And as if to prove him right, the Secret Service deployed from their SUVs to face them. Not giving much of a shit about being told to await instruction. Their long dark coats and futuristic black glasses like Matrix wannabes. And looking very much like they’d like to air their weapons. Go bullet time. Their attention firmly fixed on the Harriers, the most obvious threat as seen through those lenses.

The closest of the muscle men started to reach into his jacket. Possibly, belatedly, realising that his covert cap really ought to be on his head. Then thought better of it, as half a dozen Secret Servicemen put hands on the butts of their pistols. Mickey held his breath, seeing the Counter Terrorism Land Cruiser doors crack open. Eight assault-rifle-equipped firearms officers; 240 rounds of 5.56mm ready to rock and roll. Getting ready to debus onto a London street. In front of Secret Service officers not used to either their uniform or methods. Way to ratchet up the tension, guys.

‘Bronze Command, all callsigns, hold position. Harriers, lower threat profile and focus on any obvious public disorder.’

Potential crisis averted. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. The Harriers set to dissuading the more bolshie passers-by with their sheer intimidatory presence. Quietly putting on their yellow caps. Belatedly announcing themselves as ‘Police’. Once they thought they could do so without being shot, that was. And the Secret Servicemen and women, denied a bullet to catch, stood and watched them with poorly concealed amusement. Another two minutes of vigorous direct intervention from the dismounted working riders cleared the road. Kev sitting impassively out front on his BMW R1000, ignoring the camera phones and catcalls.

‘Romeo Control, Working Two.’ Maisie, sounding smug. ‘Carriageway will be clear in thirty seconds.’

The blockage, it turned out, having been caused by a delivery vehicle and a mobile crane. The former parked in an urban clearway to drop off office furniture for a development. The latter too big to make the turn out of a side street with a furniture van parked in its path. Its driver having got halfway round and realising there was no way he was going to make the turn. And then found himself boxed in by half a dozen honking cars behind him.

The vehicle at the heart of the problem now closing its rear doors and getting ready to go round the block. Maisie having threatened the site foreman with arrest unless the delivery driver presented himself within sixty seconds. Thereupon pointing out to Jerzy, from Krakow, that the Met could just as easily confiscate his waggon as wait for him to move it. And do him for obstruction. Words which, once translated into Polish by his mate, had made him see the light in double-quick time. Frayed tempers were soothed. Secret Service and Met muscle starting the phased fall-back to their vehicles. Counting down the seconds, Mickey grinned as Kev came on the air twenty-eight seconds later.