BZRK

the point that if I were here to kill you, you’d be long dead by now.”
    Sadie breathed. More calmly than she had any right to do.
    “Let me guess: you’re here to save my life. How exactly are you going to do that?”
    “For a start, like this.” He touched her face and held the contact for a several seconds. There was nothing erotic in it.
    “So,” Sadie said flatly.
    Vincent nodded. “Like I said, I knew your father.”

EIGHT
    The instructions Noah had been given included directions for getting to Selfridge’s department store. He already knew how to get to that place. Selfridge’s is on Oxford Street: it’s vast, it’s sleek, it’s very bright yellow, it’s full of things like designer bags and exotic cosmetics and oddly dressed mannequins. It glows and glitters and glistens.
    It was the sort of place that instantly made Noah feel small, shabby, self-conscious, awkward, shockingly unattractive, and possibly criminal. Everything was polished and clean—and that definitely included the employees, who did a creditable job of concealing their concern that such a creature as this grubby teenager should be in, actually physically
in
, their store.
    On the other hand, quite a number of those employees wore high heels and pencil skirts and taut blouses. So the environment wasn’t entirely without points of interest for Noah.
    He’d been instructed to go to the food department and buy a jar of sherbet pips, which cost a shocking five pounds, nearly all the money he had. Well, they’d make a gift for his mum, although she’d think him an idiot.
    He was to carry the sherbet pips in a bright yellow Selfridge’s bag to the cigar humidor, a walk-in sauna of sorts with hundreds of very expensive cigars on shelves and behind glass.
    This was ridiculous, and Noah very nearly decided to walk away. Of course first he would try to return the pips.
    But as he hovered indecisively outside the walk-in humidor, a man—Indian or Pakistani by the look of him, with an extravagant mustache—gave him a look. A look. He ushered Noah into the humidor and said, “You enjoy a good cigar?”
    And Noah completed his instructions by saying the coded response, “I have your pips.”
    He handed the jar to the man, who looked at them and nodded and said, “Yes, I do.” The mustache stretched into a smile. “You were not followed,” the man said. Seeing Noah’s quizzical look, he added, “We, of course, have watched you on the CCTV cameras since you left your home, and then security cameras within the store.”
    He was lying. No question about that—whoever these people were, they weren’t that hooked in, no. They weren’t police or the sort of people who could just tap CCTV at will, or even the store cameras, most likely. If they had that kind of juice, they wouldn’t be doing this whole cloak-and-dagger thing.
    The man eyed Noah very closely, and his eyes crinkled when he saw Noah’s suspicion. “Good. You’re not a damned fool at least.”
    “And you don’t work here.”
    “Clever boy. Meet me on the street in five minutes.”
    It was cold outside, and dark compared to the store’s bright-yellow-and-chrome magnificence. It was only just noon, but the rain clouds were so low Noah could have reached up and touched them. The man materialized beside Noah and said, “Walk with me. You must not tell me your name, you have no name yet, but my name is Dr Pound.”
    Noah did not believe that. Maybe Chaudhry, maybe Singh, maybe a lot of things, but the man’s accent did not flow from places where the last name of Pound was common.
    They had left Oxford Street and now skirted Cavendish Square, one of many small, contained, melancholy parks in London. The rain started up and the umbrellas bloomed, and for a while conversation was impossible.
    Then up Harley Street to one of the doors in one of the segments in the endless line of indistinguishable four-story townhomes.
    There was no lift, so Noah followed Dr Pound up quite a number of steps to a brown, varnished wood door with no number or nameplate. Dr Pound came out with the key, flourishing it and grinning as though this in itself was quite an accomplishment. Dr Pound was missing two teeth together, the right canine and the one behind it. Something about the gumline spoke of a cause more traumatic than mere dentistry.
    “After you,” Dr Pound said.
    Noah heard a
Pfft!
sound and felt a sting on the back of his neck. Then he decided it was time to lie down on the