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He made special splints from old lolly sticks. Eventually he even began constructing his own, tiny, perfectly executed false limbs. Somebody made a documentary about his work and tried to sell it to Channel 5, but I don’t think they bought it. He was involved in radical causes. It frightened the shit out of them.’
    Wesley glanced up. Ted was rubbing his clean-shaven jaw with his nimble fingers in such a way as to indicate a certain want of credulity. Wesley scowled, irritated. ‘I’m perfectly serious. He simply couldn’t abide the sight of a bird with a limp. He was mad about feet. Birds’ feet. Loathed human feet, though. If you pulled off your socks in front of him he’d break out into a sweat. It was tragic.’ Wesley gave the forefinger and thumb on his good hand a cursory lick to improve his turning power. ‘Pigeons aren’t indigenous to Britain,’ he observed, helpfully, ‘and that was his beef. His argument was that they were kept domestically, originally, but then they strayed or were abandoned. Yet somehow they were canny enough to adapt and survive. That was partly why he felt such a powerful connection with them. He was temporarily fostered himself as a kid…’
    Wesley paused for a moment to inspect a particular sheet, frowned, then continued turning the pages, ‘People think factory farming is a modern phenomenon, but pigeons were kept by the Romans in the fourth century BC inside these huge, airless towers. They had their legs broken and their wings clipped to prevent them from moving…’, he cleared his throat. ‘This friend of mine waged a campaign against lime-use. People put it on their windowsills. Extremely common in the 1970s. Very cruel. Melts the bird’s toes…
    ‘The point I’m making…’ Wesley stopped leafing and paused for a minute, ‘is that he was actually ridiculously sensitive, underneath all that other stuff. Underneath that thick layer of poise and helpfulness and affability…
    ‘ Right, ’ he passed Ted a sheet, ‘this is the place.’
    Ted took the sheet and glanced at it, his mind still fully occupiedby images of lime and feet and feathers. After a few seconds, though, his eyes cleared and widened. He shook his head. He began to snigger, nervously. ‘You can’t be…’ he managed eventually, shaking his head and trying vainly to hand the sheet back again.
    Wesley scowled. He would not take it. ‘What’s so funny?’
    Ted’s mirth slowly evaporated. He stared intently at Wesley for a moment, struggling to tell if he was sincere. But he couldn’t tell. Wesley’s expression was completely unreadable. He was a human hieroglyphic.
    ‘This is her house,’ Ted said, finally. ‘She’s renting out the spare bedroom. Shared use of bathroom and kitchen facilities. I’m only handling it as a personal favour.’
    ‘Whose house?’ Wesley sounded perfectly innocent. Benign. Casual.
    ‘ Whose house?’ he repeated, after a pause.
    Ted pointed at the printed details: ‘This is Katherine Turpin’s house. This is the house of the local woman whose life you ruined.’
    A short silence followed, punctuated, briefly, by Wesley’s stomach rumbling.
    ‘Blow me,’ Wesley finally expostulated (almost convincingly), ‘that’s some crazy coincidence. I suppose we’d better go and take a look, then, hadn’t we?’
    He stood up. Ted didn’t move a muscle.
    ‘Take me there,’ Wesley ordered, reaching over to grab Ted’s jacket from the back of his chair, bundling it up into a compact ball, and throwing it at him.
    ‘You don’t know me…’ Josephine said, squeezing her way between the plastic bench and its table.
    ‘I don’t know you,’ Doc affirmed, not even looking up at her, but applying all his energy to dissolving the foam on his coffee by stirring at it vigorously with the back end of a knife. The foam wouldn’t dissolve though. Too dense. Too soapy.
    He was occupying a window kiosk in the Wimpy. Dennis sat outside, tied to a lamppost, his snout