‘Well, no,’ he said. ‘It’s not TfL equipment, see, and it’s not like I don’t have enough to worry about down here already.’

Even once we’d stepped out from under the fake houses the bottom of the cut was pitch-black. Fifty-odd metres to the east were the lights of Bayswater Station where gangs of men in high-viz jackets were manhandling heavy equipment onto the tracks.

We knew there had to be a secret door. Even if whoever it was had delivered the pottery overnight, they’d still taken the fresh produce away in the middle of the day while the trains were running. You couldn’t count on more than five minutes without a train on the track, and the window was smaller because you didn’t want to be seen by the drivers. Since there wasn’t an obvious entrance within fifty metres in either direction we had to be talking about a concealed entry.

‘There’s always a secret door,’ I said. ‘That’s why you always need a thief in your party.’

‘You never said you used to play Dungeon and Dragons,’ Lesley had said when I explained my reasoning. I’d been tempted to tell her that I’d been thirteen at the time and anyway it was Call of Cthulhu but I’ve learnt from bitter experience that such remarks generally only makes things worse.

‘Don’t you have to make a perception roll?’ she asked as I walked slowly along the dusty brick wall that lined the cut.

‘You know a suspicious amount about gaming,’ I said.

‘’Yeah well,’ said Lesley. ‘Brightlingsea’s not exactly the entertainment capital of the Essex coast.’

I felt something and paused to trace my fingers along the course of bricks. The surface was gritty beneath my fingers and suddenly there it was – the hot sand smell of the furnace and a whispered muttering sound on the cusp of hearing. Even as vestigium went, it was faint and I doubted I would have spotted it as recently as this summer but I was improving with practice.

‘Got it,’ I said.

I checked the position. On the north side of the cut, underneath the road on which the false houses fronted – in the shadows and hidden from any of the nearby buildings that overlooked the tracks. Less than five metres from the base of the extendable staircase.