She looked at the VO on the kitchen counter. Today, she had been going to visit Lenny in jail, to commiserate with him. She had been worried about breaking the news about the house repossession to him when all the time . . .

‘Get out,’ said Angel flatly.

‘What? I—’ Letitia started.

Angel didn’t even know she’d intended to do it; she lunged forward and grabbed Letitia by her fur collar and dragged her, squawking in surprise, back out into the hallway. Angel flung open the door and hurled the woman out and down the steps. Letitia sprawled onto the gravel, her bag spilling its contents.

‘Christ, you mad bitch!’ she roared, scrabbling back to her feet.

‘Get the fuck off my property,’ said Angel coldly, and slammed the door shut.

Then she went back into the kitchen, picked up the visiting order, and ripped it to shreds.

129

A while after he’d questioned Charlie Poulter in the pub, Farmer stood one evening outside a high-rise in Clacton, staring up at the facade of the charmless building. Lights from its many windows were blazing into the night sky as people settled down for the evening, bathed the kids, ate their tea.

But this wasn’t what Charlie had described to him. What Charlie had talked about was a small apartment block – one floor up, one floor down. Farmer pulled a scrap of paper out of his raincoat pocket and in the ghostly glow of the street light above his head he checked the address.

But this was the right address.

He stuffed the paper back into his pocket and heaved a sigh. Traffic was swooshing past, wipers going full-pelt, headlights shimmering off the wet road. People were hurrying homeward along the pavements, some with heads bent against the steadily falling rain, others with umbrellas sheltering them from the worst of the downpour.

Back to the drawing board then, he thought, and started off along the road, heading back to his car. Tomorrow he’d check with the council, the electoral register, the Land Registry people. He was turning all this over in his mind, about to cross an alleyway, when someone bumped hard into him, shoving him sideways.

‘Hey!’ he burst out, but there were two of them, big burly men, and he was grabbed and hauled into the alley out of sight of people passing on the main road. ‘What the fuck—’

Then they started hitting him and he couldn’t draw breath to speak. He started to fight back, but they only piled in harder. He tried to shout for help, but he couldn’t even manage that. Bastards! He fell to the wet ground and they kicked him. Pain rocketed through his body. His stomach, his legs, his arms, his head. He curled up, trying to protect himself. Finally he just lay there and eventually – thankfully – it stopped. He heard groaning. It was him. He could hear their panting breaths, could smell the refuse in the bins nearby. He blinked rainwater out of his eyes. Someone in chef’s whites came out of the back of one of the restaurants further up the alley. Farmer tried to shout. Couldn’t. The man turned his back and went inside.