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from one another only to discover that Anthony had somehow managed to loop their watchstraps together.
    â€˜Hey!’ cried Darryl.
    â€˜How’d you do that?’ Millsy asked Anthony.
    Anthony shrugged. ‘Honestly, no idea.’
    â€˜Don’t pull, you idiot. You’ll break it!’ Darryl snapped at his friend. They took a moment to unhook themselves.
    Anthony started to wander away, not remotely concerned by these two young thugs, even though theywere clearly riled up now. Darryl and Millsy swaggered after him.
    â€˜You looking for a slap, pal?’ asked Darryl through gritted teeth.
    â€˜No,’ replied Anthony. ‘I remember the sea.’
    This threw Millsy and Darryl a little. What did the sea have to do with anything?
    â€˜Get him!’ barked Darryl, and he and Millsy pounced on Anthony. Anthony shifted his weight and, almost like a dancer, spun out of their path. In one swift movement, he grabbed the hem at the back of Millsy’s thick woollen coat and pulled it up and over the boy’s head. The coat twisted inside out and stretched across Millsy’s chest, incapacitating him as if he was entwined in a strange sort of straitjacket.
    Darryl threw a punch, but Anthony caught his fist easily and twisted his arm, spinning Darryl around. The teenager cried out in pain.
    â€˜You’re a nutter!’ he shouted.
    â€˜Very possibly,’ said Anthony calmly. He let go of Darryl’s wrist and the boy started running. Millsy watched his friend deserting him.
    â€˜Darryl!’ he cried, but Darryl didn’t stop or look back. Millsy struggled to escape from his own coat and the moment he was free he ran too, leaving the coat lying in the snow behind him. Anthony picked it up.
    â€˜Hey!’ he called. ‘You left your coat.’ But Darryl waslong gone and he saw Millsy vanish through some bushes. Anthony waited for a few moments, but it didn’t look like the boys were coming back. He shrugged and threw the coat on over his maroon and yellow jacket.
Waste not, want not
, he thought. It fitted perfectly, and he walked away.

6
FRANK THE FENCE

    Frank lay entwined in his duvet, wearing only a mangy pair of Y-fronts and his prized David Bowie
Aladdin Sane
T-shirt. His head was tilted backwards, his mouth hung open and a deep, sonorous roar drifted up from the depths of his throat. Somewhere he could hear banging:
bang bang bangbangbang bangbangbangbang bang bang!
It replayed over and over again.
Bang bang bangbangbang bangbangbangbang bang bang!
    â€˜Sharrup!’ Frank managed to croak.
    Bang bang bangbangbang bangbangbangbang bang bang!
    This time it got through to the meat of Frank’s brain and he lifted his head off the pillow and managed to open one eye almost all the way.
    *
    Frank flung open the bedroom door and stomped out, trying to wrap a brown towelling dressing gown around himself as he headed along the narrow hallway to his front door.
    Bang bang bangbangbang bangbangbangbang bang bang!
    â€˜All right! All right! Knock it off, will ya? I’m coming,’ Frank shouted. The banging stopped. ‘Who is it?’ he asked.
    He heard Goose’s voice on the other side of the door. ‘Hurry up, will ya, Frank? It’s bloody freezin’ out ’ere.’ Frank gave his face a rub in some half-arsed attempt to get the blood flowing and unlocked the door. Goose and Mutt were standing on his doorstep.
    â€˜It snowed,’ said Goose, jabbing a finger over his shoulder at the frozen view from the walkway outside Frank’s eighth-floor council flat.
    â€˜Yeah, I know,’ said Frank, as the events of the previous night started to come back to him. He remembered the strange man in the maroon-and-yellow jacket lying in the road. He wondered for a moment if that had been a dream. He didn’t think so but wasn’t a hundred per cent.
    Goose stepped inside and Mutt started to follow. Frank quickly put his bare foot in