More than a foot taller, he stared down, casually alert, as if bored with such small prey.

Where is it? A flat voice.

What’d ya mean?

Lynch knew he would be killed as soon as he told where the briefcase was. A simple fact and accepted the way he accepted bunions and a cold wind.

You want money? You’ll get money. After. Where is it?

Tell me what ya want.

The man hit Lynch across the face. He used the back of his hand. The blow wasn’t hard and not the hardest Lynch ever received, but it was hard enough to knock him off his feet. He got up slowly and backed away.

Where is it?

I give it to someone. Guy I owed a favour. I took some pens, nuthin’ else. Ya can have ‘em back. Got no use for the rest.

Who is this guy?

A bum.

Where is he?

He don’t live in one place.

The hand struck again, harder. He was knocked back, his feet in mid-air as he landed on the carpet. The side of his face was numb. He didn’t want to but got up, afraid he might be kicked. As he stood up, the man stared but not at him. He raised a hand to scratch his chin. Lynch jerked his head away.

Are good intentions good enough? Two fourteen-year-old vegans try to reform a tramp. Will he appreciate the girls’ efforts to get him off the streets and to find him a place of his own? Will he stop drinking, give up meat and go vegan? They are persistent but he has other ideas. He steals and gets drunk, courtesy of the tenants in the building where they are hiding him. Robbing empty suites on the Labour Day weekend, he pulls off the biggest heist of his life. But he accidentally witnesses a rich and powerful pedophile raping and murdering a girl. His haul from the robbbery contains evidence of a network of pedophiles. He is seen and becomes prey. Hiding from a hit man, the tramp attempts to save himself, drawing the girls, their families and everybody he knows into a whirlpool of deceit and murder. The pedophile is sucked into this vortex. His public reputation as a benefactor of children comes under threat. A woman who has promoted his reputation finds out the truth and places herself in danger as she tries to expose him. Sometimes chance flips a two-headed coin.