Pierce smiled. ‘That might be 90 per cent of the reason he does anything. All the personal data he has amassed from his various projects gives him power, but …’ Here, he frowned. ‘What’s strange about Quin, for someone so successful, is that he’s terrifically angry. Maybe that’s not strange. I had success, I was celebrated, and it did weird stuff to me. Anyway. He’s made a lot of money. Millions, tens of millions. Maybe he thought that would give him the power to do what he wants. Not super-villain things, just … When we first met, he just raged about the city, about London. The cost of housing, how his staff couldn’t afford their rent and had to commute for hours, the expense of that building in Shoreditch, how money was killing everything. He’d go on and on about the 1980s and 1990s, how great it was, empty buildings everywhere, artists, designers, squats, crime … No wonder he was a fan of mine, no wonder he liked Night Traffic and Murder Boards; I suppose it was a link back to that kind of grungy, squatty stuff.’

‘Before my time,’ I said. I hated to think about it. Soon the city would spit me out, dead, half-dead, or alive. Without my job, it was over. And then what? No other job, that was for sure. If people like Quin couldn’t make it work, then … It made me angry, too. With Quin, as much as anyone. ‘I would have thought he was responsible, at least in part; he’s been the face of trendy Shoreditch for so long, him and his dazzle-pattern building and apps to help you find a good cold-press place and share photos of your ostrich burger.’

‘Yeah, and you’re a feature writer for a glossy magazine on Old Street, and I’m a Vice writer, a lapsed Vice writer anyway. We’re all to blame. Christ, what was the name of the guy who founded your magazine? Aaron …?’

‘Errol,’ I said.

‘Well, there you have it,’ Pierce said. ‘Didn’t he do the first pop-up shop?’

‘There’s some dispute about that,’ I said. Errol certainly believed he was the first, never having heard of market stalls or car-boot sales. But this didn’t seem an appropriate fact to bring into the conversation.

‘What’s he doing now?’ Pierce asked.