It's January the 10th, 1929 in Southampton, England.

An upstairs window of the Royal Exchange pub on Grove Street opens, and a man climbs out onto a flat roof.

This is Henry Passmore, newly appointed agent for the Wolfhead Oil Company in Southampton.

Henry has a problem. He can't get into his company's premises, a garage store room next to the pub.

The outer gate is locked and he doesn't have a key. Henry's plan is to drop down into the yard from the pub roof.

As he clamors across the roof, he can't help thinking this is not the best way to start his first day,

being forced to break into his own place of work.

Now, earlier that morning, he'd gone to the previous agent's house to pick up the keys,

but there was no sign of him, or of Mr. Vivian Messeter, Henry's predecessor.

Henry lowers himself down, dropping the last few feet to the ground.

He looks round the outside of the garage. His first impressions

are not favorable. On this bleak January day, the place has an abandoned air. The windows are

grimy. One of them is broken. The garage doors are padlocked. Henry cuts the chain with a pair of bolt

cutters that he brought along just in case. Stepping inside the gloomy storeroom,

he finds himself surrounded by oil drums and storage crates. The garage also

contains a red Morris Oxford car. With its flat-nosed hood and

bug-eyed headlights, the car is typical of the era. We'd call it vintage today, but in

1929, it's cool. It's a modern sports car. Henry breathes in the acrid smell of oil.

There's something else in the air. Something rotten. It hits him like a punch in the throat.

As he moves towards the source of this horrible stench, Henry's skin begins to crawl. What was that he saw scurrying

away out of the corner of his eye? Rats? Henry swallows down as disgust and lowers his gaze.

There, laid out on the cold, hard concrete floor of the garage, tucked away in a gap between two stacks of boxes is the body of a man.

...