My phone was enjoying Winterzone, at least. Google wanted pictures of it, and had travel and weather information. Tamesis was alive with reviews and suggestions and sponsored content and requests for feedback. This was exactly the kind of young, connected, well-off crowd that would use Quin’s social-mapping system and it was busy grinding its gears, trying to make connections. People I know had been here earlier, it said, and I saw Freya and Ilse among the names. And Alexander De Chauncey. He had added me back. Would I like to invite my T-Plus list? Would I like to make my presence public? Would I like to add pictures or reactions to the event T-cloud?

I would not.

Pierce returned with two bottles of beer. They had been immersed in ice water, and their labels were askew, glue dissolved. Sloughing off like reptile skin. Fluorescent labels, covered in Smileys: ‘Madfer Pils’ by the Brilliant Balham Brewing Bros, a microbrewery.

I tapped my phone. ‘I need to get some quotes,’ I said. ‘It’s time. You have to tell me about Night Traffic. How it happened. How it didn’t happen.’

Pierce grimaced. ‘Didn’t you get enough quotes yesterday?’

‘No,’ I said. The secret recording was gone, now, so the truth and the lie were the same. ‘You asked me to turn off my recorder, remember? Keep it off the record.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Pierce said unconvincingly. He had known this full well, and was simply trying to wriggle off the hook. ‘Can’t we keep it off the record?’

‘We’re out of time,’ I said. It was time to push hard, as hard as possible. ‘I have a deadline. I need it on the record.’

‘Why?’ Pierce said, squirming like a child, slipping the label of his beer around with his thumb. ‘You know the truth. I invented the whole story. It’s fiction. You know that from yesterday. Why do you need me to say it on tape?’

‘I need quotes. I can’t report a whole conversation from memory. A lot happened yesterday. I need it in your words, specifically about the fraud.’

He winced at that last word. ‘What you want is blackmail material.’

Another ugly word, but I controlled my reaction. Blunt was good. ‘I need material I can take to my editor, yes. Something that can stand up to lawyers. Something that stops you from going back on our deal and denying everything.’

‘Our deal,’ Pierce said, dragging out the word, mocking it. ‘I wasn’t really aware we had made a deal.’

I took a deep swig from my own bottle, washing away this petulance, then woke my phone and brought up the voice recorder app. A wavy line jigged on the screen, picking up the merry noises around us, the chirpy music, the scrunch of Converse on woodchip.

‘Why did you decide to invent the story about being mugged?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Pierce said. ‘Everything in Night Traffic is 100 per cent true.’ He stared at me, expressionless, defiant.