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‘It contains everything you need to know,' he said. ‘It also contains half the money in advance. Three thousand pounds.'

Barker reached for the envelope, thinking he ought to check the contents, but Lambert rested one hand on his sleeve. ‘Not now. When you're at home,' and Lambert paused, ‘in Bermondsey.'

‘You're not going to tell me what the job involves?'

‘It's nothing you can't manage.'

‘And if I decide not to do it?'

‘You've already decided. You wouldn't be here otherwise.'

‘But if I change my mind,' Barker persisted.

‘Then you'll be here tomorrow at the same time. With the envelope, of course.' Lambert looked down at the pale-pink tablecloth and smiled almost wistfully. ‘But I don't think you'll be here tomorrow.'

Barker stared at the envelope, the brown paper seeming to expand, to draw him in. When he looked up again, the food had arrived and Lambert was already eating.

‘This is good.' Lambert pointed at his plate.

‘It's not your first time, is it,' Barker said.

Lambert looked at him.

‘You often come here,' Barker said. ‘To this restaurant.'

Lambert was eating again. ‘You know, this really is very good.' A few moments later he glanced at his watch, then touched his napkin to his mouth. ‘I must go.'

He pushed his chair back. Barker half-rose from the table.

‘Please,' Lambert said. ‘Finish your lunch.'

Afterwards, Barker couldn't recall his face at all. His eyes, his nose, his hair had vanished without trace. Lambert was the kind of man who had no habits. Who did not smell. Of anything. When you had lunch with him, time passed more quickly than it did with other people. Not because you were having fun. Not for any reason you could think of. It just did. Perhaps it was a technique Lambert had mastered – part of his job, his brief. Later, it felt as if you'd only imagined meeting him. It had never actually happened. You'd eaten lunch alone, in a restaurant somewhere just off Edgware Road. It was the shrubbery that you remembered. Those leaves. Too big and shiny. Too green.

At home that evening Barker took a shower. As always, he noted the contrast between his legs, which seemed too thin, and his torso, which was almost as deep as it was wide, his ex-wife's name tattooed in muddy grey-blue capitals across his chest. Mostly he chose to see the shape of his body as
representing some kind of efficiency. The type of work he'd done in the past, legs didn't matter. It was the other people who needed legs. To run for it. To scarper. He dried himself thoroughly, then put on a black T-shirt and a pair of faded black jeans, pulling a thick leather belt through the loops and fastening the Harley Davidson buckle. He smoothed his hair down with his hands till it lay flat against his skull. In the kitchen he opened a can of lager, which he carried into the lounge. He sat on the settee with the TV on. The red numbers on the video said 7:35.

After his meeting with Lambert, Barker had returned to work. He had asked Higgs for a three-hour lunch-break that day. He hadn't bothered to invent a reason, an excuse, and the old man had been too discreet to ask for one. Once, though, when the shop was empty, Higgs had looked across at him and asked him if everything was all right. Barker nodded, but didn't speak. Outside, the sun was shining, which made the interior seem gloomier than usual. Bad news? Higgs said quietly. Barker didn't answer. Later, he walked home under a bright-blue sky and lifted weights until his skin glistened.

The brown envelope lay on the table by the wall, its surface blank, its contents still unknown. If he thought he still had a choice he was fooling himself.
You've already decided. You wouldn't be here otherwise
. He had answered the phone and he had appeared at the restaurant. He had eaten a meal. Most ways you looked at it, he was already in. As he reached for the envelope he heard the man's voice again, dispassionate and neutral.
When you're at home
, and then a pause,
in Bermondsey
. The bastards. They even knew where he lived. He tore the envelope open lengthways, almost carelessly, and emptied it on to the cushion next to him.

It was the photograph he noticed first. A standard colour print, one corner bent. He'd been expecting a photograph, given the amount of money involved, given the secrecy, but he hadn't thought about the face, what it might look like.
Usually it didn't matter. You treated it as a guideline. They gave you a name, some kind of visual reference. Parts of the body were mentioned too. Do the right hand, do the knees. Somehow this felt different, though. As he'd known it would. He was holding a picture of a girl who was in her early twenties. She had hazel eyes, the look in them direct but, at the same time, vague. Her bright-blonde hair fell below her shoulders, out of frame. One of her ears stuck out slightly. She didn't look like anyone he had ever known. He could imagine meeting her on a street-corner. She would be lost. She would ask him for directions. When he had helped her, she would thank him, then turn away. And that would be the last he saw of her. He couldn't imagine meeting a girl this pretty under any other circumstances. Certainly he would never have imagined circumstances like these. He put the photo down and picked up the money, a stack of twenties and fifties held compactly with a rubber band. He ran his thumb across the notes, but didn't count them. Three thousand pounds. He turned to the two typed sheets of paper, which had been stapled together for his convenience. He skimmed neat rows of words, looking for a name. He found it halfway down the first page.
GLADE SPENCER
.

For the next two hours Barker watched TV, only getting up to fetch more beer. From time to time he thought of the barber's shop – the red leather chairs, the mirrors with their bevelled edges. Propped in the window were pictures of men's hairstyles from the seventies, at least fifteen years out of date. Above them, a faded notice that said
Come In Please – We're Open
. He saw Harold Higgs sweeping the lino floor at closing-time, his shirtsleeves rolled, the skin on the points of his elbows thin and papery. Always gritting his teeth a little on account of the arthritis in his shoulder and his hip. Forty years in the business. Forty years. And still struggling to break even. But wasn't he the same as Higgs when it came down to it? That afternoon he had seen himself through Lambert's
eyes. The man had recognised him – not personally, but as a type. Someone who'd do what was required. Who wouldn't shrink from it. That was all he remembered about Lambert now, that moment of recognition. When he would rather have seen doubt. Was that the reason he had agreed to the meeting, even though all his instincts had advised against it? Had he secretly been hoping that he might look unlikely, that he would not be trusted with the job? In that version of events Lambert would never have parted with the envelope. Instead, he would simply have stood up and walked out, leaving Barker in the empty restaurant, humiliated, alone – yet, at the same time, redefined somehow, confirmed in his new identity. It hadn't happened, though; Lambert hadn't even hesitated. Barker remembered the strangely wistful smile that Lambert had directed at the tablecloth. Lambert had been waiting for him to realise the truth about himself. Barker's fists clenched in his lap. Of course he could still say no. He could hand the envelope back. But then, at some point in the future, somebody would come for him with a broken beer glass or a Stanley knife or whatever they were using now, and afterwards, when he was discovered on the floor of a public toilet, or on the pavement outside a pub, or in an alleyway, passers-by would peer down at him, they'd see his face all cut, blood running into his eyes, his teeth in splinters, and they wouldn't be surprised, no, it wouldn't surprise them at all, because that was what happened to people like him, that was how they ended up – which meant, of course, that they deserved it. He remembered the night when he got hit across the bridge of the nose with a lemonade bottle. He had been in the chip shop with Leslie. They were waiting at the counter, watching George pour the vinegar, sprinkle on the salt. Leslie would probably have been talking. She used to do a lot of that. Talked her way on to his chest, didn't she, in letters two inches tall. Talked herself under his skin. At some point the door opened and cold air flooded against his back.
He didn't look round, though. Perhaps he thought it was the wind. That chip-shop door was always opening by itself, the catch no longer worked, and George had never got around to fixing it, the lazy sod. In any case, he didn't look. The next thing he knew, he was on the floor, his head split into sudden areas of brilliance and gloom, and somebody above him screaming, screaming. They hadn't even said his name. They just came up behind him, swung the bottle. To this day he didn't know what it had been about, whether it was something to do with Leslie and another man, or whether it was someone's way of getting back at Jim, his brother – Jim was always pissing people off. Not that reasons mattered, really. Violence seemed to follow him around regardless; he could feel it snapping at his heels like a dog. The scar above his nose, the puzzled look it gave him, that was a reminder. That was proof.

At ten o'clock he dialled Ray's mobile number. He could only hear Ray faintly through a cloud of static. Still, he didn't waste any time in coming to the point.

‘You know what they want me to do, Ray?'

Ray didn't answer.

‘That job you got me, Ray, you know what they want me to do?'

‘They didn't tell me.'

‘They want me to kill someone. Did you know that?'

‘I told you. They didn't tell me.'

‘Well,' Barker said, ‘now you know.'

An image came to him suddenly, another fragment of the past. He had been standing outside a club a year ago, Ray on the pavement beside him wearing a shiny black jacket with the snarling head of a tiger on the back. ‘I heard you did one of the Scullys,' Ray had said. Barker asked him where he'd got that from. Ray shrugged. ‘The word's out.' Barker pushed Ray up against the wall, knowing Ray could throw him ten feet whenever he felt like it. ‘I'll tell you what the
word is, Ray. The word is bullshit. You got that?' Ray had nodded – OK, OK – but he obviously hadn't believed what Barker was saying. Which meant he could be lying now.

Why, though? Why would he lie?

The static cleared and he could hear Ray breathing on the other end. He could hear a TV in the background too. They were both watching the same channel. It gave Barker a peculiar feeling. The feeling, just for a moment, of being everywhere at once. Like God.

‘You see, strange as it may fucking sound,' he said, ‘I never killed anyone before. Not even by accident.'

Ray began to talk. ‘Jesus, Barker, if I'd known what the job was, do you think I would've –' and so on.

After a while Barker just cut him off. ‘Got any ideas, Ray, for how to kill a girl?'

Barker listened to Ray breathing, the TV in the background and, beyond that, the eerie hollow space inside a phone line.

‘No,' he said. ‘I didn't think so.' He lit a cigarette and bounced the smoke off the wall above the phone. ‘Tomorrow, Ray,' he said, ‘tomorrow you should go down the Job Centre and ask them to take you on. They should stick you behind those fucking windows. Because you've got a real talent for finding people work, you know that? A real fucking talent. And something everybody knows, Ray, everybody knows, talent should not be fucking wasted. All right?'

Barker slammed the phone down. From the quality of the silence that descended all around him he guessed he must have been shouting. Towards the end of the call, at least.

He walked back into the lounge. On the table he saw the photograph of Glade Spencer. He picked it up and tore it into pieces. Dropped the pieces in the bin.

On the tube Glade fell asleep, as usual. She had worked six shifts that week, including a double shift the day before, so perhaps it was no wonder she was tired. When she first left art school she had waited tables at a café in Portobello Road, but then, six months later, she had got a job at a small but fashionable restaurant in Soho, and she had been there ever since. She liked the place as soon as she walked in; though it looked formal – the starched white tablecloths, the low lighting, the slightly malicious gleam of cutlery – it didn't feel tense. The hours were longer, of course, and she had to travel further, but she earned good money, never less than two hundred pounds a week including tips – and anyway, what else would she have done?

She woke as the tube was slowing down. Her head felt numb and foggy. Turning round, she peered out of the window. The line had climbed into the daylight, though the towering embankment walls and cantilevered walkways of the station made a gloom of it, an underworld of gravel, weeds and shadows. Paddington. Four stops to go. As the tube clattered on, she glimpsed a stretch of barren land to the north, beneath the blunt, pale pillars of the Westway. This was a place she often thought about – a kind of sacred ground.

Four years before, on her nineteenth birthday, she had invited some people to her room on Shirland Road, which was where she lived at the time. They drank Lambrusco out
of plastic glasses and then, at midnight, she opened the door to her wardrobe and reached inside. The rocket she drew from the darkness behind her clothes was almost as tall as she was, the blond stick slotting into a heavy blue cylinder that had a pointed scarlet top to it. It had cost eight pounds, and she had kept it hidden in the wardrobe since November.

That night they walked down Shirland Road, talking and laughing and smoking cigarettes, three or four girls from art school, and Charlie Moore, who was Glade's closest friend. The girls were wary of Charlie, she remembered, one of them whispering about his hair, how it looked like stuffing from a sofa, another wondering why he hardly ever spoke. Shirland Road opened into Warwick Avenue, Glade leading the way. Warwick Avenue – so wide and spacious suddenly, with that church at one end, like a ship, somehow; she always imagined sea in front of it instead of road. Sometimes she sat outside the pub and drank a half of cider or Guinness, and she watched the church sail right past her, white spray breaking over the high porch, soaking the dull brick walls. On that night, though, the moon was almost full and in the aluminium light the church looked as if it had been moored, it looked anchored, and they walked on, past the grand houses, shadows draped over the cream façades like black lace shawls. Something seemed to snatch at her when she stared in through those windows, their curtains tied back with silk cords and their lights switched on, the edges of amber lampshades intricate with tasselled fringes, and deeper into the rooms, gold mirrors over fireplaces, sofas, Chinese vases. Something seemed to snatch at her insides and twist. Then one of the girls touched her elbow, asked where they were going.