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period in his life when he started stealing books from the pubs they were meant to decorate; dusty hardbacks on history and philosophy. He’d even read the Bible, and it was better than he expected. So much was about dissatisfaction, leaving places, being lost. He saw these books now as props with which he’d tried to construct something: a life that was more than a job, perhaps. It hadn’t worked. But the churches, at least, had been peaceful. Each carried its own flavour—some bright and serene, others unspeakably lonely, like being in a cell.
    Belsey walked around the back of the City, through the tail end of the morning rush hour in its winter uniform of dark coats and scarves. Basement windows looked down onto rows of unmanned terminals. Every building advertised offices to let. But the crowd had not thinned. It took him a while to find St. Clement’s Court, moving from the main roads onto progressively smaller and more crooked side streets. He found the plain front of St. Clement’s Church, then realised that a slender gap between the churchyard and an anonymous office block beside it was in fact the entrance to an alleyway. On one side of the entrance a plaque said “Here lived in 1784 Desiley Obradovich, Eminent Serbian Man of Letters.” On the opposite wall was an equally weather-worn notice, engraved in metal, with a disembodied hand pointing into the permanent dusk of the alley: “Entrance to 37–41 St. Clement’s Court.”
    The passageway was one of those chaotic formations that made the City feel like it had been eroded through limestone. Belsey went down it. By some quirk of the medieval warrens, numbers 37–41 turned out to be a single black door in a narrow, brown-brick facade at the end of the cul-de-sac. Belsey wondered if it had once been attached to the church; a parsonage, maybe. AD Development had the property to itself. It presented one leaded window to the world, the lower half quaintly curtained off like a French restaurant. There was a single brass bell with a brass plaque polished that morning, carrying the firm’s name.
    Belsey climbed onto the churchyard wall and peered over the curtain. The glass was fogged but he could make out a young woman at a desk in an office. There was no one else. She looked cold, in a cardigan and heels, writing something. Belsey climbed down before she noticed him. He realised he was wearing Devereux’s clothes. He removed the tie and jacket, reasoning that these were the most conspicuous items, and left them folded at the side of the building. Then he rang the bell.
    The door buzzed. He entered a hallway with gold fittings, a large framed mirror and flowers on a table. The side door into the office was already open.
    “Come in,” the young woman said, through the doorway.
    The office was well worn, oozing old-money charm and suggesting a comfortable few centuries of clever business. It had furniture for four or five, but only the girl was present. She was a brunette, in heavy makeup that failed to disguise how young she was. An old electric heater blew at her ankles. One woman’s coat hung on a hat stand beside three dented bottle-green filing cabinets. There was a large mahogany table at the back with an upholstered armchair that might have been antique. Dusty green curtains filled the wall behind it. Someone had arranged a decorative stack of pine cones in the fireplace. The carpet was worn.
    The girl watched him expectantly. She looked like an intern.
    “Is Mr. Devereux about?” he said.
    “No.” Her face faltered. “I’m his assistant. Can I help?” It was a strange face, he thought; not plain but not quite pretty, with liquid eyes and incredibly pale skin.
    “Do you know where he is?”
    “No.” She twisted a Kleenex in her hand.
    “OK. When was he last in?”
    “Is there a problem?” she asked.
    “No. I don’t think so. Is this his office?”
    “Yes.”
    “Does AD Development have offices upstairs?”
    “No. This is the office.