She headbutted him – again in the middle of his bitten nose.

He choked in pain, his finger reflexively squeezing the trigger, the weapon blasting the room like a miniature howitzer. Plaster erupted from the walls, and with an echoing spang-spang-spang, plate-sized holes were punched in the metal shutter, before it blew out of the window altogether. Lucy headbutted him again. He released one hand from the weapon and tried to grab her throat. She slammed a fist into his right eye. He gasped, releasing her but throwing another punch. It caught her in the mouth with sledgehammer force.

Lucy was hurled backward, jarring her spine against the stone mantel. The gunman staggered and half-overbalanced. Tonguing a loosened tooth, blood filling her mouth, Lucy bolted sideways for the window and sprang up and out through its now empty frame, landing heavily on the mangled metal lying on the pavement outside. She forward-rolled over cobblestones, launching herself back to her feet and sprinting away along the street.

With a grunt, the gunman slid out through the window after her.

Lucy zigzagged, but she too was at the end of her strength, her head woozy from the pounding she’d taken. The world spun, and she found herself tottering sideways and tripping over the opposite kerb.

Panting, he trekked across the road towards her, weapon levelled.

‘Oh, God …’ she sobbed.

He was only about five yards away, when he stopped and gazed down the barrel at her.

And then – BLAM! – BLAM! – BLAM!

Lucy watched agog, as the gunman jerked to each impact – before tilting sideways and hitting the cobblestones like a sack of wet cement.

The sub-machine gun clattered down alongside him.

Hardly able to breathe, she levered herself upright, squinting to see through the gloom, not just bewildered – but perplexed, bamboozled, as she tried to figure out what had just happened.

She sensed the gigantic figure advancing down the middle of the road before she saw him.

He too was armed, but in his case with a pistol; he still aimed it two-handed at the prone figure in the scarlet mask. ‘You okay?’ he asked.

‘You?’ Lucy could scarcely believe it, but there was no mistaking the towering intruder, not when she’d got so up close and personal with him in the past that she’d half-busted his knee with a wrench. ‘Shallicker! Mick bloody Shallicker!’

‘Keeping tabs on you’s a full-time sodding job, girl!’

Exhausted though she was, Lucy staggered to her feet. ‘What’s going on? What the hell is this?’

Shallicker halted a few yards away, gun still aimed. ‘Was hoping you could tell me?’

He looked and sounded genuinely bewildered, something Lucy had never seen in him before.