Penn was ordinary. He was average height, average build, naturally wore average clothes. His hair was average brown, not dark and not light, and average length, not long and not short. His walking stride was average, not clipped and mincing, not busy and athletic. His accent was average, not smart and privileged, not lazy and careless with the consonants. Penn was the sort of man, damn it, who was accepted because he made few ripples… and wanting to make waves, wanting to be recognized, was what had pitched him out of the Service. Dragging on the cigarette… The door of the target house was opening. Stubbing the cigarette into the filled ashtray… He saw the target. Coughing the spittle of the Silk Cut and remembering the woman from Section 4 of A Branch who had come to the garage they used under the railway arches in Wandsworth and slapped a No Smoking sticker on the door of the glove compartment and dared him, and bloody won… The target had turned and carefully locked the front door of the house and was walking. The target was coming towards the parked and heated-up Sierra. He made a note on the pad, time of departure, and he eased his average weight across the gear stick and the brake handle and slid in behind the wheel. Naughty little boy, the target, and not playing it straight with the lady, the client. Penn was taking 300 a day, a half to the company, for ten hours a day, cooking in his car with the Silk Cut smoke up his nose so that the lady, the client, should not be conned out of her fancy salary. It was mid-morning and the car would have stunk anyway from his socks that were damp and his trousers that were still wet from the rain when he had walked round the back of the target house to check whether there was a rear exit, and a hell of a good thing that there wasn't because this was solo surveillance. The target was the fourth male out of the house that morning.