There was a party on the estate, three doors down from Martin’s Auntie Steph’s flat. Everyone invited. A welcome home for a well-known armed robber. Mickey wisely tried to resist his friend’s suggestion they both go. Told Martin it wouldn’t do for a would-be copper to go to a coming-out party. Martin had retaliated with the assertion that there’d be free beer. And girls. Which was how Mickey had found himself in a flat wreathed in bunting, fag smoke and the smell of cheap booze. Sipping a can of Red Stripe and wondering where the girls were. Auntie Steph and her two septuagenarian mates not really qualifying as such.

Something, of course, had been bound to kick off. And given that the returning hero’s wife had been over the side with his best mate while he’d been away, the scene was set. A firearm had been procured, and violent revenge was planned. The would-be victim, however, wisely declined to attend his own execution. Forewarned by the errant spouse. Unlike the Met, who were more than happy to take his place. Someone had tipped the Feds off, and it wasn’t hard to guess who.

And so the boys in blue attended in force. Mob-handed and tooled up for any eventuality. Word quickly got around that there were carriers full of battle-hardened Territorial Support Group coppers queued in the streets around the estate. Ready and willing for a replay of Broadwater Farm. Only this time it’d be the blue army on the offensive. Boiler-suited, shield- and baton-equipped squads were seen converging on the block from all sides. Armed officers at their head.

And so it was, as panic ensued, that Mickey handled his first ever firearm. The pistol, a battered, tired old Browning Hi-Power. Thrust upon him by the woman of the house. Having confiscated it from her hapless husband, she had momentarily blinded the closest young lad – Mickey – with the magnificence of her sizable chest. And then took advantage of his teenage bewilderment to issue the instruction: ‘Get rid of this, there’s a love.’

Disaster beckoned, especially for a boy with uniformed career plans. All hope seemed lost. With Mickey cast as “last man seen holding a shooter” even if he dumped it. The local hard boys had fallen about laughing. Telling him that even if he dumped the piece it still had his prints all over it. And then, with police entry squads only seconds from piling through the open front door, help had come from an unexpected source. And of all people, it was Auntie Steph who came to the rescue.

A woman well into her seventies at the time, Steph was what her neighbours called “redoubtable” when she was listening. And “that fucking old cow” when they believed she couldn’t hear them. Glowering on the sofa between two equally life-hardened harridans, she had beckoned Mickey over.