‘This is the bit where you say, “We can do it here or down at the station.”’

We had a history. Our bond – such as it was – was based on the love of dogs, and the suspicion that we preferred them, on balance, to people.

When an old face called Mad Vic Masters had been found dead in a ditch on Hampstead Heath, I had looked after Bullseye, his English Bull Terrier, until Paul Warboys – Vic’s former employer – could claim it.

I followed him into his new riverside apartment. It was a ground-floor flat next to London Bridge, one of the big apartment blocks that were sprouting all along the banks of the Thames, block after block of glass towers in what had been a rough neighbourhood thirty minutes ago. In the soft light of the early afternoon the view from the ceiling-to-floor living room window looked like a postcard of London, back in the days when people still sent postcards to each other.

Tower Bridge. The Shard. All the gleaming spires of the City. The last time I had seen Paul Warboys, the night his wife took her own life, he had been living in a house out in rural Essex that was the size of a small Balkan country.

‘Downsizing, Paul?’

He gave a cursory look around his apartment.

‘The old place was too big for me after Doll died.’ He nodded, his eyes flooding with sudden tears. ‘I was rattling around in that Essex gaff. And Doll dealt with all – you know – the staff.’

He grinned at the irony of a celebrity gangster having to deal with the gardener and the pool guy. Then his face clouded.

‘And now, Steve,’ he said, his voice hoarse with grief.

I nodded and waited, in respect to all his loss – his wife, his grandson, a world that was slipping away. Bullseye padded into the room and I held out my hand to his gloriously sloping head. He checked out my scent and then curled up at the feet of his master.

‘They allow dogs in these flats?’ I said.

Pau Warboys shrugged. ‘I never asked,’ he said.

‘Of course not.’

‘I like it here,’ he said, brightening. ‘I like the history. I like being close to what was the docks. I like the thought of all those ships coming here from all over the world.’

‘Your father was a docker, wasn’t he?’

He nodded. ‘Hardest bastard I ever knew. You didn’t want to get on his wrong side when he’d had a few. You didn’t even want to get on his wrong side when he was stone-cold sober. I can still feel his belt across the back of my legs.’

‘I saw Barry,’ I said. ‘I saw your son.’

He nodded bitterly. ‘Give him my best.’

‘You don’t talk.’

‘The longer you live, the less people you have in your life. Some of them die. And some of them just wander away.’