‘How do we do that?’ Pierce asked, visibly impatient.

You don’t, I thought. I didn’t want to facilitate an assault, I wanted to put so many ethical hurdles in the way that it was impossible. But I did want to appear helpful.

‘We could mood-board it,’ I said. ‘It can be a useful creative tool – make a wishlist of the best possible victims.’ I opened my bag, took out my reporter’s pad and laid it between us. ‘Who would be ideal?’

Pierce frowned. ‘I don’t know. City types. Property developers. Estate agents, the big ones.’

‘Alexander De Chauncey, for instance,’ I said. ‘He would be perfect.’ I jotted his name at the top of the list.

‘Who is he?’ Pierce said. ‘The name rings a bell.’

‘He has a chain of estate agents,’ I said. ‘Wolfe / De Chauncey – you must have seen them?’

‘Yes, yes,’ Pierce said. ‘He’s ideal.’

‘Obviously we can’t actually do him,’ I said, patting the pad, trying to make the nature of the exercise clear. ‘We’re just trying to get a feel. And I have dealings with him.’ I crossed the name off, for emphasis.

I tried to think of more names. The culprits. I had never met my neighbours, and without names or faces it was hard to condemn them directly. I knew my landlord’s name but nothing more about him, only the occasional elliptical email. Bella’s husband Dan? He was horrible, they both were, but I didn’t want them beaten up.

‘Boris Johnson,’ Pierce suggested, and I nodded enthusiastically. The mayor’s name went on the top of the list. And so we went on, thinking of the most nauseating Londoners with the worst possible politics and the biggest slices of the pie. Former tabloid editors turned TV presenters, style gurus, right-wing commentators, think tankers. Pierce added a couple of obnoxious writers he had feuded with: Mike Butcher, the bestselling self-help novelist; Hugo Pleasance, a pop-sociology twerp, author of Will This Do: The Surprising Science of Adequacy; Phil Lothian, a critic and columnist for a liberal newspaper and the Spectator. It was an ugly list.

‘A good start,’ Pierce said.

‘We’ve got the flavour of it,’ I said. ‘Of course you’re not going to bump into these people. This is just the mood board.’

‘And the mood is hatred,’ Pierce said. ‘Tomorrow, then. Signed document in hand. We’ll do – whatever.’

‘No signed document, no whatever,’ I said. ‘No more games.’ Before, I might have balked at setting an ultimatum, fearing that Pierce would simply walk away. Now, I had nothing left to lose.

Pierce nodded. ‘No more games.’

NINE

It was a game, though, all of it, that much was revealed as soon as a pneumatic drill split the shell of unconsciousness. The drill had become a mosquito whine, not the deafening, marrow-penetrating racket of previous mornings but an uncomfortable buzzing rattle, alternating with silence.