If she could find out where Petar Tadić hung out, then follow him, perhaps he would eventually lead her to his brother Goran. He was the one she wanted most, the one she had bitten, the one who had punched her in the face and had later come to visit her in the breaking house outside Vršac, just over the Serbian border, cracking his knuckles and grinning as he entered her tiny room to wreak his revenge on her helpless body. She wouldn’t be so helpless the next time they met. But London was a big city, and she didn’t know where to start.

She caught the barman looking at her and gave him another smile. He blushed and pretended to be washing glasses. Zelda polished off the rest of her wine, slung her bag across her shoulder and paid the still-blushing young man before leaving. It had been a long time since she had used her charms to get something she wanted from a man, and she was encouraged to find out that they still worked.

There was one other question she hadn’t put down in her notes, perhaps because she was afraid of the answer. But in the interests of thoroughness, she made a mental note to add it to her list:

• 5. If Hawkins did blow the whistle on me last December, why hasn’t the gang come after me yet?

SEAN AND Luke were certain the house was empty, they told the police later, or they wouldn’t have gone in there in the first place. Everyone knew the old Hollyfield Estate was on the verge of demolition to make way for new affordable housing and a shopping center, and that many of its residents had already left for new pastures. Number twenty-six had looked like one of the empty houses left behind.

The backyard was a treasure trove of broken and discarded objects piled high—old bicycle frames and prams, bald tires, twisted coat hangers, cracked radios, TVs with broken screens, rusty iron bars, empty tins and plastic containers, and even a very heavy old machine that Sean identified as a typewriter. He’d seen one on a TV costume drama not so long ago. While they had sorted through the accumulated rubbish searching for anything worth keeping, Sean had noticed that the back door of the house was slightly ajar. Sometimes they had to break down boards to get into derelict houses, but this one seemed to be inviting them across the threshold. Luke was reluctant to go in at first, but Sean called him a yellow-belly and a scaredy-cat, and that stirred him into action, though he stayed well behind Sean.

The first thing they noticed in the gloom of the ruined kitchen was the smell, which Sean later described as rather like their toilet at home when his dad had just been after a curry from the Taj Mahal. It struck Sean as odd that the sink was still piled high with dirty dishes, but then people left all sorts of rubbish behind them when they moved on to better things. And if you had to move, why bother washing all your dishes first? Sometimes squatters came in and took over, but they were parasites, his dad said. Just in case someone was there, he called out, and got nothing but dead air in return. The place was deserted. Abandoned.