The building sites had turned into nothing more than crappy shopping centres and empty offices, boarded up before they were even occupied. Security guards appeared, uniformed and logoed, jobs for the boys back from Ireland. Cameras sprouted on barbed perimeter fences and lampposts. One guarded the row of shops at the end of the street, worth more than the contents of all of them.

Sweeney knew someone who watched the feeds, got hold of tapes and turned them into an endless art project: they’d sit there watching their own fuzzy ghosts wandering around. Later, it would be the only way they could remember having gone to Nuttall’s for milk or the Spinners for weed.

Ninety-six, he’d got up that summer morning, hot and shiny, bright and soft. Football on, people in town. Then the bang, followed by a slow boom, the sudden shiver of everything. He’d walked into the centre, found it as empty as the morning after a party, shattered glass and overturned bins, pale shock on the few faces he saw.

It was time to go.

He’d headed south, to Brighton, as far as he could travel without actually leaving the country, made his money doing up places for those who couldn’t afford to live in London anymore. News dribbled down to him from time to time, the police trail of mobile phones and a stolen second or third-hand van, journalists going down for refusing to reveal sources, a blurred figure on the security camera feed. Letters forwarded from several addresses sometimes arrived, but Sean wanted nothing of Sweeney’s entreaties to come back and share in his millions.

4

  

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