Joint finished I get up, thinking I’d better drop in on Leah, when I spot Rashid’s place across the canal. Flashback to Kush chasing the man who’d been trying to get on board. A jumble of thoughts fall into place. I start running, my footsteps echoing off the houses over the canal like rapid gunshots. People turn and stare. I startle a seagull as I turn onto the bridge taking me over the canal. It dribbles a thin line of shit as it rises fast, flapping wings and screeching. As I’m nearing Rashid’s I glance up, and yes it’s there. I burst in, hoping against hope that he’d actually turned the thing on. I find I’m panting hard as I explain what I need to a startled Rashid.

Ten minutes later, with a coffee in hand – Rashid wasn’t doing anything until he’d plied me with a steaming mug – I’m hunched over a laptop in the back office. It’s tiny, more of a broom cupboard really with a flickering light I’d been forced to turn off for fear of an epileptic fit, and stacks of paper invoices in dire need of a bookkeeper. The focus of the CCTV is obviously the front door, the way the original thieves had got in, but given the angle, in the top right-hand corner of the screen the aft of my houseboat is just visible and the canal side beyond. I watch myself appear briefly. Kush is with me, though the camera only just caught the end of his tail. I pause it for a few moments before hitting play again.

Rashid’s head pokes round the door. ‘Anything?’

‘Not yet.’

He disappears again and I carry on until I see the first wisps of smoke and the flicker of flame initially reflected on the water. So whoever it was came from the other end. I’ll have to check if there are any other cameras along the canal, but somehow I doubt it. The blaze is getting bright fast and I watch it intensify. Suddenly there’s movement on the shore and I have to rewind. I inch the footage forward slowly until I catch a glimpse of an odd figure twisted out of shape, one arm trailing behind him. It takes me a moment or two to work it out, but once my brain’s locked on to it it’s clear as day. The figure is a man running away from my houseboat. He’s wearing a hoody. The man who’d been poking round the houseboat the other day. The one I thought was a simple druggy, trying to fund his habit with a bit of light burglary.

Only he came back, torched my houseboat, killed Kush.

I’m starting to think he wasn’t a simple druggy at all.

Familiar

‘Not you again. I’m pretty sure your clearance was revoked.’