Her feet were dark stained, she had not had a bath in more than a month, but she knew where the veins ran on the underside of her feet.

She gritted her teeth as she inserted the needle behind the ball of her right foot. She drew back the arm of the hypodermic, sucking blood into the container, allowing the blood to mix inside the syringe with the scag powder. Slowly, trying to control the trembling of her thumb, she pressed down on the syringe.

She lay back on the bare mattress. She anticipated the peace and the dream.

The boy was where he had said he would be.

Old habits would die hard for Mattie Furniss. The old way of doing things was to meet in a park's open spaces where it was comparatively easy to guard against surveillance and eavesdropping. The boy was a shadow under a sycamore tree close to the lake. He was almost trotting, and the supermarket bag flapped against his trouser leg. Out in the road that fringed the park a van did a U-turn, and its headlights played across the open ground with the manoeuvre and the boy was lit.

Tall, bearded, a fine looking boy. Mattie had known young Eshraq so long that he would always regard him as a boy. But Charlie did not seem to Mattie like any other 22-year-old that he knew, not in build and stature, not in temperament or attitude. A hell of a fine young man, but then so had his father been… He reached the tree. He drew at his breath. He had run all the way from Century on the other side of the river, over the Bridge and across Whitehall to the park. He would have to put in some extra training if he were to finish the half marathon this summer.

"Tied up, dear boy. Apologies."