. Some poor sod stood up at the wrong moment and got the Pale Lady’s forearm smashed into his head. He went down hard, upending a table and sending a tray spinning over the railings and down into the atrium three stories below.

“Police,” I yelled again, which just got me bewildered looks from the bystanders. I really don’t know why we don’t just save our breath. Which I needed to save at that point, I can tell you.