Stop! Terry told himself. Stop thinking about it, Carricklea, and Harkness, the bruises under his eyes, the blood on the bathroom tiles, all of it. That was then, this was now. He had five crisp tenners in his wallet, and another wad back at the hotel, sewn into the lining of his suitcase. He looked spiffy in his blazer and his buckled shoes. He was young, he was cocky, and he was a killer. And he had no Harknesses to bully and bugger him any more.

He couldn’t keep himself from wondering if he might still be around, Harkness. He hadn’t been that old. Be nice to meet up with him by accident down a dark lane some night. That would call for the knife, no question, a bullet would be too quick. Yes, a job for the shiv, nice and slow.

*

He had contacts in the city, he might look them up. There was a fellow who bought and sold horses in Smithfield. What was his name? Connors, that was it. Joey Connors. A tinker, of course, all the Connorses were tinkers, but Terry didn’t hold that against him. And there was a London bloke who’d legged it over here after a bank job went wrong and had never gone back. Ran a pub, The Hangman, up the river by Kingsbridge railway station. It was a rackety place, that place. A lot of queers went there, on the lookout for rough trade. Plenty of that available at The Hangman. That wouldn’t put Terry off.

One thing you could say for queers, they livened things up. Some of them were funny, a real scream, when they weren’t too busy trying to feel your leg or get a hand on your arse. The one time he was there he had amused himself by sending out false signals, and when anyone approached him he put on his special stare, that made people turn white and back away as if they’d just seen their granny’s ghost.

The Hangman would be the place to get himself a replacement gun.

It had broken his heart to get rid of the Colt, but it had to be done. He had abandoned his plan to bring it here and give it a decent burial on some heather-clad hillside. Too risky, smuggling a piece through customs. An hour out from Holyhead he had gone on deck when no one was around and let it slip down the side of the boat, the way he had let what was left of Percy slide into the Pool of London. If it made a splash, he didn’t hear it. Just when he was letting go of it, a seagull came sweeping out of the twilight and passed him by so close he had felt the swish of its wings. Huge bloody thing it was, and gave him a fright, too. He wasn’t superstitious, but still.