He'd been told before he left England that the man now sitting across the table from him could make the necessary arrangements. Mr Kane was, apparently, a fixer of such things, and in the sprawling, dirt-poor and life-cheap metropolis that was Manila, where almost anything could be bought and sold if the price was right, he had ready access to a constant supply of victims. It was now simply a matter of finding that price.

A call to Kane's mobile phone an hour earlier had set the meeting up, but now that his guest had arrived in the hotel room, Blacklip was beginning to have second thoughts about the whole thing. Not because he didn't want to go through with the act itself (after all, the truth was that it wasn't his first time), but because he was alone in a strange city thousands of miles from home, and was unsure of discussing his innermost thoughts and secrets with someone he'd only just met. Kane was supposed to be reliable, but what if he wasn't? What if he was a conman? Or worse still, working for the police, here to entrap him? Blacklip was aware that he was being paranoid, but that didn't mean his fears might not be justified.

'Is everything OK?' Kane's voice was calm and controlled, designed to reassure.

It worked, too. Blacklip smiled and used a handkerchief to wipe sweat from his forehead. 'It's fine,' he answered, sounding falsely jolly, even to himself. 'It's just this heat. I'm not used to it.'

The room was stifling. He'd changed into lighter clothes and turned the ceiling fan up to maximum, had even pulled down the blinds to keep out the fiery sun, but nothing seemed to be doing any good. He was conscious of the wetness under his armpits, and wished now that he'd rented a room with air conditioning. But then, of course, he was saving his money for bigger things.

Kane said something about Westerners getting used to the heat after they'd spent some time in the Philippines, but Blacklip wasn't really listening. He was too busy studying his guest while trying to act like he wasn't, a task he believed he performed much better than most people. He was used to discreet observation.