His home was a two-storey Victorian house – yellow London brick with white sash windows and a hedged garden to the front, side and rear. It was some distance from any other house, and I guessed it might have been some sort of gatehouse many years ago. I entered through the waist-high wrought-iron gate and knocked on the front door. There was no reply. The house had the feel that nobody was home. The curtains were closed to all the front windows and a flyer for a local restaurant was sticking out of the letterbox. I walked around the back of the house via a paved path that was carpeted with cherry blossom. The back door had a small, circular, frosted pane of glass at three-quarter height. I gave it a sequence of increasingly bold knocks but there was no response. The kitchen window to the side of the door had its blinds shut, so there was no way I could get a view into the house. I noticed a piece of masking tape was flapping from the paintwork next to the keyhole. I looked to my feet and saw a small white square of notepaper lying on the carpet of cherry blossom. The note simply said: ‘We need to talk’, with a telephone number written below. I wrote down the number on the back of my hand then gave the kitchen door one final knock. Again, there was no reply. I scribbled down a note of my own asking Brendan to give me a ring (nothing urgent) and placed it in the front letterbox. I left there with an uneasy feeling regarding Brendan’s welfare and whereabouts.

This feeling wouldn’t shift all afternoon, so after work I decided to make an unannounced visit to Brendan’s workplace, Cityside Investigations, which was just up the road on Denmark Hill. If I talked to his boss, then surely I could finally put my mind at rest.

Their offices were on the first floor of a large Victorian building above a betting shop and amusement arcade. You entered via an anonymous door at street level between the two shops. A small brass plate with ‘Cityside Investigations’ engraved on it and a buzzer intercom marked your arrival. I was buzzed inside and made my way up the stairs to the reception area. The office was mostly open-plan with two partitioned offices at the far end. It was a busy place, lots of men in shirts of varying tightness staring at their computer screens and speaking confidently into their phones. Probably a banter factory, but who am I to judge?