She stopped. He had discarded the bow and her last piece of rosin, and now had her one remaining spare string, a Thomastik-Infeld Dominant A, in his fingers. He took away his elbow. Before she could run off, he jerked her back and punched her hard in the stomach. The breath disappeared from her lungs. Tears of pain and rage and fear rose in her eyes.

As she began to recover, she saw he had turned the fiddle string into a noose and felt it slip over her head, pushing it down until it rested on her neck. He pulled it, not so tight, only so much that she could feel the familiar wound metal become a cold ligature around her throat.

“Poor little lost girl,” he whispered, his breath rank and hot in her ear. “No home. No friends. No future. One last time . . . What did he give you?”

“Nothing . . . Nothing . . . ”

The Thomastik-Infeld Dominant A started to tighten. She was aware of her own breathing, the short, repetitive muscular motion one always took for granted. His face grew huge in her vision. He was smiling. This was, she now realized, the result he wished all along.

Then the smile faded. A low, animal grunt issued from his mouth. His body fell forward, crushing hers against the wall, and a crimson spurt of blood began to gush from between his clenched teeth. She turned her head to avoid the red stream now flowing down his chin, and clawed at the noose on her throat, loosening it, forcing the deadly loop over her hair until it was free and she could manage to drag it over her head.

Something thrust the gray-suited man aside. The tramp was there. A long stiletto knife sat in his right fist, its entire length red with gore.

He dropped the weapon and held out his hand.

“Come with me now,” he said. “There are three of them in a car round the corner. They won’t wait long.”

“Who are you?” she mumbled, her head reeling, breath still short.

A car was starting to turn into the narrow street, finding it too difficult to make the corner in one go. The cloud worked free of the sun. Bright, blinding light filled the area around them, enough to make their presence known. She heard Polish voices and other accents, ones she didn’t recognize. They sounded angry.

“If you stay here you will die,” the tramp insisted. “Like your uncle. Like your mother and your father. Come with me . . . ”

She bent down and picked up her fiddle and bow, roughly pushing them into the case, along with the scrappy sheets of music.

And then they ran.

He had a scooter round the corner. A brand new purple Vespa with a rental sticker on the rear mudguard. She climbed on the back automatically, hanging tight, the fiddle case still in her grip, as he roared through the narrow lanes trying to lose the vehicle behind.