Their haste warned Raven that it might not have been the fight they were interested in. He didn’t think Flint would have said anything, as it would only rain down greater trouble upon his own head, but it was possible someone else had told McLevy about Raven’s visits to Fountainbridge after the robbery. There had been plenty of witnesses: the family decanted from their home to accommodate his patient, for instance.

He did not wish to wait and find out. He ducked out of sight behind a stall, keeping his head below the crowd as he ran towards a close off the Lawnmarket. He glanced back and confirmed that it was indeed him they were pursuing. Perhaps McLevy planned to prevail upon him to give up what he knew.

He stood tall so that they would see him enter the close, then ran down it at full pelt before skirting left when he emerged. He turned into a parallel alley and doubled back, describing a full loop before proceeding down the new West Approach Road.

Martha was correct that the West Port was an insalubrious part of the town, and no respectable lady would wish to venture into it alone. It wasn’t particularly safe for a respectable gentleman either, but Raven wasn’t sure he yet qualified. There were times when he was haunted by the vision, the fate that might await him down some gloomy alley, but also times when there was a dark want in him, a desire to be the thing good people feared when they ventured into such places.

He was familiar with Warnock’s Close from his schooldays not so far from here. It was one of the places he knew to hurry past should his route take him this way. The passage was barely wide enough for two people to pass each other, the clogged channel in its centre wholly inadequate to draw the contents of soil buckets out to the street. The walls were buckled, the building on his right looking in danger of collapsing into the equally creaking tenement on the other side.

As he hastened towards the door Martha had specified, a figure emerged to block his path: a scrawny, malnourished and filth-caked specimen gripping a blade. It looked like a common table knife that had been sharpened to a point, its handle no more than a wad of rags. He held it up before Raven’s face, a blast of alcohol accompanying his words.

‘Give me what money you have, or you will feel my knife.’

Raven held out his hands in a gesture of surrender. The would-be thief eyed his right hand eagerly as Raven reached into his coat.

He produced the Liston blade.

‘That wee skelf isn’t a knife,’ he said. ‘This is a knife.’

The cutpurse did not tarry to argue the point.