The café door opens and he looks up to see a woman step inside. Her skin is a milky latte, her eyes are blue, or green, he cannot be sure, and her oval face has a determined expression that brightens when she smiles at Chau. She is wearing a navy-blue double-breasted pea coat and carrying a black leather backpack. She orders a green tea and gives her name as Archer.

‘Archer,’ he whispers to himself. Her surname perhaps. The sound of it sweetens the bitter coffee on his lips.

She walks across the café and finds a space on a high stool facing out of the window.

He is intrigued by her ethnicity and struggles to place it. She could be from central Europe and have a trace of the Middle East or Africa, perhaps, concealed somewhere in her genes. He fancies that with a little more sun her skin would transform to a golden brown.

She takes off the backpack, drops it to the floor and lets the coat slip from her shoulders and fall onto the back of the stool. She is wearing casual dark jeans and a fitted olive-green sweater.

She scoops a phone from the coat and rests her elbows on the window table. Through the reflection in a nearby mirror, he can see it’s an old iPhone 6 with a cracked screen. She enters the passcode, dials a number and places the phone to her ear. A moment passes and she ends the call. She bites her thumb and begins to tap the phone on the table top. She seems troubled and he wonders what is turning over in her pretty head.

Chau appears with the tea. The woman thanks her, removes the lid and blows on the hot liquid.

He becomes aware of the time and checks his wristwatch. It’s 8.46. Time to go and watch the reveal before paying one final visit to the courier’s. He packs up his belongings and notices the woman called Archer is hurrying out through the door. He smiles and walks down St Martin’s Lane like a ghost following in her wake.

Chapter 2

2

THE SMALL HAIRS ON GRACE Archer’s neck stand on end as if she has been caressed by a cold hand. Archer isn’t the superstitious type, yet if there were ever a time to think that someone has just walked over her grave, now is that time. She has the sense of being watched and slows her pace. Looking at the shop window to her right, she sees the transparent figures of commuters and tourists swarm around her like spectres from another world. Turning, she scans the faces, but sees no one watching her.

She shudders and rubs the scar on the back of her left hand.