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better by itself. Time to… fulfil our management obligations, yes?”
    “Absolutely, Ms Li!” enthused Miles. “How do you propose following this excellent plan?”
    She thought; but the answer, it seemed, was obvious. “What’s the best way to Deptford?”

Chapter 10
    … Try, Try Again
    They took the Overground.
    This surprised Sharon. It wasn’t just that the line through Whitechapel and across the river was new; it was that it was new, sleek, punctual and all things for which the words ‘National Rail’ seemed destined to reject. It wound through that transitional part of town where the City met the East End, humming above the streets whose occupants looked up from bus stops and cracked old benches as if they couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing. Posters at the stations warned passengers heading towards Camden Road and Willesden that, during this season, leaves might fall on the line and this could be a problem. But such reassurance that the Overground was, in fact, a part of London’s transport network and fulfilled the requisite clichés of the same, was countered by the promise, then arrival, of trains to within a few seconds of when they were due.
    But if Shoreditch was shocked at finding itself accessible by public transport, Deptford was having no such crisis. Set between the royal palaces of Greenwich and the solid, unpretentious housing of Bermondsey, Deptford was an industrial embarrassment. Into its tangle of one-way streets and drive-through burger bars, great splats of aluminium-walled warehouses and grubby-faced offices had been thrown like dirty droppings from the urban paint brush. Century Industrial Complex (“A Legacy Of Success”) hid a cardboard-box company, a sandwich maker and a printer of quirky T-shirts; Cannon Wharf Business Centre (“For All Your Commercial Needs”) contained the offices of a company which supplied ushers for large public events, a coffee importer and three men who hired lights for far too little to people who couldn’t afford to pay a penny more. A potted plant in its reception area assured visitors that no matter how bleak, functional and cold this place might seem, they were, in fact, welcome guests in a dynamic environment.
    The white warehouses of Longshore Quay (“Bringing Innovation To Your Working Environment”) were lined up like warriors squaring off for battle in long ranks that ran from the gateway down to the river, in units each consisting of a small metal door for humans, and a far larger metal shutter for lorries to back through when making deliveries and connections. Stepping past a barrier by the abandoned entrance, Sharon could smell diesel and hear the distant long-ago cries of foremen and porters as they juggled their loads in and out in a perpetual flow of cut flowers, fresh eggs, pasteurised milk, clean paper, soft toilet roll and all the unseen essentials of city commerce – now faded to nothing more nor less than echoes that whispered in the shaman’s mind. She looked down and now saw cracked grey tarmac through which grass and sharp-leaved weeds were pushing their way up. The signs that had stood above the lorry bays were gone, leaving no more than outlines on the wall, or odd letters dangling by a single nail from scarred concrete and crumbling brick. Even the nearby waters of the Thames, in an ancient timber-lined inlet where wooden vessels had once offloaded their cargos from the Empire, seemed sullen and dull as they slapped against the quay.
    “Why would the Midnight Mayor come here?” Miles spoke in the breathy tone of one who’d hoped his companions would have put the question first, and spared him from betraying his own bewilderment.
    Sharon didn’t answer. She walked on, between the shuttered bays and faded signs, and listened. For all that commerce had long since abandoned Longshore Quay, life, with pesky unstoppability, had pushed its way in through the rusting chain fence, and as she walked she