He thought that he would have some kind of control over events. But that’s what the attacker steals first, your control. And they never really give it back, even afterwards.

‘You’re very confident this is going to happen just the way that you want,’ I said.

‘Yeah, I’ve got a good feeling,’ Pierce said, still with that bubble of energy. ‘Really good feeling. I can see it perfectly.’

‘It’s not like imagining a scene,’ I said.

‘Well, it has happened to you twice,’ Pierce said. ‘It happens.’

‘Not on demand,’ I said.

Though the self-assurance in his words had hardly changed, Pierce had seemed diminished by my mild scepticism. But now he recovered, taking on that lecture-hall manner again.

‘When I was writing Night Traffic,’ he began (and I expected him to look from me to a spectral audience, as if we were on stage at Hay-on-Wye or Cheltenham), ‘I came across a brilliant essay by David Freeman about muggers in New York in the early seventies, real behavioural sink, Panic in Needle Park stuff – do you know it?’

I did not. I shook my head.

‘Anyway, there’s two of them, man and woman, Hector and Louise. They work as a team. Louise acts like bait. She walks down the street, and when someone tries to chat her up, she steers him towards Hector, who puts a knife to his throat.’

If this information had any relevance to our situation, it was impossible to see. It might as well have been a tale of knights and chivalry, or cattle rustlers in the Old West.

‘Yeah, but that’s New York in the early seventies,’ I said. ‘Not …’ I sat up in my chair and stretched out my arms, a gesture that took in the pub around us, the busy, bright, gentrified East End pub. After-work drinks that had turned into deep sessions, young flat-sharers enjoying midweek mini-breaks, sport on the telly, music. Maybe Pierce didn’t see it, but I meant to take in the wider city: its intense inhabitedness, its unaffordable dormitory towers filled with fair folk watching TV and heading to bed.

‘I know, I know.’ Pierce looked deflated – perhaps even disappointed. ‘It’s a horrible story, anyway. Cockroaches, miscarriages. Another pint? Before we set out.’

It was a gloomy prospect for me, as well, this pub. Too many young couples, not married yet but not far off, talking about their work day before heading back to a building with two or three front doors. They’d have something waiting in the fridge, the rest of a big batch of chilli made at the weekend, perhaps, or a couple of M&S ready meals for the microwave. Maybe that would seem like a bit much effort, and he’d suggest, all sly, they get something in, and the phone would come out. And in half an hour they’d be unloading tinfoil trays from a sweaty white bag.