After a couple of hours his hackles subsided a bit as he got used to the feel of the area. He went up and down Commercial Street, and stopped for a cup of tea and a snack at a Jewish café, which tried hard not to look German despite the owner’s accent. It provided a welcome distraction, since the meat and vegetables were pickled or preserved in unfamiliar ways with unusual flavours, and God knew what they did to the cobs—bagels, they were called here—to make them so chewy, shiny, and delicious. He’d want to come east again, he decided, once this was over, and found comfort in thinking about that.

He’d identified a couple of decent-looking places he might kip for the night, but hadn’t gone into any. It was too early in the day, and in all honesty he didn’t want to sit still. He hadn’t found a public telephone in all his roaming, though, and he was uncomfortably conscious that even if he stayed the night here, he’d still have a problem in the morning.

He just didn’t know where to go. If he’d actually been trying to flee a murder, he’d have headed straight for the docks and got on a boat, but he felt very reluctant to make himself look any guiltier than he already had.

He was heading back west in the search for a public telephone when he heard the yell of a newsboy: “Ee’ng Sta’d! ’Orrible murder! Another Clubland killing!”

He lurked long enough to be sure there was no photograph of himself on the front page, then bought an Evening Standard, and lounged against a wall, bag between his feet, to read.

MURDER IN GOODGE STREET

VICTIM WORKED AT SYMPOSIUM CLUB

SUSPECT FLEES SCENE

That was the part that interested him. There was very little detail, as yet: a man had been spotted at the scene but evaded the police by escaping through a window; the Met was following several leads. He read the whole story anyway, as if “By the way, he’s called Will Darling” might be tucked away in a corner of the page, and was startled when someone tapped heavily on the other side of the paper he held.

“Oi!” he said, lowering it, and found himself facing a uniformed constable.

A wave of panic hit, the urge to knock the man down and leg it only just held in check by an equally instinctive respect for the uniform. “Uh—”

“Move along, there,” the constable said, with just a flicker of a sneer. “Go on. You’re cluttering up the street.”