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he realised he hadn’t noticed the turbulence of the return journey at all.

North London

    The man slipped past the shaven-headed bouncer and yanked open the heavy wooden door, careful to grasp the worn metal handle with only two fingers. The door swung shut behind him and he wiped his fingers on the leg of his jeans. The King’s Head public house was, as expected, a shithole. Situated at the heart of the Longhill estate in north-west London, the single-storey concrete block sported mesh-covered windows, graffiti-daubed walls and a chalk notice board that promised satellite TV and home-cooked meals. The only thing cooked around here was heroin, the man speculated. In any case, the King’s Head was a focal point of dubious entertainment for the residents who occupied the surrounding concrete towers, and it was here he’d find the man he sought.
    The inside was gloomy, the narrow windows set high around the walls beaming thin shafts of milky daylight across the floor. The man clamped his cell phone to his ear, faking a conversation while his eyes adjusted to the shadows. The bar was directly in front of him, enveloped in a layer of blue smoke. Smoking laws were unenforceable here, a pointless and potentially dangerous exercise for any local official who might be bothered to try.
    To his left, along a short corridor, a dimly-lit pool room reached towards the rear of the building. More smoke swirled over the tables, a heady mix of tobacco and cannabis leaking along the corridor. Young men drifted in and out of the table lights, feral street roughs with pale chins jutting beneath baseball caps and hooded sweatshirts. Pool balls cracked noisily, the air punctuated by harsh laughter and coarse street talk. The man looked away, careful not to make eye contact with the players. To his right several tables and chairs were clustered together, their occupants bathed in the light of a huge TV. A cry went up, cruel encouragement for the horses that galloped across its high-def surface. Gambling, alcohol, drugs the blatant sins that surrounded him made his skin crawl.
    He charted a course around scattered chairs and heavily-stained tables and crossed the open floor to the bar, his trainers rasping noisily on its tacky surface. He was confronted by a lurid assortment of pump lights advertising cheap lagers and a steel shutter hung above the counter like a guillotine. He finished his bogus conversation and slipped the cell back into his pocket. The landlord, a flat-nosed rough with tattooed arms, glanced up from his newspaper.
    ‘Yeah?’
    ‘Lager. Small one,’ he said, pinching his finger and thumb together. The landlord swept a calloused hand across the chipped bar, its surface decorated with a dizzying pattern of moisture rings.
    ‘Name your poison.’
    The man selected the only brand he vaguely recognised. It wasn’t the type of establishment to flash notes around so he paid with small change, counting out a few coins and dropping them into the landlord’s outstretched hand.
    ‘Like a bloody homeless shelter in ’ere,’ he scowled, fingering the coins. A ripple of course laughter erupted from the cluster of punters, briefly smothering the drone of the racing commentator. It faded quickly as the horses headed toward the start line for the next race.
    The man made no comment. He carried his lager over to a quiet corner and sat down, leaving the grumbling landlord in his wake. He unfurled a Racing Post from his pocket and stared uncomprehendingly at the form pages, sensing his presence had slid back into welcome obscurity. He sipped his drink, careful not to grimace at the foul taste.
    Thirty minutes passed. The man relaxed a little more, confident he was now a part of this miserable landscape. A casual glance in his direction would confirm that he was just another of life’s hard-luck stories, crushed by the system, his only solace a few cheap beers and an afternoon watching the races. Still, it paid to be vigilant.