Strike slid the mobile back into his pocket and emerged from his hiding place, crossing the dark car park that lay beneath the deserted flat of Donald Laing. The Strata building looked down upon him as he walked, vast and black, its jagged windows reflecting the last traces of bloody light.

Fine netting had been stretched over the front of the balconies of Wollaston Close to prevent birds landing on them and flying in through open doors and windows. Strike moved around to the side entrance, which he had earlier wedged open after a group of teenage girls had left it. Nobody had tampered with the arrangement. People assumed that somebody needed their hands free and feared triggering their wrath. An angry neighbor could be quite as dangerous as an intruder round here, and you had to live with them afterwards.

Halfway up the stairs, Strike stripped off his jacket to reveal a fluorescent one. Carrying the first so that it concealed the canister of propane inside, he proceeded on his way, emerging onto the balcony of Laing’s flat.

Lights shone from the homes sharing the balcony. Laing’s neighbors had opened their windows on this warm summer evening, so that their voices and the sounds of their TVs floated out into the night. Strike walked quietly past towards the dark, empty flat at the end. Outside the door he had so often watched from the car park, he shifted the gas canister wrapped in his jacket into the crook of his left arm and withdrew from his pocket firstly a pair of latex gloves, which he put on, then a mismatched assortment of tools, some of which belonged to Strike himself, but many of which had been lent for the occasion by Shanker. These included a mortice skeleton key, two sets of jigglers and assorted comb picks.

As Strike set to work on the two locks on Laing’s front door a female, American voice floated out into the night through the neighboring window.

“There’s the law and there’s what’s right. I’m gonna do what’s right.”

“What wouldn’t I give to fuck Jessica Alba?” asked a stoned male voice, to laughter and agreement from what sounded like two other men.

“Come on, you bastard,” breathed Strike, fighting with the lower of the two locks and keeping a tight grip on the concealed propane canister. “Move… move…”

The lock turned with a loud click. He pushed the door open.

As he had expected, the place smelled bad. Strike could make out very little in what looked like a dilapidated and unfurnished room. He needed to close the curtains before turning on the lights. Turning left, he immediately knocked into what felt like a box. Something heavy fell off the top and landed with a crash on the floor.

Fuck.

“Oi!” shouted a voice audible through the flimsy dividing wall. “That you, Donnie?”

Strike hastened back to the door, felt frantically up and down the wall beside the doorjamb and found the light switch. Flooded suddenly with light, the room proved to contain nothing except an old, stained double mattress and an orange box on which an iPod dock had clearly been standing, because it now lay on the ground where it had fallen.