‘What is it, the Custard Factory?’ she asked, over the roar of three lanes of traffic.

‘Exactly what it sounds like,’ said Maggie. ‘The old Bird’s Custard plant. It was derelict for years then this developer bought it and gradually turned it into a kind of hub of hipster enterprise, all indie shops and start-ups, a little brewery, you know. Tattoo quotient: high.’

A little further on, a cluster of Victorian survivors loured at the day, red-brick seamed with a century and more of grime. The sky over them was crystalline, so blue it actually hurt her eyes to look at. Innocence and experience. When they rounded a college on the corner of Floodgate Street, a hundred-foot brick chimney painted with the image of a mustachioed man in a bowler hat hove into view. A cream building nearby wore a painted yellow tie three storeys high. Here be hipsters. ‘Voilà,’ said Maggie.

They turned off down a narrow street between spruced-up Victorian factory buildings painted raspberry and cobalt, emerald green. Strings of light bulbs criss-crossed overhead. There were shops at ground level, windows full of mannequins in edgy fashion, another that appeared to sell skate gear. For a moment, Robin felt old. Sometimes, between Lennie and the job, she felt like she’d missed her youth, fast-forwarded to a weird sort of pre-middle-age.

The street broadened into a courtyard where two life-sized model flamingos paddled in a big pink-painted pool. Further on, a Green Man that had to be forty feet tall loomed from a corner, wild-headed, sculpted from stone parts modelled in muscle groups. It was powerful – scary and strangely sexual at the same time. Plants curled from a lead box at his groin.

Maggie stopped outside the last building before the old brick viaduct at the end. ‘This should be it.’ She pressed the intercom and almost immediately a voice crackled, ‘Hello?’

‘Harry Norris?’

‘Yes, hi. I’ll come down.’

Thirty seconds later, they heard footsteps inside. When the door opened, Robin’s first thought was that the man in the photo on Becca’s mirror had done a Benjamin Button. The super-chill guy had gone; this one looked ten years younger and a lot less expansive. He was wearing black jeans and boots but just a blue chambray shirt on top despite the temperature. His eyes were widely spaced which, combined with ears that protruded slightly, made him look like Will Smith in the Fresh Prince era: good-looking, a bit goofy. No smiles, though – he looked drained. He shook their hands and put their cards carefully in his top pocket.

‘Thanks for meeting us,’ Maggie said.

‘Thanks for coming. Lucy told me Valerie had hired you, she gave me your number, but then you rang me. I’m so worried, I …’

A door opened at the end of the hall and a man came out lugging a box of printer paper. Robin held the street door open for him, letting in a sweep of cold air.