‘I’m sorry, madam, but the gentleman who bought the phone came back a few days later and asked the very same thing. I gave him the tape,’ he announced. ‘For a small price.’ The man had lowered his arms from over his head, having decided that I wasn’t going to blast him with a sawn-off shotgun.

‘How much?’

‘Pardon? How much what?’

‘You know. How much did he pay you?’ I yelled. I hurried back to the front door and clicked the lock closed against a young female customer trying to get in.

‘I can’t remember,’ he continued, his hands now laid across the counter. He was trying to regain control but I sensed he was holding something back.

‘Was it a lot? How much? Tell me.’

‘Three hundred pounds,’ he whispered, looking round the shop, suspecting that a police officer might be lurking among the shelves.

‘I’ll give you another three hundred for a copy. Cash.’ I was right. The greedy bastard had taken several copies when he realised there was value attached. ‘There are conditions, however.’

As I boarded the bus outside the shop, a number eighty-three to Muswell Hill, the sky had brightened and the sun was trying to break through the clouds. Wet travellers were shaking umbrellas, and freeing their heads from hats and hoods.

Inside the double-decker, I climbed upstairs, clinging to the damp spiral handrail. I slid into a window seat near the front. The Closed sign in Handy Mobiles was still facing outwards. I imagined the patron furtively counting out the healthy wad of banknotes.

As the bus pulled away from the kerb I spotted him. Arthur was frantically running towards the phone shop. As the bus snaked away to join the traffic, I watched him hammer on the door.

86

Arthur

It was the rain. It had blinded my vision. While it usually afforded me welcome camouflage, it made discernment well-nigh impossible. Rebecca was pounding faster than usual. That should have been a warning but the eagerness with which she accepted my marriage proposal a few days earlier had perhaps made me less vigilant.

I had reinstated the incident room in my flat and hung a corkboard over the newly painted walls. Amber’s name was circled as the perpetrator of evil. Rebecca and I were proudly placed together again, back at the top, and the absence of the Target’s face staring back at me felt triumphant. There was one down and one to go.