On this occasion, he approached with more trepidation than usual, turning his Galaxy slowly into the narrow lane between the last two rows of lock-ups, half expecting to find the roll-down door to No. 17 jemmied open and all his goods, or what remained of them, scattered on the tarmac – though an inner voice kept telling him that this was unlikely. No one knew that he kept his stash here. Even among his electronic records, all of which were meticulously coded, there wasn’t a single reference to it, and he’d taken out the lock-up lease under a fake identity. The only way the Crew could have come to know was if they’d been following him around, and while he suspected they’d done a bit of that, surely they hadn’t been doing it for weeks on end; he hadn’t been here for at least a month and a half.

He rounded the corner and halted, his headlights flooding the straight ribbon of tarmac running ahead of him, the brick backs to the penultimate row of lock-ups on the left, the row of garage-like doors on the right. It was bare of life. The shutter on No. 17, which was three doors down, was locked in place, as it should be.

Relieved, Lazenby edged his Galaxy forward. The motion-sensitive lights overhead activated. So far so normal. He drove past his own unit, and parked across the entrance to No. 16. Climbing out, he looked around and listened. The only sound was a distant thrum of night traffic. There were no voices, no metallic clatters as other shutters were opened or closed.

He peered once more to the far end of this particular lane, seeing only the distant boundary wall. Satisfied, Lazenby opened the back door to his car, took out the overlarge sports bag that normally travelled there, and emptied his unused squash gear into the footwell; he hadn’t played squash in ages, and only kept his kit in the car as cover for keeping the bag, which he always wanted handy in case of occurrences like this. He took his keys from the ignition, closed the car and locked it, and, squatting down, opened the padlock at the base of the shutter.

The shutter wasn’t heavy and he was able to lift it easily, its own momentum pulling it up the last few feet, at which point a steel catch clicked into place.