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Four stops later, Barker changed to the Hammersmith & City line. The train emptied a little. At that time of day most people who had jobs were travelling into the centre. He should have been on the way to work himself, of course, but the idea only occurred to him remotely, like the light issuing from a distant star. He hadn't thought of calling the shop, for instance, even though he was aware that Higgs might feel let down. It would have been too much of a distraction. And besides, his letter would arrive soon enough. In the meantime, he was overtaken by a kind of confidence, a surprising absence of responsibility. He had the feeling he was flying on automatic pilot. As obstacles presented themselves, so adjustments would be made. He wouldn't even really be involved.

Which was just as well, perhaps. Though he had a plan now, he had no idea where it had come from or whether it
was going to work. Plans depend on your ability to predict the unpredictable. You have to prepare the ground, allow for every eventuality. He had notes on Glade Spencer, and he had watched her, followed her – but how much did he really know? It seemed quite possible that he had underestimated the difficulty of the task that lay before him. Maybe he was even living in a dreamworld. At the very least, he could expect a few moments of violence. He would have to instil a sense of fear. Well, it wouldn't be the first time. And then? Should he tell her the truth? If he did, how would she react? From that point onwards he would be entering the unknown.

Standing outside the tube station at Latimer Road, he checked his watch. Just under fourteen hours left. He looked around. A black cat crouched beneath a parked car, its eyes as bright and flat as sequins. A woman in a shell-suit wheeled an empty pushchair out of a paper shop. There was the smell of drains. A sudden irritation ran through him: one of his hands flew upwards, skimming his forehead, as if to brush away a fly.

He moved north, covering the distance between the station and her house as quickly as he could. At eight-thirty-five he was turning the corner into her street. That was good. One girl would already have left for work, the other would just be waking up. Above his head a plane moved with slow, hydraulic force towards the airport fifteen miles to the west. The grey sky crackled in its wake. This was it. He walked up to the front door and pressed the bell. After a moment he heard footsteps on the stairs. Through the frosted glass he watched her float towards him, her identity disguised, scrambled, reduced to a shifting pattern of abstract shapes and colours.

There was no security chain in place, no suspicious eye appearing in the gap. Instead, the door swung open, drawing air into the house, and there she was, Glade Spencer, standing right in front of him. When she saw him, she smiled.

‘I thought it was you,' she said.

He stood on the doorstep, clumsy now, and utterly bewildered. The strangest sensation. He felt as if he was wearing what old-fashioned deep-sea divers used to wear – a helmet like a goldfish bowl, a pair of lead-soled boots.

‘Come in,' she said. ‘I've been expecting you.'

She closed the door behind him and then led him up a flight of stairs. He followed her, his eyes fixed on her bare feet, the frayed hem of her dressing-gown. Halfway up, she stopped and looked at him, over her shoulder. ‘You know, you look completely different from what I imagined.' She noticed the confusion on his face and laughed. ‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I shouldn't be so rude.'

She showed him along a narrow corridor and into the front room. He recognised the bay window, the red curtains. This was her room. He couldn't resist moving towards the window. He stared past the curtains and down into the street. He had watched the house for so many hours that he felt he must have left an impression on the air. He could see his own ghost standing on the paving-stones below. That puzzled look, which he knew from the mirror. A man who had been placed in an impossible position. A man with the odds stacked against him. Something seemed to have changed since then, just in the last few minutes, though he couldn't have put his finger on what it was.

He stepped back into the middle of the room and looked around. A tiled fireplace, its grate heaped with pale ashes. The double bed unmade. He could see the shape of her head preserved on the top pillow, an oval indentation in the cotton. At last his eyes reached hers. She was still smiling. He realised he hadn't spoken to her yet. Words seemed to have deserted him.

‘I suppose,' she said, ‘that you've got theories …'

He had no idea what she meant by that.

She took a step forwards and her voice softened, as if he was slow in the head, or fragile. ‘Perhaps this is the
wrong place to do it,' she said. ‘Perhaps we should do it somewhere else.'

She seemed to know exactly what he had in mind. All he had to do was agree with her. Could it really be that simple?

‘Well?' she said. ‘What do you think?'

‘I think you're right,' Barker said. It was so long since he had spoken that he had to clear his throat. ‘I think we should do it somewhere else.'

‘Where?'

‘It's a long way.'

‘How will we get there?'

‘By train.'

None of this disturbed her in the slightest. If anything, she appeared pleased. ‘Do I need to take anything with me?'

‘I don't know. A jacket, maybe.'

‘That's all?'

‘Yes.'

The ease of the exchange unnerved him. She didn't seem to have any doubts, either about his identity or his intentions. Who did she think he was? This was a question he found himself trapped into not asking – but he thought that if he listened carefully enough, then perhaps she would supply him with the answer. He had so many questions, though, even at the most basic level. He wanted to ask about her hair. Why had she dyed it? And why orange, of all colours? He couldn't risk that either. It would imply that he had seen her before, that he had some prior knowledge of her and, judging by what she'd already told him, this was the first time they had met.

All of a sudden, her hand lifted to her mouth. ‘The kettle.
I forgot.' She ran out of the room. Before he could follow her, she ran back in again. ‘Would you like some tea?'

He glanced at his watch. Twenty-past nine. Almost half an hour had passed since she opened the front door and he walked in. Time was beginning to speed up. He saw clock-hands spinning, a calendar shedding its pages like leaves in a gale.

‘Is there time?' she asked.

‘Yes,' he said, ‘there's time.'

He stood by the kitchen window while she rinsed two cups under the tap. He couldn't help noticing the sticky patches on the table, the dust and rubbish on the floor. It surprised him that she lived in such squalor. He watched her open a box of tea-bags. She used one in each cup, dropping them in the sink when they had yielded their flavour.

At one point she turned to him, steam from the kettle rising past her face. ‘I'm so glad you came,' she said. ‘Charlie was really worried about you.'

Charlie? He managed a smile. He still had no idea who he was supposed to be, but he thought that if he played along with her, then it would make the whole thing easier – easier than he could possibly have imagined. When she spoke to him, he held his tongue and tried to look as though she was only telling him what he already knew.

She stood in front of her wardrobe, one hand on her hip, the other covering one corner of her mouth. The dull tingle of hangers on the rail, the sprawl of discarded clothes across her bed. She couldn't decide what to wear. She was even slower than Jill, who often used to take an hour to dress if they were going out, and perhaps because of this odd, skewed sense of familiarity, a feeling of nostalgia, really, he didn't try to hurry her. Instead, he sat on a chair with his back to the window and sipped his tea, which had long since cooled. He felt the sun reach into the room and touch his shoulder. Gradually, he found himself relaxing. So much so, in fact, that when she
finally appeared in a black skirt and a denim jacket and told him she was ready, it caught him unawares and even, for a few brief moments, disappointed him.

Yes, it was easy in the flat, and walking up the road, that was easy too, but as they entered the tube station, a change came over her. She began to mutter under her breath, and her words, when he could hear them, made no sense to him. On the platform he tried to talk to her, to calm her, but she seemed to be listening to something else. There was a buzzing in her ears, no, a fizzing, which she didn't like at all. Further down the platform a guard's head turned slowly in their direction, expressionless but inquisitive. Barker began to wish he'd thought of a taxi. What they needed now was to be hidden from the world, invisible.

At Baker Street a middle-aged woman stepped into their carriage. She had a page-boy haircut, which heightened the bluntness of her features. Barker sensed trouble coming the moment he saw her. Some people, you just know. He watched her sit down opposite. Watched her eyes. How they drifted idly towards the two of them, then tightened into focus. She wasn't frightened of his size or his tattoos or the scar on the bridge of his nose. In fact, she hardly seemed to notice. She just leaned over, concerned, and said, ‘Is something wrong?'

Glade stared into the woman's face, then she began to shake her head. ‘I don't know what you're saying,' she murmured. ‘I can't hear you.'

The woman looked across at Barker. ‘Is she ill?'

‘She's fine,' he said. ‘Just leave us alone.'

‘Are you sure?' The woman studied Glade again. ‘She looks as if she needs some help to me.'

Barker lifted his eyes towards the roof. No corners, just curving metal. Cream-coloured. Shiny. In a loud voice, he said, ‘Maybe you'd like to mind your own fucking business, all right?'

Several people shifted in their seats, but he knew they wouldn't interfere. People don't, in England.

The woman sat back, her eyes fixed on some imaginary horizon, her lips bloodless, pinched. Barker nodded to himself. That was more like it. If only he'd been paid to get rid of her. Come to think of it, he probably would have done the job for nothing.

At last they arrived at King's Cross. He took Glade by the arm. ‘Our stop,' he told her.

She looked at him, narrowing her eyes, and then she nodded. It was a habit of hers, making him wonder if she might be short-sighted.

As they left the carriage, Barker looked round, saw the woman watching them through the window. She would remember the encounter. She'd be able to say, ‘You know, I thought there was something strange about them.' Only it would be too late by then. Yes, when she heard the news, she would remember. And then she'd probably blame herself. If only she had done something. There'd be guilt, huge guilt. But after what she'd put him through during the last ten minutes, Barker couldn't pretend that he was sorry.

Upstairs, in the station, he asked for two singles to Hull. The man at the ticket counter told him it would be cheaper to buy returns. Super Savers, he called them.

‘But I'm not sure when we're coming back,' Barker said.

‘Still cheaper. Even if you never come back.' The man watched Barker patiently, waiting for him to understand.

‘Super Saver,' Glade murmured at his shoulder. ‘I like the sound of that.'

Barker looked down at her. She nodded, then drifted away from him, drawing glances from the people standing in the queue. Her height, her slenderness. Her bright-orange hair. He turned back to the man behind the counter.

‘OK,' he said. ‘Two Super Savers.'

The tickets in his hand, he crossed the station concourse,
stopping under the departures board. The train to Hull didn't leave for another three-quarters of an hour. With Glade behaving the way she was, he thought it might be wise to delay boarding until the last minute. In the station, with all its freaks and misfits, all its strays, a girl muttering would be less likely to stand out.

Then Glade was pulling on his sleeve. ‘Have you got any money?'

‘Yes, I've got money,' he said. ‘Why?'

‘Can I have some?'

‘What for?'

‘I'd like something to drink.'

‘I'll buy you something.'

She looked at him knowingly, half-smiling, as if he was trying to trick her and she had seen through it. ‘I'd better come too,' she said. ‘I'll show you.' She led him into the newsagent's and down to the back where the soft drinks were kept. He watched her scan the cooler, her eyes jumping from one row of cans to the next.

‘That,' she said, pointing.

‘Kwench!?' He remembered noticing the same bright-orange cans lying on the floor in her kitchen.

‘Six of them,' she said.

‘Six?'
He stared at her, over his shoulder.

She nodded. ‘I'm thirsty.'

He was looking into her face, which had an earnestness, a seriousness, that he had seen in children, and he realised, in that moment, that he would find it impossible to deny her anything.

‘Six,' she repeated. In case he hadn't heard her. In case he had forgotten.

He reached into the cooler, took out six cans of Kwench! and carried them up to the till.

‘I hope that'll be enough.' She was staring anxiously at the cans. She seemed to be making some kind of calculation.

‘You drink all these,' he said, ‘we'll get you some more.'

The cashier smiled at Glade indulgently. ‘Maybe you should buy the company.'

‘Sorry?' Barker said.

The cashier turned to him. ‘You know, like in the advert.'

Barker had no idea what she was talking about.

Taking his change, he steered Glade out of the shop. The murmuring of voices, the distant drone of a floor-polisher. For one disconcerting moment he felt that he could actually see the sounds mingling in the air above his head like birds. Glade stopped and slid one hand into the plastic bag that he had given her to carry. She took out a can of Kwench! and opened it, then stood still, drinking fast. Her eyes glazed over, her body strangely disconnected, in suspension. It was as if swallowing the fizzy orange liquid required every ounce of concentration she could muster.