Toy led the way from the kitchen, which was part of the extension, into the main house. The corridors were gloomy, but everywhere Marty's eye was amazed. The building was a museum. Paintings covered the walls from floor to ceiling; on the tables and shelves were vases and ceramic figurines whose enamels gleamed. There was no time to linger, however. They wove through the maze of halls, Marty's sense of direction more confounded with every turn, until they reached the study. Toy knocked, opened the door, and ushered Marty in.

With little but a badly remembered photograph of Whitehead to build upon, Marty's portrait of his new employer had been chiefly invention-and totally wrong. Where he'd imagined frailty, he found robustness. Where he'd expected the eccentricity of a recluse he found a furrowed, subtle face that scanned him, even as he entered the study, with efficiency and humor.

"Mr. Strauss," said Whitehead, "welcome."

Behind Whitehead, the curtains were still open, and through the window the floodlights suddenly came on, illuminating the piercing green of the lawns for a good two hundred yards. It was like a conjurer's trick, the sudden appearance of this sward, but Whitehead ignored it. He walked toward Marty. Though he was a large man, and much of his bulk had turned to fat, the weight sat on his frame quite easily. There was no sense of awkwardness. The grace of his gait, the almost oiled smoothness of his arm as he extended it to Marty, the suppleness of the proffered fingers, all suggested a man at peace with his physique.

They shook hands. Either Marty was hot, or the other man cold: Marty immediately took the error to be his. A man like Whitehead was surely never too hot or too cold; he controlled his temperature with the same ease he controlled his finances. Hadn't Toy dropped into their few exchanges in the car the fact that Whitehead had never been seriously ill in his life? Now Marty was face-to-face with the paragon he could believe it. Not a whisper of flatulence would dare this man's bowels.

"I'm Joseph Whitehead," he said. "Welcome to the Sanctuary."

"Thank you."

"You'll have a drink? Celebrate."

"Yes, please."

"What will it be?"

Marty's mind suddenly went blank, and he found himself gaping like a stranded fish. It was Toy, God save him, who suggested:

"Scotch?"

"That'd be fine."

"The usual for me," said Whitehead. "Come and sit down, Mr. Strauss."

They sat. The chairs were comfortable; not antiques, like the tables in the corridors, but functional, modern pieces. The entire room shared this style: it was a working environment, not a museum. The few pictures on the dark blue walls looked, to Marty's uneducated eye, as recent as the furniture they were large and slapdash. The most prominently placed, and the most representational, was signed Matisse, and pictured a bilious pink Woman sprawled on a bilious yellow chaise tongue.

"Your whisky."

Marty accepted the glass Toy was offering.

"We had Luther buy you a selection of new clothes; they're up in your room," Whitehead was telling Marty. "Just a couple of suits, shirts and so on, to start with. Later on, we'll maybe send you out shopping for yourself." He drained his glass of neat vodka before continuing. "Do they still issue suits to prisoners, or did they discontinue that? Smacks of the poorhouse, I suppose. Wouldn't be too tactful in these enlightened times. People might begin to think you were criminals by necessity-"

Marty wasn't at all sure about this line of chat: was Whitehead making fun of him? The monologue went on, its tenor quite friendly, while Marty tried to sort out irony from straightforward opinion. It was difficult. He was reminded, in the space of a few minutes listening to Whitehead talk, of how much subtler things were on the outside. By comparison with this man's shifting, richly inflected talk the cleverest conversationalist in Wandsworth was an amateur. Toy slipped a second large whisky into Marty's hand, but he scarcely noticed. Whitehead's voice was hypnotic; and strangely soothing.

"Toy has explained your duties to you, has he?"

"Yes, I think so."

"I want you to make this house your home, Strauss. Become familiar with it. There are one or two places that will be out-of-bounds to you; Toy will tell you where. Please observe those constraints. The rest of the place is at your disposal."

Marty nodded, and downed his whisky; it ran down his gullet like quicksilver.

"Tomorrow..."

Whitehead stood up, the thought unfinished, and returned to the window. The grass shone as though freshly painted.

"... we'll take a walk around the place, you and I."

"Fine."

"See what's to be seen. Introduce you to Bella, and the others."

There was more staff? Toy hadn't mentioned them; but inevitably there would be others here: guards, cooks, gardeners. The place probably swarmed with functionaries.

"Come talk to me tomorrow, eh?"

Marty drained the rest of his scotch and Toy gestured that he should stand up. Whitehead seemed suddenly to have lost interest in them both. His assessment was over, at least for today; his thoughts were already elsewhere, his stare directed out of the window at the gleaming lawn.

"Yes, sir. Tomorrow."

"But before you come-" Whitehead said, glancing around at Marty.

"Yes, sir."

"Shave off your mustache. Anybody would think you'd got something to hide."

Toy gave Marty a perfunctory tour of the house before taking him upstairs, promising a more thorough walkabout when time wasn't so pressing. Then he delivered Marty to a long, airy room on the top story, and at the side of the house.

"This is yours," he said. Luther had left the suitcase and the plastic bag on the bed; their tattiness looked out of place in the sleek utility of the room. It had, like the study, contemporary fittings.

"It's a bit bare at the moment," said Toy. "So do whatever you want with it. If you've got photographs-"

"Not really."

"Well, we ought to get something on the walls. There are some books"-he nodded to the far end of the room, where several shelves groaned under a weight of volumes-"but the library downstairs is at your disposal. I'll show you the layout sometime next week, when you've settled in. There's a video up here, too, and another downstairs. Again, Joe doesn't really have much interest in it, so help yourself."

"Sounds good."

"There's a small dressing room through to the left. As Joe said, you'll find some fresh clothes in there. Your bathroom is through the other door. Shower and so on. And I think that's it. I hope it's adequate."

"It's fine," Marty said. Toy glanced at his watch and turned to leave.

"Just before you go..."

"Problem?"

"No problem," Marty said. "Jesus, no problem at all. I just want you to know I'm grateful-"

"No need."

"But I am," Marty insisted; he'd been trying to find a cue for this speech since Trinity Road. "I'm very grateful. I don't know how or why you chose me-but I appreciate it."

Toy was mildly discomforted by this show of feeling, but Marty was glad to have it said.

"Believe me, Marty. I wouldn't have chosen you if I didn't think you could do the job. You're here now. It's up to you to make the best of it. I'm going to be around, of course, but after this you're more or less your own man."

"Yes. I realize that."

"I'll leave you then. See you at the beginning of the week. Pearl's left food out for you in the kitchen, by the way. Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

Toy left him alone. He sat down on the bed and opened his suitcase. The badly packed clothes smelled of prison detergent, and he didn't want to take them out. Instead he dug down to the bottom of the case until his hands found his razor and shaving foam. Then he undressed, slung his stale clothes on the floor, and went into the bathroom.