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into the kitchen. Opened the fridge. Yoghurt, orange juice, half a tin of baked beans. He picked up a carton of milk and sniffed at it. Seemed fresh enough.
    â€˜Whose side are you on?’ said the girl in the T-shirt.
    Barker looked at her. ‘I used to listen to Bob Marley.’ He thought back to the early seventies. ‘“Crazy Baldheads”,’ he said, and laughed. He drained the carton of milk, crushed it and dropped it on the floor. Then glanced at his watch. Ten-forty-nine. ‘I’m going to be generous,’ he said. ‘I’m going to give you twenty minutes.’
    Two faces stared at him blankly from the kitchen doorway. The girl with the green hair was probably still screaming in the corridor. He cleared his throat. His mouth tasted sour. Squatters’ milk.
    â€˜You hear what I said? Twenty minutes.’
    He opened the door to the small roof terrace and walked outside. A bleak day, mist softening the shapes of the trees. Not a bad view, though. His view now. Maybe he could buy one of those barbecue contraptions with spindly legs, the ones that look like spaceships. He could invite Charlton round for hamburgers. On summer evenings he could sit here with a cold beer, his feet propped on the railings, and look out over the backs of houses, the rows of narrow gardens. Standing with his hands in the pockets of his jacket and his feet apart, Barker began to sing ‘Hotel California’ under his breath. He had no idea why that particular song had come to mind – unless perhaps he’d heard it on the radio that morning while he was waiting for his saucepan of water to boil.
    On a dark desert highway
    Cool wind in your hair …
    He had to hum the rest because he couldn’t remember the words. When he walked back inside, the squatters were huddled by the front door, their possessions crammed into two black bin-liners. Who would have thought it would be so easy? Charlton had offered him the use of a Rottweiler that morning, but he’d said no, and all the way over he’d been regretting it. Because he’d had no idea of what he might be up against.
    He followed the squatters down the stairs, the words of the song coming back to him.
Last thing I remember
…
    From the doorstep he watched them drift disconsolately away, three figures dissolving into the mist at the end of the street. It seemed unlikely they’d be back.
    Upstairs again, on the third floor, he began to look around. In the two main rooms, the bedroom and the lounge, they’d left a lot of rubbish behind – silver take-away cartons, dirty clothing, cigarette butts, empty bottles. The ceiling in the kitchen looked as if it leaked, and the toilet wouldn’t flush at all. Otherwise, the flat was in reasonable condition. He took out the mobile Charlton had given him and dialled Charlton’s number. Standing in the middle of the room with the phone pressed to his ear, he had a flash of what it must be like to be Ray Peacock.
    â€˜It’s me,’ he said when Charlton answered.
    â€˜How did it go?’
    â€˜All right.’ Barker moved to the window, the floorboards wincing under his weight. He peered up into the sky. Grey. All grey.
    â€˜Any problems?’ Charlton said.
    â€˜You might need a couple of new doors.’
    Charlton laughed for longer than was necessary. Relief could do that to people. So could fear. Barker held the phone away from his ear and thought he could see Charlton’s laughterbubbling out of the tiny holes. Then, suddenly, a plane went over and it seemed as though everything he could hear had just been buried in an avalanche.
    The quality Barker appreciated most in Harold Higgs was the fact that he didn’t talk more than he needed to. It could have been the direct result of his speech impediment – a kind of self-consciousness, a deliberate attempt to limit the amount of embarrassment he caused – but somehow Barker doubted it;