Jasmine shuddered and screamed as the first of a series of bangs assailed her ears. When she looked in the mirror again, however, she saw that the figure in the Nixon mask was empty-handed, his shotgun now lying on the road. He scrambled towards it, which was when Jasmine was shaken by a second bang from close by, resulting in the shotgun flipping and spinning across the tarmac like it had been yanked on a string.

She sat up a little straighter and turned to look out of the driver’s-side door, where she saw Ingrams alongside the Land Rover in a kneeling crouch. He was holding an automatic pistol in both hands, his face stony with concentration as his finger worked the trigger.

She heard a slam as the gunman closed the Audi’s passenger door behind him and a screech of tyres as the vehicle accelerated away. Ingrams kept firing, taking out the Audi’s rear windscreen and drilling some holes in its bodywork as it zoomed off like a startled rabbit.

He fired six shots in total, but kept the gun trained on the Audi until it had disappeared around the next bend, maybe quarter of a mile away. Only then did Jasmine feel she could breathe out.

Throughout the Audi’s retreat, she hadn’t wanted him to fire again, partly because of the jolting shock of the reports, but mainly in case he hit the tyres. She didn’t want the car to stop, didn’t want the gunman to have any reason to get out and return fire, just in case they had more than one weapon on them.

Having watched Ingrams train the pistol intently upon the escaping car without his trigger finger twitching again, she appreciated from the minutely calmer position of retrospect that he had never had any intention of precipitating such an outcome. He was scaring them off, not trying to draw them back into a fire fight.

Ingrams dropped his aim and walked calmly forward to retrieve the abandoned shotgun, picking it up by the trigger guard. The stock looked as if it had been shattered by his bullets, twisted and dangling like a broken limb. Jasmine watched all of this in a state of numb disbelief, like the little rectangle of the rear-view mirror was the screen on a smartphone or a portable DVD player, showing scenes far removed from her reality. Then she came back to herself, feeling stings and throbbings of pain that had been anaesthetised by fear.

It suddenly became imperative that she get out of the Land Rover. Despite the danger receding, she felt a compelling need to escape from this rickety metal box and put her feet down on the ground. She clambered across the driver’s seat and hopped unsteadily on to the road.