‘She left a pub in Brick Lane at half-past midnight, and, lacking four pennies for her lodging –’ again, Costain heard the familiar lilt in the way the man said it, as if this was a song he’d sung many times, an inaccurate mantra – ‘was thrown out of 18 Thrawl Street, the latest victim of merciless capitalism.’ There was his new narrative, a new geological layer, flung on top for new money, with no thought as to what was underneath. This bloke didn’t care if he contradicted himself; he had no idea, in the end, what he stood for or what he meant. That pricked Costain. These days, he had to be careful about his every action, about everything he said. He only hoped, and he glanced over at Ross again, that didn’t extend to what he thought. He put all that from his mind and went back to listening to this man who had given up all such limitations.

‘She said she’d go and find the money on the streets,’ Fennix continued. ‘It’d be easier that night … she’d just bought a new bonnet. We can only wonder if that was what caught the eye of the man who turned out to be the most important encounter of her life, the man who … made her famous. At 2.30 a.m. she had a conversation with one Nellie Holland at the Frying Pan pub, which is now a balti house. “Polly” told Nellie that she’d made the money she needed three times over, and then drank it all away again. This was late August, a warm, humid night, just like today, in fact. You can imagine “Polly”, a few too many buttons undone, perhaps, beads of sweat on her young flesh, a bit merry, in her new bonnet, chancing down this backstreet, the rumble of the newly built railway station in the background – a station built so the middle classes could go on their holidays, flattening the slums to do so…’ Fennix had spread his hands in the air, his leather gloves flexing like those of a mime artiste. ‘She’d sacrificed herself on the altar of booze and cheap pleasure, turned herself into the perfect brazen victim. Or perhaps she’d been that from birth. And then out he stepped.’ He took a sudden stride towards the crowd, and with a flourish drew a knife. The Italians and the Koreans obligingly gasped and leaped back. The students gave him the gift of their ironic laughter.

Ross was left looking calmly at the end of the weapon pointed at her face. She cocked her head to one side, examining it professionally, as if for traces of blood. Or silver. None was present.