He looked at me, at the gun, and at me again. It was either the gun or me that he didn’t like the look of, but I couldn’t immediately tell which. He was a youngster, no more than twenty, in a cheap brown suit, nylon shirt with broad stripes, and a vulgar blue tie with red blobs and yellow zig-zags. He had a thin layer of hair on his upper lip, where he thought he was growing a moustache, and a comb and a short ruler sticking out of his breast pocket. His eyes were open wide, and getting wider; his initial expression of dislike was fast turning to one of fear.

‘You’ve got five seconds to tell me who you’re working for before I shoot your balls off,’ I said. ‘One … two …’ A car in front started hooting – the traffic in front of the Jaguar had started to move. ‘Three …’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ He spoke with an Irish accent.

‘Unless you tell me, I am going to pull the trigger in two seconds’ time – and I don’t really care whether you tell me or not,’ I said.

He got the message.

‘Four …’

‘Cleary.’

‘Clever boy!’

Another car and the van joined in the hooting.

‘Patrick Cleary,’ he said.

‘And who is Uncle Patrick and how do you come to be working for him?’

He looked at the gun again. It was a particularly large and menacing-looking weapon. The wrong end of a Beretta 93R is not the most comforting sight in the world, and it’s not meant to be. It’s meant to scare, as much as blast, the living daylights out of people.

‘I don’t know who he is. I was offered the job by a bloke I met in a pub.’

It seemed to me that the underworld led a pretty cushy life. Its inhabitants appeared to spend all their daytimes – when they weren’t on holiday on the Costa Brava – collecting things that had fallen off the backs of trucks, and all their evenings getting offered large sums of money for doing simple jobs for strangers they met in any pub they entered. ‘Bullshit. Who is he?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What was the name of the pub?’

‘Ring of Bells, Highgate.’

‘Who is he?’

The car behind started hooting as well.

‘I don’t know, I told you.’

‘Who was the bloke you met in the pub?’

‘Mick.’

‘Describe him.’

‘Short guy, ginger hair.’

‘Smile, please!’

‘You what?’

‘I’m taking your photo.’ I pointed my watch at him, and pushed a small button above the winder. There was a sharp click and a tiny whirr. A cacophony of hooting began both in front of us and behind us, simultaneously. ‘Mick who?’

‘I don’t know. He didn’t say.’

‘What did he ask you to do?’

‘Said I had to follow you; see where you went.’

‘And then what?’

‘That’s all.’