Even in high-rise heavy New York, buildings as tall as The Stratford were rarely built in clusters. With no other residence close enough to view into the apartment, there was no need for curtains or blinds; 35D’s position on the top floor of the block was privacy enough. And so even a single step inside revealed a clear view over the neighbourhoods of the Upper East Side from a height of thirty-five storeys.

It was this view that drew the eye of any visitor; it made every other of the apartment’s deficiencies irrelevant.

Joe Dempsey picked the antiquated kettle from the electric stove at the first hint of its ear-shattering whistle. The sound of bubbling water had already told him that the liquid inside had boiled. The kettle’s in-built ‘alarm’ was an unnecessary and annoying addition to the exercise.

He turned 180 degrees, to the cracked wooden worktop opposite the bulky cooker. Two mugs were waiting. Both were hospital clean and hospital basic: a description that could be well applied to almost everything in Dempsey’s apartment.

Two minutes later and Dempsey was done. He exited the kitchen, a steaming mug of hot English tea in each hand. He headed for the far end of the room. Towards the large, picture-frame window and the concrete balcony that sat on its other side.

The door on the left-hand side of the window was ajar, letting the cold air from the late New York afternoon into the apartment. Even a relatively warm January in Manhattan would be thought cold in Dempsey’s native London, but the loss of the apartment’s heat did not concern him. Extremes of weather had been an occupational hazard during his military career. Four degrees Celsius – or thirty-nine degrees Fahrenheit, as his American thermometer insisted – was nothing.

The small, basic balcony that sat beyond the metal framed door would win no awards for aesthetic design: a concrete rectangle that nudged out into the sky, 350 feet clear of the streets below. And yet the moment Dempsey stepped out and felt the cold waterproof resin beneath his socked feet – as soon as he saw the top of The Carlyle Hotel in the distance – the tension between his shoulders begin to lessen.

The little that was special about Apartment 35D was all out here. On its balcony. It was the reason Dempsey called the place ‘home’, and he was reminded of that every time he looked out across the city.

‘Come on, man. You just gonna let that tea go cold?’

Dempsey had not noticed that he was standing in place until the deep, accented voice broke through his distracted thoughts.

He turned with a shake of his head and held out one of the two mugs to Father Sam Cooke.

‘It’s a hell of a view,’ Dempsey said, explaining his pause with a hint of a smile.

‘Get used to it. It’s not going anywhere,’ Cooke reached out and took the mug Dempsey had offered. ‘And neither are you, at least for a while.’