He kept his hands tight on his face, could feel the stubble on his palms.

'What I don't know, my friend, my little piece of shit, is where you're going. Are you going to go on failing? That's easy, isn't it? I don't know if the only road you're comfortable with, my friend, is the easy one… Take your bloody hands off your face. Look at her! Does that take guts, looking at an old lady who's been done over for her purse? Look at her and remember her.'

He did. He saw the slightness of her and the bruises in their mass of colours, the thin upper arm in its sling. And he saw the stems of his flowers upside down in the bin, and the glory of the bouquet on the cabinet. He pushed himself up from the bed and turned for the aisle that ran through the ward.

'There's an easy road and a hard one – most, when they've fallen like you have, take the easy one.'

Out of the hospital, he walked on the embankment.

The river seemed sour and dirtied. Rain ran down his face, was not wiped away. He walked on and did not know where, walked until a massive cream and green building – an architect's dream – blocked his path.

Then, he turned, retraced his steps and headed back to the Amersham where he could hide behind a door that was locked and bolted.

Had Frederick Gaunt looked out through his fifth-floor window, reinforced and chemically treated glass that could withstand bomb blast and electronic eavesdropping, he would have seen a man walk on the Albert Embankment towards the wall that blocked further progress to the building where he worked, then loiter and drift away. But there was more on Gaunt's mind that lunchtime than the aimless advance and retreat of another of the capital's work-shy low-life – that would have been his description if he had seen the loafer. His sandwiches were untouched and his bottle of mineral water unopened.

Gaunt's room in Vauxhall Bridge Cross, the monolith occupied by the Secret Intelligence Service, was in an isolated corner of the building.