The girl in the book, she didn’t work at all. A real-life Pinkie wouldn’t have touched her wearing welder’s gloves. He might have given her the odd poke, but that would be the limit of it.

He was quite the lad, was Pinkie. What had Percy seen in him that made him think Terry was like him? Because he wasn’t like him, was he? For a start, Pinkie was more a knife man than your regular gunsel. Gunsel was a word Terry had picked up from some old movie, he couldn’t remember which one. He liked it. Terry the gunsel. Gerry the tunsel. Heh.

The phone rang, giving him a jolt. He had drifted into a doze, the book fallen forward on his chest. He struggled upright on the bed, his heart racing. His nerves must be bad. That’s what being away from home did to you. Not that he’d ever had a home, not to speak of.

‘What?’ he said into the receiver, and straight off fell into a fit of coughing. ‘Who’s that?’ His voice had become a croak. ‘Lenny?’ Lenny Marks. The Jew boy. He had an irritating way of whispering into the phone, as if he thought everyone around him must be listening. ‘What you want, Lenny?’

A job. Abroad.

‘Nice trip down south,’ Lenny whispered coaxingly, ‘sun and sand and all the quim you could ask for. What do you say?’

‘I dunno,’ Terry said, trying to sound like a jaunt to Spain was the last thing he wanted, which wasn’t the case. The fact was, he had been getting a bit concerned about what his next move was to be. This would give him time to relax and ruminate. That was another word he liked, ruminate. It meant thinking, but in a slow, deep way.

‘All expenses paid,’ Lenny cooed. ‘And a handy three hundred quid, one-fifty into your mitt now, in crisp new notes, the other half on completion.’ He paused. They listened to each other breathing. ‘Come on, Terence, say yes.’ Lenny did a nasty little laugh. ‘It’s a government-sponsored job – legit lolly.’

Terry was humming a tune in his head.

Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside …

A stick of Brighton Rock would do very nicely, right now.

DONOSTIA

Chapter 36

The first thing she noticed was his clothes. His cricketer’s jacket, once white but now grey, had seen better days, and so had his baggy, khaki-coloured trousers. He wore a pair of stout brogues, of a remarkable shade of yellowish-brown, with cracked uppers and strips of metal reinforcement on the toecaps. All he lacked was a solar topee. In his hand was a well-thumbed volume bound in faded green cloth. He held it close in front of his face. He should wear reading glasses.