‘Shit,’ said Kumar.

‘We don’t have any,’ I said.

Wriggling boy subsided under our hands. Beneath the thin fabric of his hoodie he seemed much skinnier than I expected him to be, but the muscles in his arms were like steel cables.

‘I can’t believe you didn’t bring handcuffs,’ said Reynolds.

‘You didn’t,’ I said.

‘It’s not my jurisdiction,’ said Reynolds.

‘It’s not my jurisdiction,’ I said.

We both looked at Kumar. ‘Evidence,’ he said. ‘You said we were looking for evidence, not suspects.’

Our suspect had started shaking and making snorting noises.

‘And you can stop laughing,’ I told him. ‘This is really unprofessional.’

Kumar asked if we could hold him down on our own and I said I thought we could, so he loped off down the platform in search of a Help Point where he could contact the station manager.

‘I don’t think you want to be here when help arrives,’ I said to Reynolds. ‘Not while you’re tooled up.’

She nodded. It was just as well she hadn’t pulled it out in front of a CCTV camera. I glanced down the platform to where Kumar was talking into the Help Point and I must have loosened my grip or something – because that’s when the bastard tried to throw me off. In my defence, I don’t think the normal human arm is supposed to bend that way, certainly not twist up in some weird angle and smash its elbow in my chin.

My head cracked back and I lost my hold on his right arm.

I heard a woman scream and Reynolds yell, ‘Freeze!’

A glance told me that, despite everything, she’d stepped back and drawn her pistol.

Training, I learnt later, specifies that you never let your weapon get close enough to the perp to get snatched. I was also informed that the biggest fear an American law Enforcement Officer lives with is the prospect of dying with their weapon still in its holster.

The guy underneath me didn’t seem impressed. He reared up and then slapped the ground with the palm of his free hand. I got a flash of fresh loam and ozone and the cement floor of the platform cratered under his hand with a loud bang. I actually saw the start of the concussion wave in the dust around the crater and then it knocked me, Reynolds and half a dozen members of the public sprawling. We were lucky the train was still in the station or somebody would have gone onto the tracks.

Not me, though, because I still had a grip on the fucker’s arm. Because that’s how I’m trained. I pulled on it hard to try and keep him off balance and drag myself up to my feet. But he dug his fingers into the ground and twisted.