Thankfully, he hadn’t changed his shoes for slippers yet, so the fact there’d likely be lots of dirty puddles out there wasn’t a problem. He stepped from his gate and, as the rear of the van was nearest, edged in that direction first. For some reason, Milly hung back in the gateway. But Harry barely noticed, his temper continuing to fray as he thought more and more about the Rodwells and their loutish, snot-nosed pals. He noticed that the van wasn’t parked across their gate. When he reached the back of it, its rear doors were both closed, doubtless locked.

Moving to the vehicle’s nearside and finding that the passage on that side was wider by several inches, he sidled along it more quickly, though his feet sloshed through inches of mucky water. When he got to the front, there was nobody inside the cab. Both the front doors were also probably locked, but when Harry put his hand down to the radiator grille, warmth exuded from it. As he’d suspected, the damn thing had only recently arrived.

The more he looked at it now, the more he thought it was dark-blue rather than black, which was a relief in a silly kind of way. But that didn’t stop it being any less of a nuisance.

He was now well positioned to view the rear of the Rodwells’ house. There were no lights on at the back, but there could be at the front. Harry would need to go back through his house to check.

His slid along the vehicle’s nearside, circling its rear end towards his own gate – and there stopped in surprise. The left of the van’s two rear doors now stood open.

Harry was stumped.

Could it have been the wind? No, that was preposterous. There was the odd gust tonight, but nothing like sufficient to open a vehicle door, even if that door had been left ajar, which he was damn sure this one hadn’t.

So – had someone inside this van just climbed out?

He glanced over his shoulder, but the alley dwindled away in a straight line until it joined with the next street. There was no one there.

‘What the bloody hell?’ he muttered.

He leaned forward, poking his nose into the van’s interior. It was too dark to see anything, but now he wondered if that was a faint rustle of cloth he was hearing.

‘Is someone … someone in here …?’

Two hands in black leather gloves shot out of the darkness, gripping him by the cardigan collar.