‘Just after midnight,’ she says and then starts rummaging in her pockets. I am about to stop her giving me money when I realise that she’s just fishing for cigarettes.

The evening and a day slot into place with a series of clicks. A charge of wasting police time wasn’t serious enough for them to hold me overnight. I’d left the police station and walked and didn’t stop. The night was bone cold and this coat of Seb’s just wasn’t up to the job and I ended up here. I used to come here in the old days when I worked. It’s changed a little but the atmosphere is familiar: corporate, safe. Blue Zone. People leave you to yourself here. A doorway here can be yours for an entire night without anybody calling the police to have you moved on. Very few drunks or chancers.

I pull the coat tight around my body and stand. The woman looks up at me and smiles through a mouthful of smoke, showing me the silver in her mouth.

‘You’re a big lad, ain’t you?’ she says, cackling.

I give her a half-smile and look around deciding where to go next.

‘It’s going to drop tonight,’ she says, flicking her cigarette away. ‘You want to get yourself to a shelter tonight if you can.’

‘How did you know?’ I say, surprised that Seb’s clothes aren’t better camouflage.

‘Ha,’ she says. ‘It’s the eyes. And the hair.’

I nod my thanks and move off. The shelters aren’t for me. I can’t take the weight of all those people, circling.

To my left is Tottenham Court Road. To my right, Farringdon. I take the right.

The police went there and spoke to the man, Ebadi – is that what they called him – the same man I saw yesterday? He had an alibi. I don’t trust it, though. I don’t trust something as flimsy as what they called an e-ticket. Don’t those things just come off a printer? And those coppers – I don’t trust that they did the job properly. How can they have been and searched the place and not found a body? If they even did search the place. Maybe they spoke to him and were satisfied by his alibi and then didn’t bother with a search.

But I do trust Seb, and his friendship even after all these years have passed. I head towards his place and in an hour or so I am outside his door.

My finger hovers over the bell a moment before finally making contact. I grimace as I wait. I don’t want to wake him up. It’s already been too much of a liberty, using his home as my bail address and taking these clothes – the ones he gave and the ones I stole. And now here I am, waking him at past one.