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father used to say.
Jobs don’t come looking for you. Only the police do that
.
    One afternoon while Charlton was asleep Barker walked to Petticoat Lane. Rotten fruit clogged the gutters, and the sickly scent of joss-sticks floated in the air. He had the sense that, all around him, people were attempting the impossible: a thin man with a twitchy, unshaven face wedging a steel roll-door open with a piece of wood, a pregnant woman selling second-hand TVs. As he stood uncertainly among the stalls, the sky darkened and rain began to fall. He turned a corner, hoping to find shelter – a café, perhaps. Instead he saw an old-fashioned barber’s shop. The sign in the window said GENT’S HAIRSTYLIST and underneath, in smaller, less formal letters,
Come In Please – We’re Open
. Barker opened the door, which jangled tinnily, and stepped inside. A row of mirrors glimmered on the wall, reflecting the rain that was streaming down the shop-front window; the glass seemed to be alive, liquid. At the back an old man in a white cotton coat was sweeping hair into a pile. Barker asked him if he ran the place. The old man said he did.
    â€˜I’m looking for work,’ Barker said quietly.
    The old man looked up from his pile of hair. ‘How m-much experience you got?’
    He had a speech impediment – not a stutter exactly, more a kind of hesitation as he attempted certain sounds. He wouldsay the first letter twice and, while he was trying to make it join the rest of the word, his eyes would flutter rapidly. Then he would carry on as if nothing had happened. Barker found he couldn’t lie.
    â€˜I was in the Merchant Navy for a while,’ he said. ‘That was in the late sixties, early seventies. After that I worked for the council as a gardener. I worked in a garage too. Mechanic. The last few years I’ve been a night manager. Well, they call it that. It’s a bouncer, really. Down on the south coast. Plymouth.’
    The old man studied him, still gripping the broom-handle in both hands, lips twisting sceptically to one side of his face. ‘Doesn’t sound like you’ve cut a w-whole lot of hair.’
    â€˜Not a whole lot,’ Barker admitted, ‘but I’ve done it.’
    His father, Frank Dodds, had been a barber. The sight of that slowly spiralling red-white-and-blue pole had been one of the mysteries of Barker’s childhood. Where did the ribbons of colour come from? Where did they go? Why didn’t they ever run out? He had learned to cut hair when he was thirteen or fourteen – crew-cuts and DAs, mostly. His clients had flat noses and glossy knuckles, and their tattoos had faded to the dirty bluish-grey of veins. Sometimes they would be drunk. Other times his father had to break up fights. In those days it was more like being a bartender than anything else.
    â€˜Tell you what,’ the old man said. ‘I’ll give you a two-week trial. If I still like you after that, you can stay on.’
    â€˜Sounds fair.’
    â€˜The money’s not m-much good.’
    â€˜You really know how to sell a job,’ Barker said, ‘don’t you.’
    The old man chuckled, then held his shoulder, wincing. ‘Arthritis,’ he explained. He told Barker what the hours were and what he could afford to pay. ‘Are you still interested?’
    When Barker walked back into the house on the Isle of Dogs that afternoon, Charlton was standing in the kitchen,his face still swollen with sleep. Smoke loitered in a cloud above the grill. Charlton had just burned the toast. Now he was trying again. Barker leaned against the fridge and watched.
    â€˜You seen the Nutella?’ Charlton said.
    â€˜No,’ Barker said, ‘I haven’t.’
    â€˜What about the jam?’
    â€˜You finished it.’ Barker reached for the bottle of whisky. He poured a double measure into a cup and swallowed it. ‘I got a job.’
    â€˜About fucking