Seeming to realise this, Royton stopped and turned when he reached the canopy, his muscular neck and exposed chest gleaming with sweat. Almost as soon as he did, Harry was in front of him, shouting at him to give it up and that he was under arrest.

Royton responded with the sort of swift precision one would expect from a professional enforcer. Harry was a big guy but he went in unguarded, and caught a bone-crunching knee in the groin. He doubled over, and Royton, clamping his hands together in a single giant-sized fist, bludgeoned him in the middle of the back. As Harry tottered, agonised, the big guy caught him with such a powerful uppercut that it lifted him upright, blood spattering skyward, and then a short, hard left, followed by a roundhouse right, the meaty smack of which echoed across the car park.

Lucy got there just as Harry hit the deck, Royton spinning to face her.

His face was terrifying simply because it was blank. There was no rage there, no fear, no desperation; he’d just beaten someone unconscious, and it made no impact on him at all. Because this was his job, this was what he did for a living. And now he was about to do it again.

He lurched towards her, all six-foot-five of him.

Lucy backed off involuntarily, before sensing one of the two Asian lads standing nearby, gawking in disbelief at the unfolding situation.

Instinctively, she snatched the jet wash from his hand, and turned it on Royton, angling it into his face. Taken by surprise, he gagged and gasped, batting at the intense stream with both hands. Lucy advanced as she trained it on him, blasting it into his eyes, pushing him backward. Royton ducked and wove like a boxer, to no avail.

As Lucy came alongside the second of the three car-washers, she grabbed his jet wash as well – now she was hammering the bruiser with two high-pressure sprays. He crashed into the Range Rover and sank to a crouch, arms over his head, trying to work his way along its flank, only to slip and fall to his knees.

Lucy kept blasting him, getting as close as she dared. He tried to crawl away on all-fours, but then, though she at first thought he was squawking and spluttering, she realised that he was actually laughing.

By now, uniform support had arrived. They clambered all over Royton, one officer hooking an armlock around his neck, another cuffing his wrists behind his back.

Lucy dropped the hoses and ran to Harry, who lay face down in a puddle of blood-filled water.

‘You think this is funny, Royton?’ she shouted over her shoulder. ‘You fucking won’t!’

Chapter 22