One

The shattered forecourt of the station announced itself moments later. They bypassed it on their left, mindful of the baleful stare of figures hunched into the glittering cave of an old coffee shop where coals burned cherry red and something indistinct turned on a makeshift spit. They crossed the road and turned right. A web of ginnels and alleys where small restaurants and wine bars had once enjoyed brisk business at the weekends when the old Spitalfields Market had traded were now host to slouching gangs drinking red biddy or wrestling in the icy mud on the cobblestones. There were others, still and emaciated, sitting on kerbs at the very end of life, blood leaking from their eyes or smeared across their faces as it seeped from noses and gums. They were paper, these people, all but ready to be blown entirely away by the tireless winds. You could see the grooves and notches on their bones through the skin. The recessions and tugs in throat and stomach at each drawn breath was so pronounced that it seemed they must implode. You could hear the suck of it over the muted roar of weather, like something being rescued from thin mud. Becky and Jane moved silently through them, eyes averted whenever possible, knowing that this was them in time.

'Where do we find Plessey?'

'He's inside,' Jane said, gesturing with his chin at the sacked remnants of the old market. Much of the façade was caved in; the ironwork frame remained, albeit malformed by fire, along with dozens of roasted trestles, warehouse trolleys, roll-cage containers and lampblack scaffolds. 'Or he should be. I've only ever seen him here. Aidan likes his shop. Lots of stuff to look at.'

They moved through the wreckage like vacationers at the beach searching for rock pools. In a far corner of the great hall was a shop with its windows boarded over, reinforced with sandbags and razor wire. Faded gold lettering on a purple awning heralded HOUSE OF CLASS.

Jane threw a fallen bracket from the scaffolding at the board. There was a dull clang. They heard a voice call out. Jane said, 'It's me, Richard Jane. Have you seen Aidan?'

There was the sound of bolts shooting back, fully half a dozen before the door cracked open and a small crushed face looked out from a ring of shadow. Plessey ignored the two of them and ranged his gaze over the rest of the marketplace. 'We weren't followed,' Jane assured him.

'Inside,' he said, and left them to forge a path through the obstacles.

Once they were in, Jane closed the door and rebolted it. It was sepia-dark in the shop. Buttery light was reflected back at them in soft-edged rectangles from burnished copper, foxed glass, mottled tin. A smell of naphthalene. Jane felt a known claustrophobia, the kind of stifling he had felt whenever he went to visit his grandparents as a child. Small rooms containing too many things, not least the people who lived there, barnacled fast to ancient, heavy rocking chairs, like pilots in a steampunk story, all antimacassars and brown tartan.

Plessey had moved ahead. He was busy with a teapot and a tin of leaves. The smallness of his face was explained by his ubiquitous peaked balaclava; Jane had never seen him without it. Perhaps it protected some injury caused by the Event. Perhaps he was just cold. They followed him along a narrow corridor, columns of things from the past crowding in from either side. Scratched dusty gramophone records of dull shellac. Mountains of old cracked lacquer boxes for fountain pens. Rusting tins that had once contained boiled sweets. A cigar box overflowing with tickets for trams, trains, dancehall events, coupons and vouchers for rations never obtained. Horn-rimmed spectacle frames. Sheepskin coats. Every smell was brown. It was tobacco and tannin, leather and corduroy, heavy, oppressive. Jane felt sweat rising through his skin. At any moment his grandmother would bring him a bowl of stodgy suet pudding and custard, Camp coffee made with condensed milk. Chocolate lipstick bleeding into crow's feet. Dusty haloes shining in the floss of her hair. The metronomic beat on the mantelpiece of a clock presented on their wedding day and ageing alongside them. Oak and ormolu. The grind of the rocking chair. Slow, inescapable punishment.

'Are you all right?' Becky asked.

Jane nodded. 'Just forgot how much I hate this shop,' he said.

'I haven't seen Aidan for at least a week,' Plessey said. His voice was as soporific as the things he collected around him; he sounded as if he were just getting rid of something rich in his mouth: fruit cake or port or blue cheese. Wet sibilants. Contentment.

'Fielding is dead,' Jane said. 'Murdered.'

Plessey didn't reply. He turned from the water he was boiling on a small gas ring and widened his eyes. Jane could imagine what he might have said, camp, theatrical: You don't say.

'We haven't got anybody for it. It was something of a surprise.'