But Trey N’Dou still wasn’t scared of me. He saw some weakness, or some reticence in me. Some line that he knew I would never cross. He looked at me and smiled. He knew I wasn’t going to take out his eye or destroy his knees.

‘I want you away from here,’ I said, and he laughed in my face.

‘And I want you to suck my cock until you love me,’ he told me.

‘Let me have him for a minute,’ Jackson said, pushing me aside.

He grabbed the Dog Town Boy, swung a leg behind him and pushed his chest with both hands.

Trey N’Dou went down like a Greek bank.

And then I saw the gun in Jackson’s hand.

It seemed to come from out of nowhere, but I knew I had watched him reach his right hand round to the back of his spine and produce it from under the Original Penguin polo shirt I had lent him.

Trey N’Dou saw it at the same time. I heard him whimper and then a hissing sound as he wet his baggy jeans. I could not breathe as Jackson straddled the Dog Town Boy and put the barrel of the gun in the kid’s mouth.

‘I can’t hear you,’ Jackson said, the boy gagging on the gun. ‘Louder. Come on. What is it you want? We can’t understand you.’

Trey N’Dou was begging for mercy with a gun in his mouth.

Jackson took it out.

‘Please. Please. Please.’

Jackson fired between his legs.

Twice.

I had heard guns fired with serious intent before. The sound always shocked me – the way it seemed to last for longer than it should, the way it seemed to rend the air, to tear it apart, to go on and on. Somehow this was different. The sound was more like two bombs going off.

I stood there paralysed, my ears ringing, my breath ragged.

I watched Jackson carefully pick up the spent brass from the gunshots.

He slipped them in his pocket.

‘Am I dead?’ Trey N’Dou said.

Jackson laughed.

‘If you were dead you would have one in your head and one in your heart. Listen to my friend. Get out of the Angel. We don’t give a toss if you go to Kingston-on-Thames or Kingston, Jamaica. Up to you. But you really don’t want to see my face again. No more warning shots.’

Lights were coming on all over the Liverpool Road.

There was a group of people outside the club across the street, cowering behind cars and looking across at us. The bouncer was nowhere to be seen. But in the distance I could hear sirens and I wondered if they were coming for us.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said.

We did not speak for quite a while.