So I’m wiping tears and sniffing back snot and wishing I’d never answered the bloody phone as I reach under the loose kerbstone and find the shiny brass key that unlocks the gates to the O’Farrell mausoleum. I should be checking my perimeter and doubling back on myself, but instead I’m off in my own little world, thinking of a place 200 miles north where I experienced something a little like happiness and made the only real friend I’ve ever had.

The key slips into the lock as if it’s been buttered. I detach the lock from the big black chain and slowly uncoil the links from the rusty iron railings that serve as sentry to the black mouth of the tomb. The chain is new but care and attention has been taken to make it look old. So, too, the railings. It might seem as though a well-placed kick would detach the metal from the brickwork, but the hinges are sunk deep and anybody aiming a boot at the metal would end up with nothing more than a pained knee.

I pull myself together once I’m inside, slipping between the two halves of the railings and moving forward into the absolute black of the mausoleum. There are two thick wooden doors a little way ahead. The key is somewhere by my feet, hidden beneath the carpet of dead leaves and broken bottles, an installation piece of artfully arranged debris. I find it without cutting myself and manage to locate the lock, turning the big brass handle; the blood smell of rust rising above the bass-note reek of damp earth and softening flesh.

I step into the darkness and close the door with my foot. The blackness is absolute. I know there’s a torch somewhere to my right but I can tell already that the man I’m due to meet has already arrived and is standing, silently, in the ink-black recesses of the circular tomb. He smokes nasty little cigars and favours spicier foods so even with the absence of light I can pick out the blob of darkness where he lingers.

‘There once was an ugly duckling,’ I say, softly, wiping the sleeve of my overcoat across my nose and cuffing away any tears that might have slipped, unremarked, from my eyes.

‘Feathers all yucky and brown?’ comes the reply, rising at the end as if the speaker isn’t entirely sure he’s remembered the snippet of code correctly. ‘Maybe it’s “mucky”. Gosh, my memory. I’ve been repeating it to myself over and over and I’ve still buggered it up. Who’d be a spy, eh, my bonny lass?’

‘I’ll forgive you, Hinny,’ I say, a smile in my voice. ‘Nobody else sounds like you, Walt, my pet.’