Anna was up and out of Durrants early, wearing the light jumper and tailored suit trousers that had been delivered to her the evening before, and carrying her jacket over her arm with the envelope of money tucked in the inside pocket.

She strolled the short distance across Manchester Square and picked up a black cab on Wigmore Street that took her along the north side of Hyde Park west towards Shepherd’s Bush.

She told the driver to drop her outside the tube station, which was starting to fill with the first waves of morning commuters, waited for the cab to pull away, then continued her journey further west on foot.

Shepherd’s Bush had originally been just that—an area of shrubby grazing pasture for shepherds taking their animals into the city. Now, a sparse triangular green that Anna walked along the side of was all that was left of its ancient history.

A thin, weak drizzle started. It was the kind of rain British skies managed to produce on cloudless days, that didn’t so much fall as fill the air. Anna guessed it would only last a few minutes, but she still slipped her coat on as she crossed over a junction into Goldhawk Road. A couple of minutes later she turned into Shepherd’s Bush Market, a narrow alleyway of stalls and shops that hugged an old elevated train line. She passed fruit stands and a couple of cafes that sold nothing but tea and buttered bread to the few people who could fit round their small Formica tables.

Halfway along the market the front of a clockmaker’s shop jutted out from one of the railway arches. It looked like it had been there for a hundred years. The wood frames of its windows were worn and chipped. The square panes of glass sitting inside them were warped and sunken with age, and at least half of them were cracked. The shop was dark, and Anna could barely see past the first row of clock faces into the gloom, but the door opened when she tried it.

Her eyes quickly adjusted to the lack of light, and she realised why she hadn’t been able to see further into the shop from outside. It was only six feet deep. The shop was literally just a front. A wall of wood panels had been built into the arch, with another small door tucked far up against the right-hand curve of bricks.

Anna could hear humming and the shuffling of feet over the ticking clocks that surrounded her, and she silently glided across to the second door to see who was responsible for them.