There was a ragged hole beneath us, perhaps two metres deep, and Scarlet Bush at the bottom of it, shielding her eyes from the white light of the torch, naked and wet with petrol.

A barbecue pit for cooking human flesh.

A light flared and I saw a man coming round the pit just before it fell – whoooooosh – into the pit, and Billy Greene seemed to fall with it as the flames erupted with a sickening pop, and then Greene was in the pit with Scarlet, beating at the flames with his bare hands.

The man was small and powerful, long-haired and simian, and when he punched me in the heart I felt the air go out of me as I went backwards, falling, smashing my back hard against some sort of work table that collapsed under my full weight.

I felt the pain explode in my back, and then the blow on the back of my skull as my head hit the wall.

I clutched at my heart and felt the rip in my shirt and suddenly I knew that he had not punched me.

He had stabbed me.

I touched the dent in the Kevlar Stealth that had saved my life, felt the sting of the bruise beyond.

I closed my eyes, dizzy and sick from the pain in the back of my head, the rest of it coming in broken fragments.

Screams from the pit. A man’s screams now. Greene with his jacket in his hands, beating wildly at the fire. Scarlet Bush scrambling out, her eyes wide with the horror. Light in the room from the fire in the hole. A lot of light, but dancing and uneven, making ghosts of us all.

And the man – Bob the Butcher – punching Mallory in the chest, and in the arm, and in the side of the head. Mallory going down, his John Lennon glasses falling from his face. His face without his glasses no longer as hard as some old Viking, but vulnerable and lost and very easy to hurt.

Then Bob the Butcher gone. Out of the secret space. Past us all. Getting away with it.

And Whitestone waiting for him in the basement.

Bob walking into her forearm smash, the blow turning his head almost 180 degrees, and Whitestone, tiny woman that she was, perched on his back, cuffing him and punctuating his rights by bouncing his face against the ground.

‘You are under arrest.’ Smash. ‘You do not have to say anything.’ Smash.

I remembered a line from training days: a formal arrest will always be accompanied by physically taking control. She was doing that all right.

‘But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court.’ Smash. ‘Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

Smash smash smash.

Bob the Butcher finally starting to beg.

And then I heard someone scream Mallory’s name as the lights came on and I blacked out.