The streets of Walthamstow were full of people, loads of office workers coming out of the tube in shirtsleeves, jackets slung over their shoulder, women pulling their straps down to get some sun. They looked as if they were deliberately trying to be relaxed, despite the smell of smoke always on the air, even out here. But even the sunshine had felt sick this summer, never quite burning through the clouds, instead shafting through gaps in them. It felt as if the whole summer was going to be dog days. Or perhaps all that was just the perspective of the Sight. It was impossible for Sefton to separate himself from it now. Every day in the street he saw the same horrors the others did, startling adjuncts to reality. ‘The opposite of miracles,’ he’d called them when Joe had asked for a description. There was a homeless person begging at the tube entrance as the two of them passed, an addict by the look of him, thin hair in patches, his head on his chest, filthy blankets around his legs. He was newly arrived with the ‘austerity measures’.

‘So,’ said Joe, ‘what did you do at work today?’

‘Can’t tell you.’

‘I thought you told me everything.’

‘Everything about the … you know, the weird shit. Nothing about operational stuff.’

‘Ah, so now there is operational stuff.’

‘Yeah. Kind of big, actually.’

‘Oh. Oh! You mean like what everyone’s been talking about all day?’

Sefton sighed. Why had he been so obvious? ‘And now I’m shagging a detective.’

Joe worked in PR for an academic publishing house and was now doing the job of what had been a whole department. His work stories were about dull professors who couldn’t be made interesting.

He lowered his voice. ‘I saw about the murder on telly and thought the same as everyone else is saying, that it had to be the driver—’

‘I can’t—’

‘—which means it must really be something only you lot can see, like, bloody hell, another witch or something, like maybe there’s one for every football club? The witch of Woolwich Arsenal? The witch of Wolves? It can only be the alliterative ones. Liverpool doesn’t have one. Liverpool has a … lich. Whatever one of those is.’

Sefton put a hand on his arm and actually stopped him. ‘Could we just get those chips?’

*   *   *

They sat on the low wall of the car park outside the chippy and breathed in the smell of frying. The old woman in a hijab they always saw around here trod slowly past, selling the Big Issue. Sefton bought one.

‘How are your team getting on now?’

‘I can’t talk about the case.’

‘Which is why I’m asking about the people.’

‘I think there’s something up with Ross.’