Bringar was cold, which was odd because it was a warm summer day. Even amongst the pigeon guano and moss atop Town Hill water tower nearly six hundred feet above Swansea Bay the sun bathed everything with its glow. But he felt cold with the chill of a life reaching its conclusion.

It had not been a good life, although he had lived it as well as circumstances allowed. In truth that amounted to keeping himself fit with night-time exercises in the privacy of his room, reading the newspapers he found in the bins, tending to the old man’s needs when called upon, and suffering the beatings his daily failings earned him.