Before he’d even finished the sentence, the attacker had begun to flee back to his vehicle, with a final parting shout of ‘fucking cyclists’. Gillard continued the charade call as he watched the Warrior roar off and up the hill. Only after two or three minutes of silence, when he was sure that he was safe, did he check himself over. He was lucky. His arms, pulled in to protect himself, had not been crushed by the big fat front tyres. The Warrior’s high suspension had enough clearance not to grind him to pieces. As he was later to discover it was his own bike that caused the worst injuries. Partially embedded in the bull bars of the four-wheel-drive, it was dragged over his shoulders and face, a sharp pedal slicing up his cheek and ear.

Five minutes after the attack, agonising bruises making themselves felt all over his body, Gillard stood on the tarmac and surveyed the crushed and twisted wreck that was his expensive racing bike. Plastic fragments on the road depicted the destruction of his mobile, his wraparound sunglasses, and various other bits and pieces. He’d need to hitch a lift, get someone with a mobile who could genuinely call emergency services. This was a quiet road, but someone would surely be along in a few minutes. In fact it only took one. The squeal of brakes, something coming downhill, just one invisible bend above him. He looked up, ready to flag the car down.

One second later, he realised he’d made a huge mistake.

Green Warrior!

The vehicle thundering down to him was doing at least forty. The driver had given Gillard just enough time to get down from his haven in the woods to make him a target all over again. With just thirty yards before impact, the cop instinctively threw himself to the inside of the curve, the other side from where he had been knocked off, making himself much harder for the assailant to target. The Warrior went the other way on the outer curve, brakes squealing as it slid to a halt another fifty yards down the road.

Now the detective really was stuck. The bank on this side was impossibly steep, and he might not be able to get across to the other side in time. A renewed climb would be agony. Every part of him was screaming in pain.

Help arrived immediately. Another vehicle could be heard descending the road, much more cautiously and slowly. Gillard tried to run uphill, as best he could, towards it. A white Nissan Micra, Eric’s School of Motoring emblazoned on its side, did a perfect emergency stop. There was a young woman behind the wheel and a tall man next to her. Gillard staggered up to the passenger-side window, which slid down to reveal a thin-faced, grey-haired fellow of sixty or so.

‘I’m an off-duty police officer,’ Gillard gasped, holding up an expired Surrey Police ID card that he always kept in a thigh pocket of his cycling trousers. ‘I’ve just been a victim of a hit-and-run and I need you to dial 999.’