Sefton jumped back at him inside his leg and punched him in the bollocks. Keel yelled and threw himself forwards again, and Sefton let him, kicking out the inside of his knee to send him falling down the stairs.

Keel struggled to his feet to see armed police officers moving out of cover to take aim at him from every corner of the car park, shouting identification and telling him not to move. But he was thinking about what he could do, his hands not going for his pockets, but moving in the air.

Sefton leaped down the stairs as Costain and Ross burst out of the door behind him, more armed police officers in their wake. He got to Keel first, grabbed his hands before anything could form in them and slammed the man down into the gravel, one knee in the small of his back. Then he rolled off so Costain could haul Keel’s arms behind his back and snap the silver handcuffs on him.

Keel stared up at the circle of police closing in around him, incomprehension adding to his fury. ‘What the fuck do you lot think I’ve done?’

‘You’ve just added resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer to conspiracy to commit murder, mush.’ Costain glowered at him. ‘We’re the law now. Like in the good old days. And we don’t like your beard.’

Sefton made himself calm down to a point where he could speak and carefully started to intone the words of the caution.

*   *   *

The rest of the shop workers were taken to the Hill for questioning, in a couple of marked vans that rolled up outside on cue. Ross thought they’d probably get only some vaguely interesting general background stuff from these mainstream innocents.

‘Do you want to go with your workers for a proper interview?’ Costain asked Keel, in the privacy of the man’s own office, with the armed officers stationed outside. Ross was aware of the time ticking down to noon. ‘Or do you want to settle things here?’

Keel folded his arms across his chest. ‘You lot really don’t want me to call my lawyer, do you? What was this, just a fishing expedition?’

‘You did the equivalent of drawing a gun on someone you knew was a police officer.’

Keel was staring at them, realizing they were all talking at high speed. Maybe he thought they were trying to get this done before the strike started at noon. He deliberately slowed his speech. ‘The equivalent won’t bloody stand up in court. And you bastards killed my brother.’