They stumbled inside. Sefton showed his warrant card to the security guards on duty, who were surprised, and, in the end, relieved to have coppers around tonight. No, they didn’t want an escort. No, they insisted on not being accompanied. They talked fast and harshly and scared the receptionists simply by how they looked on this terrible night. They were allowed through the inner revolving doors, into curving corridors. Ross tried to understand what the Sight was telling her about this place. She put a hand to the wall and felt and saw the gold thread, layered and deep, fine like the grooves on a vinyl record. You could play TV Centre, she thought, if you had the right enormous and precise needle. The information that rushed down these circular corridors, around and around, all sang the same sad song, about a future that had not come to pass, a dream of modernity, of a world evolving into unity through communication. What this building had stood for was an attempt within London to solve everything, to tell the truth about everything. No wonder so many things had conspired to stamp it out, to break this recording and broadcasting device.

Sefton was looking at Google Maps on his phone. ‘I think I can feel where the barrow is,’ he said. He set off at a run which became a stagger which righted itself into a run again, and, making sure that where he was going corresponded to the map, Ross followed.

*   *   *

They made their way, falling sometimes into the walls or into each other, through the high, empty space of an unused studio, ancient flats standing under covers, lights still hanging from dusty rafters, enormous doors and props which were now without context, waiting to be moved to other facilities. They saw the sad faded ghosts of every meaning, beloved and lost like old school plays. They nearly fell down circular stairwells. They passed a bar on several levels, where a couple of people stood apart, looking out of the long curving windows at the fires which were now consuming the skyline, washing the ancient carpets with crimson. Sefton could taste dark beer and old drama and the tales of actors, worn into the surface of those tables and that bar. He was following, as well as his map, a feeling underneath all this, buried deep underneath the earth, something he was now experienced enough to isolate and pursue, but Ross wasn’t.

It was a feeling of terrible, ancient, anger. ‘Angry’ – that was one of the words Jimmy had written in his notebook.

They fell out of a side door that led to a little dark lane around the corner, where trucks stood with silver boxes. They sped up, Sefton shouting and pointing, sure his goal was in sight.