The men and dogs scrambled for their cars, and there were gut-thumping collisions as the officers piled into them. Despite this, several vehicles started up, but as they all sought to rev away up the track at the same time, they slid into each other, clunking and shunting, grinding to a chaotic halt. The couple that managed to get ahead of this tangle only made it a few dozen yards, before the sight of a police troop-carrier blocking the gate and a whole phalanx of TAU men, as well armed and armoured as the divisional lads and yet somehow looking more menacing, more military as they advanced down the dirt track, brought them to a halt. The next thing, doors were being yanked open and burly policemen dragging out the drivers and their passengers.

Lucy lowered her loudhailer as she entered the farmyard.

Arrests were being made on all sides. There was no serious violence, but there were struggles as brutish, swearing men were wrestled to the floor and clapped into cuffs. One was struck across the back of the knee with a baton to help him comply. The dogs would have been a problem, especially as several had got loose and were darting back and forth, but they were all still muzzled, and now, at Lucy’s direction, the RSPCA handlers came forward to take charge of them.

‘Prisoner transports move in,’ Lucy told her radio. ‘We’ve got a large number detained.’

One suspect, a younger guy with longish, fair hair, wearing what looked like a wolf-fur doublet, made a semi-successful break for it, shaking off a lone PC and racing onto the open ground of the pony paddock, veering towards Wellspring Lane – only to stop at the sight of several more police vans pulling up behind the troop-carriers. He didn’t know they were divisional vans coming to take prisoners, and, thinking they were yet more police reinforcements, slowed to a trudging halt before dropping to his knees and raising his hands, allowing the pursuing officers to take him into custody.

Lucy was still in the thick of the action, though it was mostly over. On all sides, cautions were being issued, and the responses, mainly f-words and other more imaginative profanities, being recorded on dictaphone as the jostling, cuffed men were frogmarched to the farm cottage wall and held there, each by his individual arresting officer, while others commenced searching them. One resisted more than the rest, kicking out and spitting, and was given a backhander across the mouth for his trouble. Lucy wasn’t worried. When the evidence was finally presented, she doubted there was a magistrate in the land who’d be swayed by farcical complaints about police brutality.