Pierce shrugged. ‘You asked that already. Nothing. I walked up here. The main road, Mile End Road, is just up there.’ He gestured north, and I could see the street ended about a hundred metres further on. A twinkle of passing cars, the blue interior light of a night bus. ‘It’s five minutes to my house from there.’

We had come to a recess where purple dumpsters were parked, the recycling point for the surrounding housing estate. It was enclosed on three sides by high walls of windowless brick. The surrounding street turned its back on the spot, hemming it with clutter: car parks, playless strips of grass, a concrete cow.

‘This is where it happened,’ Pierce said. ‘In the book.’

The architecture was right enough – it made a good spot for a group to loiter, mostly unseen, a dark harbour in which to surround and intimidate a passer-by. But there was no group here. And even past midnight, the mental weather was wrong.

‘It doesn’t feel very threatening,’ I said. I wasn’t sure. Maybe on my own I would feel differently. If I were another gender. So many personal factors bear on the complexion of a place, quite apart from its physical structures.

‘I’ll show you some of the places I mention in the book,’ Pierce said. ‘We’ll see how bold you feel in the cemetery.’

Down Ropery Street, pastiche Victoriana on one side, and the real thing on the other, a fortress-like National School behind eroded brick walls. Halfway along, the street doglegged, a printer-jam kink without cause, and the pastiche was succeeded by authentic terraces. Further along, another abrupt dogleg, adding to the sense of a maze of nineteenth-century ad hoc building.

‘This is a bit more like it,’ I said. ‘Real East End.’

‘Yeah, a bit gangland,’ Pierce said. ‘It’s actually lovely during the day. Quiet and pretty. That’s where I bought the desk.’