The rickshaw has a warm velour seat that almost swallows her, and for a moment she wants it to take her straight home. She stiffens her spine a little: this is what professionals do. Even tired, even injured, they show up and follow the clues. The rickshaw darts down two narrow streets, then turns and crosses over a third on a bright white walkway which rises from old London’s York stone like the tentacle of something from a deeper sea. She spots Shand & Co. immediately, a wood-panelled hermit crab nestling by the lower reaches of a coral tower, last survivor of some feeding frenzy among the starfish. The shopfront has split paint and mortise and tenon joints, and the new window glass with its safety mark in one corner is rippled in simulation of an old, uneven making. A bell on a coiled brass spring tinkles as she enters, the sound bringing out from behind the counter a genial middle-aged fellow in the fat uncle mode, who extends his hand.