“No worries,” the woman replied. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Not…?” Meredith hadn’t thought that Jemima and Gordon might have moved house, but that seemed to be the case. She said, “Do Gordon and Jemima not live here any longer?”

“Gordon certainly does,” the other replied. “But who’s Jemima?”

In looking at everything that happened to John Dresser, one must begin with the canal. Part of the nineteenth century’s means of transporting goods from one area of the UK to another, the particular section of the Midlands Trans-Country Canal that concerns us bisects the city in such a way as to create a divide between socioeconomic areas. Three-quarters of a mile of its length runs along the north boundary of the Gallows. As is the case with most of the canals in Great Britain, a towpath gives walkers and cyclists access to the canal, and various types of housing back onto the waterway.

One might harbour romantic images invoked by the word canal or by canal life, but there is little romantic about the length of the Midlands Trans-Country Canal that flows just north of the Gallows. It’s a greasy strip of water uninhabited by ducks, swans, or any other sort of aquatic life, and there are no reeds, willow trees, wildflowers, or grasses growing along the towpath. What bobs at the canal’s edges is usually rubbish, and its water carries a putrid odour suggestive of faulty sewer pipes.

The canal has long been used by residents of the Gallows as a dumping ground for items too bulky to be taken away by the rubbish collectors. When Michael Spargo, Reggie Arnold, and Ian Barker arrived there at roughly nine-thirty A.M., they found a shopping trolley in the water, and they commenced using it as a target at which they threw rocks, bottles, and bricks found along the towpath. Going to the canal appears to have been Reggie’s idea, one initially rejected by Ian, who accused the other two boys of wanting to go there “to wank each other or do it like doggies,” which can be seen as an apparent reference to what he himself had witnessed in the bedroom he was forced to share with his mother.