‘Is there a problem?’ De Chauncey said. There was an edge of warning in his voice, but I wondered if it was covering something else. With my hands full of gift bags, I felt acutely vulnerable. Although I had no idea what was going to happen, I knew what was going to happen.

‘No fucking problem,’ the figure said. A hand withdrew from the hoodie, bringing a sharp metal point into the second-hand light of the alley. Another rush of white headlights caught his lower face in profile: unshaven, jowly.

It was Pierce – I had known right away, before he spoke, from his build and his gait and his intentions. When he spoke it removed all doubt, though he had tried to roughen up his voice. Just like his writing, I thought, with the reflex of a laugh – but it was like trying to move a limb that had been amputated. I could not laugh, I could not do anything. I knew what he wanted to do, but that was not what paralysed me. I was frozen because I did not know how much he was capable of.

‘Pierce,’ I said, the word muffled by numb lips. Pierce, it was Pierce. I had to say the name, to say the word, because I had been reminded of something Pierce had said when we first met. He had said that names had power, that they steered their bearers. And he was Pierce – was De Chauncey about to get pierced?

De Chauncey glanced at me, but quickly turned his attention back to the hooded form. ‘Yeah, peace, brother. We’re all just trying to get home.’

‘Home,’ Pierce growled. ‘What do you fucking know about home? How many people have you made homeless?’

De Chauncey scowled at the accusation, indignant but confused. I saw his eyes flick to one side, to the car, covered in the funky Wolfe / De Chauncey branding. He must have wondered, for a moment, how this stranger knew his business, and with that sideways twitch of the eyes I saw him draw the logical, obvious, entirely wrong conclusion: that he was being targeted because of the car. Guilt by automobile association. But the wrong conclusion was the safe conclusion as far as I was concerned. I was in double danger. It had been a mistake to say Pierce’s name, it had just slipped out, and De Chauncey’s mishearing had been a lucky escape. I did not want him to know that I knew Pierce, that we were all connected. That would make me an accomplice – it would look as if I had been walking De Chauncey into a trap.