Exactly as Pierce had described in Night Traffic. A few years older, but as he described.

I looked again at Pierce, not that I needed to gauge his thought, not that I needed confirmation.

‘I invented you,’ Pierce said in a whisper.

You only see the threshold once you’re past it. Too late, always too late, you discover that the temper of the moment has passed, and you’re in another place, another city.

‘You calling someone, bruv?’

To my amazement, I found that this was addressed to me. I had had the sensation – the reassuring delusion – that somehow this might all be for Pierce, laid on solely for his benefit, and would flow past me. Perhaps this was an after-effect of last night, with De Chauncey, when I had been a bystander in a bubble of safety. But that was fantasy. I was here. I was involved.

My phone was in my hand. ‘No, not calling anyone,’ I said. I eased my phone into my coat pocket. ‘We’re just leaving.’

‘No, you’re not.’

Familiar.

I was aware of the other two, manoeuvring at the left periphery of my sight.

‘How ’bout you give me that,’ the man said, eyes on my coat pocket.

I breathed in hard, filling my nose and lungs with the rough stink of the burning car. Its warmth was the most comforting thing around.

‘No,’ I said. Not so familiar.

The young man cocked his head to one side.

‘No, no, no, no,’ Pierce said, voice quiet and wavering where mine had been firmer than I expected. He took a messy step backwards.

‘Ffff …’ one of the pair in the rearguard said.

Our challenger turned to him.

‘We fucking know this prick,’ his friend said. ‘From before.’

Pierce took another step back, and I sensed movement behind me.

A smile spread across the lead man’s face, mockingly slanted to one side.

‘You going to write about us?’

Pierce emitted a demi-human groan and spun, clumsily, making to run. The lead youth lunged towards him. As the youth passed me, I moved, taking my hands from my pockets and shoving him in the flank. He sprawled over, off the path, into the graves.

It had all happened in an instinctive moment, feeling like precisely timed force, but the scene it birthed was bumbling farce. Pierce had stumbled, and was bent back, almost seated, in an awkward crab-like pose; his antagonist was also momentarily incapacitated, rolling on his side amid the chaos of stone and bramble around the clearing. Rough hands grabbed one of my sleeves, but ineptly, distracted by the low spectacle. Pierce had scrambled over onto his side, and was reaching into his coat. He gathered himself back to his feet as his opponent did, but now there was a spark in his hand, a flash of fire reflected off polished metal.

‘Blade!’

I tore myself free of the youth who had grabbed my coat; he was too preoccupied with the unfolding confrontation to improve his hold, or to try to stop me.