Richard affected incomprehension.

“To piss, man. I need to piss.”

John could see him thinking about it—actually thinking about it. When did we grow so hard? He was too young to be former-Stasi.

“It’s your two minutes,” he said at last. “But leave the door open.”

Of course. In case John used the precious moments to retrieve the handgun from the toilet cistern, or assemble the miniature helicopter secreted beneath the floorboards.

It was an old man’s bathroom, with an old man’s shaving gear on a shelf, an old man’s mirror on the wall, and an old man’s reflection residing there, so Bachelor ignored it, raised the toilet lid and pissed. Lately, he had been dosing himself with Solly Dortmund’s sleeping tablets, a large number of which he had found in the medicine cabinet housing that same mirror. Solly Solly Solly. Old men have trouble sleeping, and medication was an obvious recourse. But if he had been prescribed pills, why were they still here? Solly had been a hoarder, but to collect sleeping pills spoke of building himself an escape hatch, equivalent to a handgun in a cistern, or a miniature helicopter. In the end, of course, he had needed neither, which meant that his trove remained intact for John to plunder. Which, in turn, meant side effects: John’s urine had acquired a metallic odour, and he wondered now if it were drifting out through the open door, assaulting Richard’s nostrils. He hoped not, and at the same time tried to convince himself of the upside to the worst happening: that he need no longer await its appearance.

“Time’s up.”

I know, John thought.

He’d known it for a while.

They took him not to Regent’s Park, the home of the Service, but to Marylebone High Street. Richard drove. The other man sat in the back with John. He looked to be in his fifties, a man with some years’ secret experience behind him, and not unused to collecting the wayward and conveying them somewhere like this: an empty office above London’s favourite bookshop, its white walls newly decorated, its carpet squares not yet bedded in, so that the joins could be seen crisscrossing the floor, as if marking out a board game. For the players, there were two chairs, dining-room variety. There were no blinds, and light streamed through the windows while the city yawned. It was all very—John strained, momentarily, for the precise word. It was all very alarming. If they’d been thugs, he’d have known he was in for a kicking. But they were suits, which suggested a more vicious outcome. In other circumstances, he’d have been wondering what he’d done to deserve this. As it was, he knew full well.

“Sit there.”

Not an invitation.