The gate was locked from inside, but the brick post alongside had a ledge that made it easy to clamber over and drop into a narrow courtyard. All the trash from the student accommodation dropped down chutes into four giant wheeled bins, and the smell tangled with a sickly aroma venting out the back of the dry cleaners’.

‘Does that door even open from outside?’ Leon asked, as he followed Oli up a flight of metal stairs.

‘I’ve been here before,’ Oli said triumphantly, as he turned a knob and stepped into a hallway. ‘Did some errands for Trey in the summer holidays.’

The lights blinked on with a motion sensor, showing off a bare concrete hallway with pipes and ductwork along the ceiling. The rumble of the dry-cleaning machine below mingled with thumping music from a student party above. Oli seemed to know his way, and pulled a key from his pocket as they approached a plain grey door. A cheap plastic sign read Sunray Travel Agents.

‘Trey gave me the key,’ Oli explained. ‘He knows the building manager.’

Oli took half a minute to figure that you had to turn the key one way, then the other to open the deadlock. A burglar alarm chimed as the door opened, but Oli silenced it by tapping a plastic fob against the control plate inside the door.

There was a bank of lights, but Oli just flipped one switch, as Leon crept across the carpeted floor and peeked through a Venetian blind at the street out front.

‘What’s our job?’ Daniel asked, as he studied three desks set up with MacBooks and a fourth with a giant hi-res monitor connected up to a Mac Pro. There was a toilet and kitchenette off to one side, and a glass partition, behind which stood a huge Xerox printing machine, and metal racking stacked with packets of large-format printing paper.

‘Guess they print holiday brochures and stuff,’ Leon said, as he leaned into the print room.

There was a stack of A2-sized posters just inside the door, depicting the Arabic alphabet along with the logo of a local mosque. Another poster showed illustrations of Muslim prophets, printed for the same organisation.

‘So Trey wants this place trashed,’ Oli said. ‘I’m gonna bung up the sinks in the kitchen and bathroom and run the water full blast. You guys smash up the big printer. I’m told it’s worth over fifty grand. Then we throw all the papers and shit on the floor so they get soaked.’

‘Can we steal stuff?’ Daniel asked, as he eyed a swanky Wacom graphics tablet and a shuttle controller used for video editing.

‘Steal it or smash it,’ Oli said, as he headed for the kitchen. ‘That’s what Trey asked.’