My provincial childhood furnished me with memories of deserted midnight streets, sodium-sterilised, which gave a fugitive air to any lone cars that sped through, high above the thirty limit. Why linger? The last bus was at 11.08 and after that the place was a husk. The four city sixth-forms took it in turns to host the annual tragedy, two or three of their headcount lost, a sporty hatchback gift from Dad overturned between hedges, beaten into a ball of tinfoil, trails of fluid along the scarred road surface, special assembly. The title of Pierce’s book, Night Traffic, used ‘traffic’ to mean business, transactions, trade, human traffic. But there was traffic at night in London, car traffic, as my suburban soul had been startled to discover. Who were these people? Where were they all going?

Not long after I arrived in London – especially after the Christmas robbery – a place like Burdett Road might have scared me. The canal, gloomy terraces, slab blocks on both sides of the street, and our pavement passed between a high brick wall and a screen of trees. Fly-tippers had called between some of the trees, leaving odd little heaps of ungainly rubbish: crushed baby-buggies, black bags of polystyrene packing, bed headboards spattered with peeling Care Bear stickers. Blind alleys punctured the wall.

Today, however, I saw the security lighting, the bike hire racks, the cranes over it all, unsleeping red demon eyes to ward off low-flying aircraft. We passed a modern church, a divine electricity substation. ‘This is the Gate of Heaven,’ claimed the red letters set above its porch. Crossrail had swallowed a site on the far side of the road, giant machines behind glossy hoardings. Helping you make the great escape. Whitechapel to Heathrow in 36 minutes. I remembered a nugget from Pierce’s book: Burdett Road, one of the tower blocks along here, was the subject of Pulp’s song ‘Mile End’ – all squats and squalor, fights, burning cars. When was that, twenty years ago? Had it ever truly been like that? No doubt, but now it was hard to believe. It was before the colourful glass balconies had been added to these long, low blocks, that was for sure, before they sprouted the smart black railings and neat landscaped lawns, scattered with those tidy boulders that urban renewalists leave behind – regenoliths.

‘This is where I turned off,’ Pierce said. It wasn’t really a turning, more a continuation of our current course – it was Burdett Road that veered away, hugging the park to our left. The street narrowed and sprouted car-obstacle humps and islands. The traffic disappeared. It was quieter and darker, a patchwork of truncated pre-Blitz leftovers and uncharismatic post-Blitz reconstruction. Names I remembered from Night Traffic: Eric Street, Ropery Street.

‘So what did happen that night?’ I asked.