In fact, he wasn’t sure he’d recognise her even if he met her face to face. He only had a photograph of her, passed on to him, along with a wad of money, by that kike he’d bought the gun from in Dublin. It was a studio job, taken by a pro fessional. She was standing in a fake sort of bower, beside a fake pillar and in front of a painted backdrop. She was thin, with a thin face and a small mouth and bony shoulders pressing against the stuff of her expensive-looking frock. The photo must have been taken on her birthday, or some other occasion. It was from six or seven years ago, at least, and she would have changed in the meantime. A woman only had to get a new hairstyle and slap on different make-up to look like someone else.

The thing to do, he decided, was to phone the hospital and ask for her. He could say he was here on a holiday and that someone had told him to look her up. He grinned to himself. Hello, Miss Latimer, you don’t know me, but a bloke in Dublin asked me to give you this—

It was a beautiful day, the sun warm on his face and on the back of his hands. The sky had lightened, and was a delicate shade of blue, like the shell of a bird’s egg, and there was the scent of some flower or shrub in the air that reminded him of the Girl’s hot dark buttery smell.

Yes, there was a lot to be said for Spain. He wouldn’t mind hanging around here for a few months. Maybe he could meet up with somebody, a fixer with a bit of money, like Percy Antrobus. A lot of English lived down here, so he’d heard. It was a place you went to when things got too hot at home. There was a fellow, another Jew, who had masterminded a job at a jewellery place in Hatton Garden. Someone squealed on him and he had to scarper, and chose Spain to hide out in. Solomons was his name, everybody called him Solly. Reggie Kray used to have a joke about that, something about the Costa del Solly. Plenty of blokes like him around. Yes, maybe. Just maybe.