Then there was that almighty crash as it hit the dustbins and sent them flying and clanging. But that was the driver’s downfall. The impact had knocked off the licence plate. The police would get him now. Hickman hoped they’d take away his licence for life and fine him hundreds of pounds. Or, better still, send him to prison. What they ought to do is bring back the birch. That would make these lunatics think twice before they disturbed the sleep of innocent people.

He didn’t hear the car coming back. He was halfway across the road when the blinding glare of its headlamps transfixed him. The horn shrieked at him to get out of the way. But the old man was going too slowly and the car far too fast.

As if in slow motion, he saw the car leap at him, saw every detail of the radiator as it grew larger, then a terrible, smashing blow as the headlamp shattered his face. The pain was awful. Screamingly awful. But mercifully it didn’t last long before a massive cloud of red and black blotted everything out and he was sucked down, down…

Watching from her window, a neighbour saw the car slow down, hesitate, then rev up and roar away, leaving the crumpled heap lying in the road. She had no phone and had to rush out and hammer at the next-door flat, screaming for someone to call an ambulance. The commotion had woken many of the residents. It didn’t wake Hickman’s wife. Slightly deaf, she slept soundly through it all, thinking her husband was still at her side.

The woman who had seen it happen covered the old man’s bleeding body with blankets as they waited for the ambulance. It was on the scene in exactly four minutes from the time the 999 phone call had been received. The same ambulance and the same two ambulance men who had refused to handle the vomit-sodden body from the toilets. Carefully, they lifted Hickman on to a stretcher and, in a little less than thirty seconds, were on their way to the hospital, speeding past the arriving Charlie Alpha as it turned the corner.