Reynard recovered first, and with a snarl buried his teeth in Crew Cut’s neck. The man screamed and beat at Reynard’s head with his fists. Lesley hadn’t emerged from hiding yet. And she was still my priority, so stalemate suited me. Every second of status quo meant more members of the public evacuated, a tighter containment perimeter, and more chance that Nightingale was going to arrive to back me up. And if Reynard got a bit of a smacking in the meantime, I could live with that.

Unfortunately, this plan went to shit when Crew Cut fumbled inside his jacket, pulled out a compact semiautomatic pistol and bashed Reynard on the head with it.

From a policing point of view, guns are a pain. Once someone is known to be tooled up, your operational priorities are suddenly fucked up. It all becomes about managing whoever was stupid enough to pull a gun in central London and your number one priority is public safety, followed closely by officer safety and then, not so closely, by the safety of the moron with the gun. Any other operational considerations, such as arresting former colleagues, don’t enter into it.

‘Gun!’ I shouted as loud as I could.

Crew Cut whirled to point his gun in my direction in a professional, albeit one handed, firing stance. I crouched down and threw up my shield – but he didn’t fire. While he was aiming at me, Lesley launched herself out of her hiding place at him.

He was fast. Before Lesley was half-way to him he’d turned and fired – a flat loud popping sound – and then again and again. There was ripple in the air in front of Lesley’s chest and something small and fast whistled over my head.

He didn’t get in a fourth shot because Lesley swung at his wrist with what I recognised as a police issue extendable baton. There was a crack and the pistol fell out of his hand. He gasped at the pain and Lesley followed up with a sharp blow to the head then a third to his face – another crunch and a spray of blood from his mouth.

I used impello to flick the gun as far up the room as I could, and then I jumped up and yelled, ‘Armed police, stop fighting and drop your weapons.’

All three of them stopped and turned to look at me – and for a moment I thought they might actually comply, if only out of sheer incredulity. But then Reynard gave Crew Cut a swift knee in the bollocks, wriggled free and legged it.