Cover photographs © Josephine Pugh/Arcangel Images (cityscape); Henry Steadman (foreground and figure, right); SuperStock (bench, seated man); Shutterstock.com (all other images)

BOX 88 extract © Charles Cumming 2020

Charles Cumming asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber 2001

Reproduced by permission of Faber and Faber

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Ebook Edition © March 2012 ISBN: 9780007346448

Version: 2020-08-12

Dedication

For Carolyn Hanbury

Epigraph

‘There’s just one thing I think you ought to know before you take on this job … If you do well you’ll get no thanks and if you get into trouble you’ll get no help. Does that suit you?’

‘Perfectly.’

‘Then I’ll wish you good afternoon.’

W. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden

‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’

L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

Contents