At first glance Nickolai Antiques was not encouraging. For a start, it was definitely off-piste as far as the summer visitors are concerned. Their progress, once they’ve parked or been deposited in the very dinky car park behind the town hall and made use of the toilets nearby, will almost certainly take them on a pleasant meander from tea room to antique shop, to pub to museum to cafe, window-shopping in places selling local art and pottery, handcrafted jewellery and hand-blown glass, moorland honey and even moorland chocolate and gin, and return to their transport without needing to leave the tightly woven heart of the town.

Nickolai Antiques is tucked away around too many corners from all of this, out of sight in Shadow Lane, a narrow, cobbled street that rarely catches any sun and boasts nothing else of interest but a launderette and an undertaker. I peered in windows criss-crossed by security grilling, the glass so filthy and fogged up with condensation that I couldn’t see inside, the surrounding cream paintwork filmed with a grey layer that hadn’t been washed off in years. A cardboard sign on the door, scrawled in crayon, announced that the shop was closed. I couldn’t imagine wanting to go inside anyway.

Down the side of the shop was a narrow alleyway between tall buildings, not one of Ashburton’s famous walled walks, but a convenient nip-through running between Shadow Lane and Sun Street, and somewhere I had never, until that day, nipped myself.

About halfway down I found the door to the flat above. I pressed the bell, which responded with a sick rattle, and waited, staring at the scratched, black paintwork. Sometimes I have nightmares about standing in front of that door, pushing it with my fingertips, seeing it yawn open. But on that morning I just wondered what was taking so long. After a full minute there was a shuffling footstep, a drawing back of heavy bolts and Mr Nickolai opened the door.

I realised I knew him by sight – a shabby little man in a sagging grey cardigan. He was short, but thickset and powerful, as if he might once have been a wrestler.

I reckoned he was at least eighty, with wiry grey hair surrounding a balding crown and a drooping, sandy-coloured moustache. The hand he held out for me to shake was thick-fingered and strong, stained around the nails, not by nicotine, but something like wood stain or preservative. He smelt very slightly of furniture polish, and the smell that old people living alone sometimes have, of neglect. But his handshake was vigorous and his blue eyes were bright, alive and wicked.

‘Miss Browne.’ His accent was strong.

‘Juno, please.’

He smiled and white dentures gleamed below the bushy moustache.

‘Come upstairs,’ he beckoned. ‘We talk.’