She wasn’t there. Not on the steps, not on the pavement. Panic squeezed my heart. I ran up the steps and looked all round, then set off along the front of the Gallery. I’d just turned into St Martin’s Place when I saw her coming out of a phone box. My relief was so overwhelming that it was some time before it occurred to me to wonder whom she’d been calling. When I asked she said, ‘My sister in Glasgow. She made me promise to keep in touch.’

It sounded totally feasible. I nodded. ‘I’ve got a sister. Carole. I don’t phone though – clean break, y’know?’

‘Hmm.’ She nodded. ‘I promised.’

‘Oh, I’m not getting at you. I only —’

‘I know.’ She squeezed my hand.

I grinned, squeezing hers. ‘How much did you make?’

She shrugged. ‘Dunno. Never counted. Hang on.’ She dug in her pockets, produced a double handful of change and counted it. ‘Two pounds thirty.’ She pocketed the coins. ‘How about you?’

I shook my head. ‘Twelve pence, and I’m supposed to be the expert.’

‘Beginner’s luck,’ she smiled. ‘Or maybe it’s because I’m a woman.’ She gazed at me. ‘Anyway, we share, don’t we – everything?’

And from then on we did, and it was all so fantastic that time just flew. I practically stopped noticing the cold. When something happened to jerk me back into the real world, it was spring.

Daily Routine Orders 13

You mustn’t think I’ve been idle, just because Link the Stink continues to evade me. A peek under the famous floorboards is all you’d need to convince you of my continuing determination to rid my country of the riff-raff that’s dragging it down.

My tally of recruits now stands at seven. Seven! Oh, I know I went on a bit when we reached three and three is a significant number, but seven – seven’s what you call a mystical number, the reason being one that need not detain us. All I know is, lots of things go in sevens, like the seven deadly sins and the seventh son of a seventh son, not to mention the days of the week and The Magnificent Seven.

I got a black one, which goes to show there’s no racial discrimination in the Camden Horizontals. It also helps break up the pattern – the deadly pattern I mentioned earlier. You can just imagine it, can’t you – some smart-ass Detective Constable looking for a pattern, saying, all his victims have been white – that could be significant. Well it ain’t, so there! There is no pattern, except that each operation has been a textbook example of brilliance, and they’ll never see that.