Sidney watched him walk halfway across the square before she opened her own door. 'Justin-'

'Stay there.' He sounded calmer, not so much because he was feeling any calmer, she knew, but because the square was peopled with Soho's usual Friday-night throng and Justin Brooke was not a man who generally cared for making public scenes.

She ignored his admonition, striding to join him, disregarding the certain knowledge that the last thing she ought to be doing was helping him get more supplies for his habit. She told herself instead that if she weren't there, sharply on the lookout, he might be arrested or duped or worse.

'I'm coming,' she said when she reached him.

The whipcord of tension in his features told her he had moved beyond caring.

'As you like.' He headed towards the gaping darkness of the alley across the square.

Construction was under way there, making the alley mouth darker and narrower than usual. Sidney made a moue of distaste at the smell of urine. It was worse than she had expected it to be.

Buildings loomed up on either side, unlit and unmarked. Grilles covered their windows, and their entry-ways housed shrouded, moaning figures who conducted the sort of illicit business which the nightclubs of the district seemed eager to promote.

'Justin, where're you planning to-?'

Brooke raised a cautionary hand. Up ahead, a man's hoarse cursing had begun to fill the air. It came from the far end of the alley where a brick wall curved round the side of a nightclub to form a sheltered alcove. Two figures writhed upon the ground there. But this was no love-tryst. This was assault, and the bottom figure was a black-clad woman who appeared to be no match in either size or strength for her ferocious assailant.

'You filthy.. .' The man – blond by the appearance of him and wildly angry by the sound of his voice – pounded his fists against the woman's face, ground them into her arms, slammed them into her stomach.