‘You can always find a place if you use your nut,’ he said. He would say this kind of thing – meaningless leftovers from some other half-digested conversations he’d once had.

I nodded. Sometimes it was better to let the talk exhaust itself.

‘Arches. Disused shops. Commercial property. Lock-ups – that’s my thing,’ he said, taking a gulp of lager from a can. For breakfast.

‘So, if it’s a lock-up, how do you get in? Isn’t it locked up?’ an older man next to me said drunkenly.

‘Ha! Yeah, mate. But you got to choose your whatsit.’

I looked blankly at him as I turned out my boots to dry them.

‘So, certain locks you can open. Like Yales. If they got a Yale or even a small padlock, then you’re in, mate.’

‘How?’ I said, suddenly interested, remembering my picking days.

‘Lloyd key,’ he said. I looked at him and waited.

‘What, you don’t know what a Lloyd key is? ’kin’ hell, mate.’

Within five minutes he had made me one from an old plastic cider bottle. It was just a strip of plastic around three inches wide and about six inches long.

‘It’s the curve on the bottle that gets round the door jamb. You just shove it in through the gap and over the lock bit and then push. Most doors will open to that. Design flaw, innit,’ he said, before flicking it away on the ground.

How many years ago was that? Ten? Twenty? Longer? There is nothing in my memory of that place that ties it to a time period. No flat-screen TVs. No chintz. No shagpile carpet. Just bare floors and boarded-up windows. The heavy, toxic scent of mould.

A siren blares in the distance and I am jolted out of the reverie. Midday has long gone and from the position of the sun in the sky, I know it must be late afternoon. I walk to a parade of shops near the library and look for a recycling bin outside one of the shops. I find one and scavenge what I need and return to my spot. The Porsche isn’t there – Ebadi hasn’t returned. Hunger makes a call but I dismiss it to sit and carve out my own Lloyd key from a plastic bottle. The cans these days are flimsy and won’t cut so I scout around until I find an empty lager bottle. I tap its neck against the kerb until it breaks. Now I test the edge with my finger – it’s sharp and slices easily through the plastic. The key cut, I settle in to wait. I can’t do this in the light. It will have to wait until the sun has gone and I have gathered some darkness over me.