Vincent limp-ran to the site office. Standing room only, people in high-viz jackets listening to a man hold forth on the importance of seismic-rated epoxy. A pegboard by the door held the work truck keys. He chose a Ford F-150, and thirty seconds later he was pulling out through the gate, tyres spitting gravel.

Northbound through afternoon Brooklyn, the DeVille up ahead on Kent Avenue. New apartments on the right, four- and five-storey places with roof gardens and lots of glass, fit-looking people out walking little dogs. Glimpses of the East River on the left. Vincent remembered this part of town fifteen years ago: the last place on earth you’d risk being out in yoga pants with a take-out coffee.

Farther uptown and the urban splendour faded. More graffiti and rust. The DeVille made a left at North Twelfth Street, and Vincent swung in behind. Northern edge of Williamsburg out here, and it was quiet: an old warehouse on their left, and a colony of storage tanks to the right, paint blistered and rust-streaked. The road ended in a gravel cul-de-sac, and beyond that some weeds sloped down to meet the river, slipping by murky and quiet.

The DeVille stopped with its nose facing the water, and Vincent pulled up thirty feet back. Grey overhead and the Manhattan skyline tracing out a graph against the cloud, the buildings at this range just blips and spikes and troughs: instability, something bad on the way.

Vincent got out from behind the wheel of the F-150, left his door open and the engine running. Billy Ellis was out of the car now, hitching his jeans with one hand and gesturing with the other at a guy who’d got out on the opposite side. Vincent hadn’t seen him before: a blond man in his fifties wearing a suit, the guy trying to seem relaxed, standing there with his hands in his pockets. The cool look was undermined somewhat by his flushed complexion, like he ran his blood pressure fifty points over doctor’s orders.

Billy raised the hand at Vincent. ‘Vin, honestly, we’re good.’

He didn’t look good. He was glancing around, like words were about to fail him and he needed other options.

Vincent stepped around his door and stood in front of the truck, felt the throb and warmth of the engine behind him. He watched the DeVille’s front doors open and the ratty guy get out from behind the wheel and the three-hundred-pound black guy haul himself off the front passenger seat. He still had the headphones on, but with one ear exposed.

The ratty guy said, ‘Private discussion, pal. You can beat it.’