OKAY, THE hour had started, but was this all he had to go on? As far as he knew, there was no area of London called Speedwell. Perhaps there had been in the year 711. This had to be a history question. He picked up the bottle of champagne and examined the label. Non-vintage, no year or corresponding serial number. Möet & Chandon, nothing unusual there.

He was stumped. There were no libraries in the vicinity, and there was no point in trying to track down an open bookstore – besides, what could he look up? The events of that year, perhaps.

There was one person who could help him – Harold Masters. From where Vince stood, he could see a red call box on the next corner. The narrow street led down to the Thames, and was quite deserted. The air from the river was further chilled by the falling rain. Sebastian had no men posted around here. How could they see him make a call? He dug in his pocket and pulled Masters's card from his wallet. He kept a phonecard somewhere. He checked again. The street was still empty. He loped to the call box and punched out the doctor's home number. A woman answered.

'Is Doctor Masters there, please?' He stood with his back to the call box, watching the road. 'Hi, Doctor Masters? This is Vince Reynolds, I met you outside the British Museum. You gave me some advice? And your number?'

'Oh – um -'

'Listen, I wouldn't call like this but I really need your help.'

'Is this to do with – what we were talking about?'

'I'm afraid so, yes. Don't ask me to explain. I seem to be involved in some kind of a game.'

'Do be careful, for heaven's sake. I told you they could be dangerous.'

'I need help with a sort of clue thing, and don't know who else to ask. What happened in London in the year 711?'

The doctor, who infinitely preferred academic conversations to mundane calls about train-times and dinner arrangements, perked up no end and gave the question careful thought. '711? It's hard to say, just like that. The eighth century – that was before the country even had its first monarch.'

'I just wondered if anything particular occurred in that year.'

'I can't just tell you off the top of my head, you know. This is not my area of expertise. Can you hold on while I grab a book?'

He came back after a moment. 'Well, it was before the Great Slaughter.'

'What was that?'

'The Vikings attacked London, but that was in 842. St Paul's Cathedral was already built, not as we know it now, of course…'

'But is there nothing that's -'

A shadow crossed his peripheral vision. There was a man standing behind him. A hand fell onto his shoulder. Vince dropped his fist on the connection, cutting the call.

'Do you always go running off like that without apologising?' asked the pasty-faced young man he had fallen on outside the theatre.

Vince was furious. 'You moron!' he shouted, 'I've just cut him off!'

The young man threw up his hands. 'Great, fine. First you parachute onto my back from the sky, then you swear at me and vanish, then when I find you again you bloody insult me. Are you in PR, by any chance?'

'You don't know what you've done,' Vince said angrily, shoving him away and throwing the receiver down.

'Tell me.'

'That was a very important call!'

'If you're, like, so important, why haven't you got a mobile phone? Answer that, then. Everyone else has. Why isn't your e-mail faxing your voicemail?' He rattled out sentences, as talkative as only the very skinny can be.

'I didn't say – never mind, just get away from me.' Vince didn't need this, wasn't he under enough pressure already without – 'What now? What the fuck are you staring at?'

He was scrunching up his face, gurning a visual representation of intense thought. 'What were you doing up there in the first place? Fringe performance, was it? Acrobatics?'

'It's none of your business.' Vince swung his duffel bag onto his shoulder. 'I can handle it.' Sure I can, he thought.

'Is that yours?' He was pointing to the bottle of champagne standing on the shelf of the call box. 'Just gonna leave it there? Don't you want it?'

'I don't know how to say this politely but -'

The young man held up his hand. 'There is no polite way, trust me, I hear it every day. "Fuck off." "Get yourself a job." "Earn a living." "Just fuck off." Don't worry, I'm going. It's a pity, because Crippen took a shine to you.' He paused. 'I just want to check one thing. You're all right, you don't need any help at all.'

'No.'

'You're fine, then.'

'Yes.'

''Cause street people look after each other.'

'I am not a street -'

'And you're bleeding.'

'Am I?' He touched his face, and his fingers came away wet.

'It's a wicked cut. You need help? Life is short. Parks and paintings survive the centuries, not people. We're here and gone. Make friends, man.'

'There's nothing you can do, trust me.'

'You don't know that.'

Vince rooted about in his duffel bag for a notepad and pen, then wrote out what had been written on the League's latest page. 'All right, smartarse. Tell me what that means.'

The young man read it slowly, moving his lips. Made as if to speak. Crumpled his forehead deeper – three furrows. Closed his mouth, then opened it again.

'Mr Pink,' he said finally. 'Telephones.'

'What?' Vince gave him a strange look.

'You've asked the one person around here who can tell you. It's one of those odd little stories you find about London. How do I know? Weird, huh? Sit down for a sec.' He eased himself onto the sheltered step of a building and waved Vince down. 'Many years ago, the LTE -'

'The what?'

'The London Telephone Exchange – was responsible for naming all of the city's exchanges, and it had to come up with a name for the one at Golders Green. Its own name had been rejected because it was numerically identical to the first named automatic exchange, Holborn. The letters used to go around the dial in threes, so GOL and HOL were on the same fingerhole. A bloke called Mr Pink – sounds like a character from Reservoir Dogs, dunnit? – was the Deputy Director of the LTE. He rejected over fifty names, looking for the right one. Having a poetic turn of mind, he thought about the name Golders Green and translated it into the phrase 'gold as green'. Then he asked himself, what makes gold, or yellow, turn green? The answer is blue. One of the brightest shades of blue he could think of came from a flower called the Speedwell. So that's what he called the Golders Green telephone exchange.'

Vince was dumbfounded. 'So you think this is a Golders Green telephone number, then?'

'No,' he replied. 'The SPE of Speedwell only accounts for the first three digits, so with SPE 711 you're still one digit short. But I tell you what – there's a Seven-Eleven in Golders Green High Street.'

Vince mentally slapped himself. 'A Seven-Eleven?'

'That's what it says here.' He pointed to the pink price label on the champagne bottle. The answer had been in front of him all the time. 'Maybe you'll find what you're looking for in the drinks cabinet there, eh?'

His name was Strangeways. He refused to reveal whether it was because he'd been inside it, or simply had them. If he had a real name, he did not encourage its use. He was twenty-two and badly needed a bath. He had been living on and off the streets of London since he was seventeen. How and why he came to be there were not questions he cared to answer. Indeed, he replied to every enquiry in such an elliptical fashion that after a few minutes Vince gave up. His speech bore the faint trace of a Newcastle accent. He was too thin for his considerable height, like an excessively watered daisy overreaching itself. His clothes marked the style of true street wear; practical black jeans, perilously tattered leather jacket, immense, warm and probably flea-filled navy-surplus overcoat. His head looked as if it had been shaved by Sweeney Todd during a party. A moderately fashionable goatee sprouted on his chin. These were the only outward signs of the man within. Vince considered taking him into his confidence. He needed an ally, and Strangeways looked moderately sane, alert, not entirely untrustworthy. It meant breaking the rules, though, unless he managed it surreptitiously. They were seated beside each other on the Tube as it swayed through northbound tunnels on its way to Golders Green. Strangeways had flatly insisted on accompanying him, only to then borrow the price of the ticket and pocket the change.