He looked it up in his heavily thumbed and dog-eared A to Z in the bright sunlight on the street outside Vogel and Breene and then jogged towards London Bridge tube with only a glance at his watch. It was eleven fifteen. He’d been with the old man over an hour. It had seemed less at the time, but he was in a hurry now to recover the vestiges of an enigmatic and elusive life. And he could not wait to do so. It was just after midday when he crossed Fulham Broadway at the junction to the right of the station exit and walked up Harwood Road, the Town Hall building on his left a high jumble of stained ornamentation in the unforgiving light and still-rising heat of the day. Left again into Moore Park Road and the traffic sounds from the junction he’d crossed seconds earlier retreated into something like a rumour. He didn’t know this part of London at all. He was relieved to see that Moore Park Road comprised two facing terraces of three-storey Victorian houses. The angle of the sun cast the road between the terraces into shadow.
