He was thinking. Terry liked to think, liked to have a problem to be solved, a plan to be worked out. The question right now was how to get into the hospital to find Doctor What’s-her-name and have a good look at her. He would need to make sure he had the right one. Percy Antrobus had given him an inaccurate description of a target once, a blacky from Bermondsey, and he had ended up knifing the wrong guy. That was messy, and, worse, it was unprofessional. He should have given Percy a smack, but Percy, soft and all as he was, just wasn’t smackable, somehow. Shootable, yes, but not smackable.

He turned his thoughts back to the main concern. It was true, he could walk into the hospital and ask for her at the reception desk. What was to stop him? But what reason would he give for wanting to see her? And the receptionist would remem ber him, afterwards. That wouldn’t matter much, as he’d be long gone by the time they started looking for him. All the same, it was too risky. Not to mention untidy. He took pride in never leaving a trace of himself, when he did a job. Mystery Killer Strikes Again. That was him.

Once more the image came to him of Percy’s bloated corpse wallowing in the oily waters of the Pool of London. It was bound to have bobbed up by now. He knew he shouldn’t have done him in. He had let his temper get the better of him, which always meant trouble.

He stubbed out his cigarette in the sand. Down at the water’s edge a little brown kid was squealing about something and kicking up water in a fury. His mother, at least Terry guessed it was his mother, grabbed him by his arm and gave him a shake, which only made him squeal all the louder.

There should be a law saying people had to get a licence to have kids. Why did they want them, anyway? Millions of the little beggars, all over the place, wherever you went there they were, pissing themselves and bawling their heads off and getting walloped by their ma’s and da’s, who hadn’t wanted them in the first place, or at least didn’t want them when they had them, and it was too late. There were a lot of changes Terry would make, if he was given the chance. Yes, a lot of things would be different, if he was in charge.