‘They know,’ she said. ‘It’s like a smell to them.’

‘No one has even looked at us,’ he tried to reassure her.

‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘They know. But to them I do not exist.’

The man whose job it had been to prevent Jenny Lin Lee setting up home with Robert Nelson and who had failed to frighten her was tied that night beneath the Red Star ferry that crosses the harbour from Kowloon to Hong Kong island in such a way that by straining upwards he could just keep his mouth free of the water, but not far enough for his shouts for help to be heard above the noise of the engine. It took several hours before he became completely exhausted and collapsed back into the water, to drown. And several days before the ropes slackened, releasing the body.

Some time later, already partially decomposed and attacked by fish, it surfaced against the sampans and junks that cling like seaweed to the island side of the harbour.

Knowing it not to be one of them, because sampan people never fall into the water, and with the gypsies’ suspicion of the official enquiries it would cause, they poled the corpse along from craft to craft, until it caught in the currents of the open water, near Kai Tak airport, and disappeared out to sea.

The man’s disappearance was never questioned. Nor wondered at. Nor reported, either.

2

Seven thousand miles and eight hours apart, there was another lunch that Sunday, as unsuccessful as that of Jenny Lin Lee and Robert Nelson.

Charlie Muffin drove carefully, habitually watchful for any car that remained too long behind. He was unused to the road, too, and was looking for the pub accorded three stars in the guide book. He hoped to Christ it was better than the one the previous week: cottage pie made from Saturday’s meat scraps, over-warm beer, a bill for?5 and indigestion until Wednesday. At least it had given him something to think about. He sighed, annoyed at the increasingly familiar self-pity. Last time it had almost killed him.