As for the unknown male Caucasian who’d offered me a killing job, well, I didn’t hold out much hope of ever tracing him. Two weeks ago I’d been inAmsterdam, escorting aManchester bookmaker who desperately wanted to believe that he had violent enemies. He’d hired me to bolster the fantasy. So I’d held car doors open for him, and checked buildings for snipers that I knew weren’t there, and then spent a gruelling forty-eight hours sitting with him in night-clubs, watching him throw money in every direction but mine. When he’d finally wilted, I’d ended up loafing about my hotel room watching blue movies on television. The phone had rung - during a particularly good bit, as I remember - and a male voice had asked me to the bar for a drink.

I’d checked to make sure that the bookmaker was safely tucked up in bed with a nice warm prostitute, then sidled downstairs in the hope of saving myself forty quid by wringing a couple of drinks out of some old army friend.

But, as it turned out, the voice on the phone belonged to a short fat body in an expensive suit who I definitely didn’t know. And didn’t particularly want to know either, until he reached into his jacket and pulled out a roll of bank notes about as thick as I am.

American bank notes. Exchangeable for goods and services at literally thousands of retail outlets worldwide. He pushed a one hundred dollar bill across the table to me, so I spent five seconds quite liking the little chap, and then, almost immediately, love died.

He gave me some ‘background’ on a man named Woolf - where he lived, what he did, why he did it, how much he did it for - and then he told me that the bank note on the table had a thousand little friends, who would find their way into my possession if Woolf’s life could be discreetly brought to an end.

I had to wait until our part of the bar was empty, which I knew wouldn’t take long. At the prices they were charging for liquor, there were probably only a couple of dozen people in the world who could afford to stick around for a second drink.

When the bar had cleared, I leant across to the fat man and gave him a speech. It was a dull speech, but even so, he listened very carefully, because I’d reached under the table and taken hold of his scrotum. I told him what kind of a man I was, what kind of a mistake he’d made, and what he could wipe with his money. And then we’d parted company.

That was it. That was all I knew, and my arm was hurting. I went to bed.

I dreamt a lot of things that I won’t embarrass you with, and ended up imagining that I was having to hoover my carpet. I kept hoovering and hoovering, but whatever was making the mark on the carpet just wouldn’t go away.

Then I realised that I was awake, and that the stain on the carpet was sunlight because someone had just yanked open the curtains. In the twinkling of an eye I whipped my body into a coiled, taut, come-and-get-it crouch, the electrical cable in my fist and bloody murder in my heart.

But then I realised that I’d dreamt that too, and what I was actually doing was lying in bed watching a large, hairy hand very close to my face. The hand disappeared, leaving a mug with steam coming out of it, and the smell of a popular infusion, sold commercially as PG Tips. Perhaps in that twinkling of an eye I’d worked out that intruders who want to slit your throat don’t boil the kettle and open the curtains. ‘Time is it?’

‘Thirty-five minutes past the hour of eight. Time for your Shreddies, Mr Bond.’

I pulled myself up from the bed and looked over at Solomon. He was as short and cheerful as ever, with the same ghastly brown raincoat that he’d bought from the back pages of theSunday Express.

‘I take it you’ve come to investigate a theft?’ I said, rubbing my eyes until white dots of light started appearing.

‘What theft would that be, sir?’

Solomon called everyone ‘sir’ except his superiors. ‘The theft of my doorbell,’ I said.

‘If you are, in your sarcastic fashion, referring to my silent entrance to these premises, then may I remind you that I am a practitioner of the black arts. And practitioners, in order to qualify for the term, have to practise. Now be a good lad and jump into some kit will you? We’re running late.’

He disappeared into the kitchen and I could hear the clicking and buzzing of my fourteenth-century toaster.

I hauled myself out of bed, wincing as my left arm took some weight, slung on a shirt and a pair of trousers and took the electric razor into the kitchen.

Solomon had laid a place for me at the kitchen table, and set out some toast in a rack that I didn’t even know I had. Unless he’d brought it with him, which seemed unlikely. ‘More tea, vicar?’

‘Late for what?’ I said.

‘A meeting, master, a meeting. Now, have you got a tie?’

His large, brown eyes twinkled hopefully at me.

‘I’ve got two,’ I said. ‘One of them’s the Garrick Club, which I don’t belong to, and the other one’s holding the lavatory cistern to the wall.’

I sat down at the table and saw that he’d even found a pot of Keiller’sDundee marmalade from somewhere. I never really knew how he did these things, but Solomon could rootle around in a dustbin and pull out a car if he had to. A good man to go into the desert with.

Maybe that was where we were going.

‘So, master, what’s paying your bills these days?’ He parked half his bottom on the table and watched me eat.

‘I hoped you were.’

The marmalade was delicious, and I wanted to make it last, but I could tell Solomon was anxious to be off. He glanced at his watch and disappeared back into the bedroom, where I could hear him rattling his way through the wardrobe, trying to find a jacket.

‘Under the bed,’ I called. I picked up the dictaphone from the table. The tape was still inside.

As I gulped down the tea, Solomon came in carrying a double-breasted blazer with two buttons missing. He held it out like a valet. I stayed where I was.

‘Oh master,’ he said. ‘Please don’t be difficult. Not before the harvest is in, and the mules are rested.’

‘Just tell me where we’re going.’

‘Down the road, in a big shiny car. You’ll love it. And on the way home you can have an ice-cream.’

Slowly, I got to my feet and shrugged on the blazer. ‘David,’ I said.

‘Still here, master.’

‘What’s happening?’

He pursed his lips and frowned slightly. Bad form to ask questions like that. I stood my ground.

‘Am I in trouble?’ I said.

He frowned a little more, and then looked up at me with his calm, steady eyes.