PART ONE

ONE

Shepherd’s Bush, London. Six years later.

It was a cold May evening – no longer winter but not yet summer – and the traffic along the eastern end of the Uxbridge Road was sluggish. The many pedestrians on either side of the street moved more quickly than the cars and buses whose headlights illuminated them as they trudged home from work. The air was filled with traffic noises, fumes and the smell of food being cooked in Middle Eastern fast-food joints.

One man moved more slowly than the others, partly because he felt no need to hurry, but also because he was not built for speed. He wore a large woollen overcoat that went some way to disguising his generous stomach. His head was covered with an old-fashioned Trilby hat which, although seldom seen in this – or any – part of London, did not look out of place. In one of his gloved hands he carried a briefcase, the sort a doctor might have, its leather worn and soft; and he surveyed the world through a pair of glasses – square, thick rimmed and outmoded.

He found this part of London rather distasteful. In the past he had listened to his students assure him that it was vibrant and colourful, but to him it always looked dirty and ramshackle. He passed a bus stop where a teenage girl listened to something appalling over the speaker of her mobile phone; the people around her either didn’t mind or were too timid to ask her to turn it off. Further along the street there was a grocery stall. The vegetables – some of which he did not recognise – were neatly and abundantly displayed. As he passed, however, he felt the hostile eyes of the shopkeeper – arms crossed as he stood in the doorway – on him. It still did not make him hurry, but it did nothing to change his opinion about this part of town.

A few doors down there was a newsagent’s. He entered. It was almost empty, just a middle-aged woman buying cigarettes. His eyes wandered to the top shelf of the magazine rack and he selected three pornographic magazines at random. With a bit of luck he wouldn’t need them, but they were a necessary insurance policy. He paid for them without embarrassment, slipped them into his briefcase and left the shop.

He had examined the map carefully, so he knew when to turn left. There was a pub on the street corner, an unfashionable place only half full. By the time he had passed it, the noise of the main road was already receding. There were far fewer people in this side road, which made him feel more conspicuous. It was easy to get lost in a crowd, but in a less populated residential road where everyone was familiar with the sight of their neighbours, one was more likely to stand out. He pulled the brim of his hat further down and bowed his head as he walked.

He found the house he was looking for soon enough. He didn’t stop, though. Instead he kept walking a few metres, crossed the road and examined the place from a short distance. It was one of a row of terraced houses – a couple of storeys high and mostly, he assumed, divided into flats. The flat with which he was concerned was in the basement. There was a metal gate at street level and a small garden, unkempt and overgrown. That was good. It obscured the front window from the gaze of passers-by. Parked outside was an ancient Ford Escort – nothing expensive, but it had been souped up with a spoiler and go-faster stripes.

The man looked at his watch. A quarter past seven. He felt inside the jacket of his overcoat. It was there, he reassured himself. Ready to be used. He crossed the road again and approached his destination. The metal gate creaked slightly as he opened it, but that was okay. He descended the steps inelegantly on account of his girth, stopped at the front door and used his free hand to ring the bell.

It took almost a minute for the door to be answered by a tall young man. He had cropped brown hair, a slightly hooked nose and a protruding Adam’s apple. He wore a tracksuit and no shoes, and he exuded a certain shiftiness as his eyes moved up and down, sizing up the newcomer.

‘Yeah?’ he demanded, one hand still clutching the half-open door, the other pressed flat against the wall.

The newcomer took care not to let any expression show on his face. ‘Good evening,’ he said quietly. His voice bore the trace of a foreign accent. He had been in the UK for many years, however, and was sure that nobody would be able to place his nationality with any confidence.

The young man continued to look surly and impatient. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’m here on…’ He cleared his throat and allowed himself a small, nasty smile. ‘I’m here on agency business.’

That certainly grabbed the young man’s attention. His eyes narrowed slightly, as though he were judging whether or not to believe the newcomer, then he licked his lips and looked briefly up towards the street. Nervousness? The newcomer thought so. A little excitement? Possibly.

The young man opened the door a bit further, allowing him to enter. He nodded as he did so, muttering a brief ‘Thank you’. The older man noticed with satisfaction that the younger man’s tracksuit trousers were made of a thin, flowing material. Ahead of him was a narrow kitchen; to his right a door that led into the main room of this small flat. It was about what he expected. A large television screen hung on the wall. The sound was down, but it was filled with images – extreme skiing of some kind. Just the sort of thing he would be interested in. On the floor in front of it was a tangled mesh of wires connected to a video console. In the middle of the room was a coffee table, covered with the accumulated debris of more than one day’s worth of ready-meal packaging. There were, he noticed, no books on the shelves. That didn’t surprise him. He knew enough about this young man – and others like him – to realise that the slow pleasures of reading would be unlikely to appear high on the list of his priorities.

He stood in the middle of the room, placed his briefcase on the floor and slowly slid his leather gloves off his hands.

‘Thought you lot had forgotten me,’ the young man’s voice said from behind him. He made no attempt to hide the dissatisfaction in his voice.

‘Oh no,’ the newcomer replied mildly. ‘We haven’t forgotten you.’ He placed his bare hand back into the pocket of his coat just as the young man walked past him to turn off the television.

In all his years of doing this kind of thing, he had learned that it is best to grab your opportunities when they arise. For that reason, as the young man faced the television with his back to him, the newcomer moved swiftly. From his pocket he pulled a hypodermic syringe and instantly removed the plastic cap that covered the protruding needle.

He stepped forward.

The area around the centre of the buttocks was, he knew, the best location. It was fleshier for a start. Easier to puncture. And the mark that the needle would undoubtedly leave would be somewhat hidden around that area of the body.

He jabbed his arm forward and his aim was true. He squeezed the syringe.

‘What the f…?’ the young man started to say. By the time he had turned to look at the newcomer, however, the needle had been removed.

The two men stared at each other, one of them holding the needle and making no attempt now to hide it, the other gazing at it in a mixture of confusion and horror.

The young man took a step forward. His attacker did not flinch. He knew it would only be seconds before his victim was completely incapacitated.

Sure enough, as the young man tried to take a second step, he appeared to have difficulty moving his leg, as though he had suddenly been frozen. The young man looked down at the ground, then up again at the newcomer.

And then he collapsed. His attacker caught him as he fell – it wouldn’t do for his body to be too bruised – then laid him out on the floor. By the time he had finished doing this he was red-faced and out of breath.