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Chapter One

There’s a place further down the street where I work that I can’t figure out at all From the outside, it looks like your standard Shoreditch warehouse converted into an ‘art space’, the Victorian brickwork decorated in multicoloured swirls and curls, but so o out of its heavily fortified black entrance that I think there must be more to it than that

And there seems to be some kind of door policy too For every half-dozen people who are admitted, another four or five are turned away Froency, I watch the ebb and flow

‘I reckon it’s a brothel,’ says Anton, breaking frory Birds for a moment to look out of the ith me

‘But there are just asas men’

‘A bisexual brothel, then’

‘I don’t think it’s a brothel,’ I say, but I’h the visitors vary wildly in age, sex and appearance, rather a lot of them seem to be dressed to i and spike heels go in there with a man in a Savile Row suit Another ti guy crawled along the pavement from the corner with a collar and leash attached to his neck The wo’ hi My money’s on a private sex club, but it seeht, and e collection of Joes oncommute

Anton’s attention reverts to his sot a text fro at the Fish Bowl You up for it?’

‘Ohhh’ I half-rise frolun Looks like I’ a late one Sorry’

Anton shrugs ‘No biggie, blood’

He likes to try and sound like a mockney version of someone out of The Wire, but Anton is actually the privately educated son of a brigadier

I wave at his retreating figure and gaze down at an for this bastard air freshener by the end of the evening, I’m sunk Maybe ‘This will freshen your bastard air’ It’s better than the crap I’ up with at the h

I hunker down and try to clear my mind, not an easy task when your mental clutter could fill a mental landfill site

Soht, I happen to look up fro different about the Building of Enigma

I hurry over to theand squint through the blinds Running along the bottom of the wall, barely above pavement level, are a series of narrow barred s, sliround I’ve often tried to peer into the but found them blacked out and impenetrable

Tonight, one of theht

Abandoning the bastard air freshener, I grab round

Outside, the darkened street is deserted – or so I think Before I can cross to the object ofaround, irritated and slightly nervous This isn’t the safest area of town, the classic price you pay for being edgy and hip

‘Scuse ht?’

The voice is foreign, the speaker dressed in a way that places hiypsy, all leather bracelets and ripped jeans The thing that really capturesmoustache You don’t see facial hair like that except in yellowed photographs of Victorian et to answer for aarette

‘No?’ he says