Knox finished his espresso, pushed his empty cup across the bar, and, realising that there wasn’t anyone waiting to steal his spot from him, ordered another with a brief raising of his finger and the slightest nod—the unspoken language of the regular.

Knox and Williams had spent endless late Friday nights propping up Bar Italia’s counter and it had taken Knox considerable effort to keep the cafe as a home for only good memories.

The two men used to play a game over their late-night espressos—guessing which of the cafe’s customers was most likely to be an agent of some foreign power, and inventing ever more sinister backstories for them.

‘Eldest daughter of a Cypriot shipping magnate, became a gunrunner for the Turks when Daddy wrote her out of the will,’ Knox would say about a woman in a jet-black trench coat and sunglasses at ten o’clock at night.

‘Soviet sleeper who gave it all up for love and is now on the run,’ Williams would say about a pensive man lingering over his third milky coffee.

Now Knox played the game by himself over his second espresso. This evening he had his pick of a man in a dishevelled suit who looked like he was in a worse state than Knox, two couples talking very quickly over each other, someone Knox could only half-see past the couples sitting in the window, wearing a light jacket with a trilby perched on the back of their head, and another suited man lingering in the door, alternating between sipping his coffee and sucking on a cigarette.

He settled on the man in the doorway, who kept eyeing people as they walked past the cafe. He decided he was the frontman for a Balkan smuggling operation, waiting to make contact with someone who wanted something only he could supply. Not his best creative work, but it would do.

Knox finished his espresso and, considerably more alert, gave up his space at the counter and headed back out into Soho. It was one of those hot London nights that brought people out onto the streets. Lovers strolled arm in arm from bar to bar. Groups of teenagers flirted with each other across traffic junctions. Theatregoers lingered outside tube stations, putting off the end of their evenings as long as possible.

At the corner of Old Compton Street and Greek Street, Knox realised he’d been wrong to finger the man in Bar Italia. As he crossed the road he noticed a figure twenty yards behind him turn quickly away—a figure in a light jacket and hat. Someone had taken an interest in him.