On the Tesco forecourt, shoppers staggered out of the way, shouting and screaming, as the Hyundai backed into their midst at high speed, trying to make a three-point turn and smashing into a flower-seller’s stand, sending petals and greenery and splinters of woodwork in every direction. The flower-seller himself only just darted out of the way. With a deftness of touch even Harry would have been proud of, the Hyundai pulled a right and screeched back down another aisle leading to the opposite end of the car park – only to find the divisional van ploughing up towards it, blocking the thoroughfare.

Harry swung in behind the suspect vehicle.

‘Index Mike-Victor-one-six,’ Lucy relayed into her radio. ‘Lima-Hotel-Bravo. Received over?’

‘Roger that, Lucy. What’s the status of the pursuit, over?’

‘The status is he’s fucked!’ Harry shouted triumphantly.

The driver of the Hyundai had reached the same conclusion. With the van about twenty yards in front and Harry’s BMW even closer behind, he dropped his anchors, the car sliding sideways, clipping the front of a parked Golf, shattering its nearside light cluster, ripping off its own bumper bar. Before it was even stationary, the hoodlum trio were out of it and scattering across the car park in different directions, threading between parked vehicles, knocking yet more innocent shoppers out of their way.

Lucy and Harry jumped out as well. Perhaps because he was the one she knew, Lucy found herself focussed on Royton, who clumped off towards the car park’s eastern edge. He’d donned a heavy khaki jacket, which could easily be concealing weapons, but she gave chase anyway, encouraged to hear the shouts of officers behind as they attempted to apprehend the other suspects, and to see Harry as he also chased after Royton.

Lucy was lighter, and a whole lot fitter, but she’d no sooner rounded the next vehicle than she collided with a shopping trolley, which almost upended her. She sent it skittering away with multiple profane curses, but it meant that Harry got ahead of her.

Royton, meanwhile, had slowed to a weary trudge. There were so many police personnel on the car park now that there was minimal chance he could weave his way back to the entrance on foot, while directly ahead of him stood the superstore carwash, two flags billowing alongside a high, prefabricated canopy. A Range Rover was parked underneath, three Asian lads in heavy waterproofs giving it a going-over with high-pressure jet washes. Beyond this point, a brick wall marked the boundary of the car park. It was ten feet tall at least, but even if Royton could have got over it, there was a thirty-foot drop down the other side into the Bridgewater Canal.