Hobbes saw a line of graffiti spray-painted on a wall: BAN THE BOMB. It looked to be the same as the wording in the photograph Martin had left in the wedding album. The light was fading as a bank of clouds moved overhead, low down, laden with rain. A strong wind was blowing through the entranceway, and a swirl of litter was caught in an alcove leading to a stairwell. Hobbes felt as if he was walking on to the set of a movie when the filming was long over, or something more than that, far stranger, like an abandoned building in a dream world. And yet life was here: the further they ventured inside, the more he could sense it. It stirred behind the barriers and the boards, the faintest sign, the lowest sound, a whispering, the noise of hate or despair, he didn’t know which.

And then the music started.

Quietly at first, a drumbeat, a few guitar chords. And then growing louder and louder, a song played from one of the flats. It grew in volume until the walls seemed to pound with the heavy bass. A different song started from the opposite side of the courtyard, playing at the same time as the other. Hobbes and Talbot stopped where they were. It was an aggressive act against them. A third tune came from the walkway directly in front of them. The sound was a maelstrom, an explosion of noise. And Hobbes was at the centre of it.

DS Talbot turned to him and raised her hands in surrender. ‘I told you so. It’s a hellhole.’

Her voice was almost lost in the continuing noise.

Another increase in volume drove the two officers out of the central courtyard and back to the car. Talbot drove in silence for a while. Words could not compete with what they had just heard or, rather, experienced.

‘I guess they don’t like us?’ Hobbes said at last.

Talbot grunted. ‘So what do you think? You still happy to go in there looking for your nark?’

Hobbes thought about it. He thought about his son hiding behind one of those boarded-up windows, peering out through a gap, watching his father as the noise rained down. Maybe he had even chosen a record, put it on the player, and turned up the volume. His own son’s hands on the controls – it was certainly possible, aiming the music right at him. A punishment, or a warning to stay away.

‘He’s in there. I know it.’

They stopped at a red light, and Talbot snuck a sideways glance, but she didn’t say anything. Hobbes’s expression was too fixed in place, bound tight. Nothing would change it.

Five minutes later she asked, ‘Is this about your kid? What’s his name? Martin. Is it? I heard he’d left home.’

Hobbes didn’t answer. Talbot drove on along Peckham High Street.

‘You know what, Henry? Sometimes you just have to let them go.’

Hobbes nodded. The music was still ringing in his ears.