The air indoors was cooling fast, because there was no central heating installed yet. He’d only recently had the electrics turned back on, because the darker nights were drawing in. For the most part, the house was a shell, its interior stripped to the bare bricks and boards. Only the back bedroom had any semblance of habitability. Dean padded back upstairs and walked down the landing towards it, towelling off with a stained and scruffy T-shirt. In normal circumstances, he’d have preferred a shower, but there were two good reasons why that wasn’t in tonight’s programme. Firstly, it would suit him to look sweaty when he finally got home; secondly, there was no running water.

The back bedroom was still bereft of wallpaper, plus it wasn’t very large. Dean had just about managed to get a three-quarter-size double bed into it, and this was currently a mess, its mattress askew, its sheets tangled, clothes draped all over it. He pulled on a T-shirt and climbed into a pair of torn jeans with dried paint on them. Equally paint-stained was the dusty old sweat-top he put on over his T-shirt. He sat on the bed to knot the laces on his workboots, then he hit the light switch and headed along the landing, grabbing his L-Quad leather jacket from the newel post at the top of the stairs. Before going outside, he made sure to pull his hood up. Though cooler now that it was autumn, it wasn’t cold. But he still had to get to the car without being recognised.

Exiting by the back door, he made his careful way across the cluttered yard. Out in the alley, a beaten-up Honda Civic waited for him. It had been around the mileage clock at least twice, but Dean didn’t mind being seen in such a heap. It wouldn’t stand out, and still had sufficient life left under its bonnet to get him quietly and unobtrusively back to the lock-up garage he rented in Styal, where he’d swap it for his black-and-red Range Rover Evoque.

Seventy-five big ones, that beauty had cost him. Even if he hadn’t thought it would attract undue attention, he couldn’t have risked bringing it to this neighbourhood. And perhaps it was ironic he was thinking this, because he now turned left through the gate into the alley, and the first thing he saw was a man loitering in the narrow space between the wall and the Honda’s front nearside door.

Dean halted, but more through puzzlement than fear.