The man in the puffer jacket sits next to me on a bench and begins to tell me his story. “I come to Brighton, I am capocuoco; capocuoco, you understand? No, er, cucina? Yes. Very good pizza, thirty years make pizza, I come to England from Torino, very big city but bad for work, politico not good, you understand? Er, Mafia, everywhere, hard for work so I come to England, yes Mafia here too but in Italy… impossibile… Live in Italy many years but I am, er, er, Egitto, you understand? Pharaonico, Yes? But Christian Pharaonico (he touches his chest three times) many years from home.”
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Meanwhile, on the station concourse, who should I see but Carmina Smith, one of MI5’s less than secret operatives. You can tell it’s her by the way she stands, legs crossed unfeasibly and nose buried in a book (she’s an avid reader, of anything). To all outward appearances completely self-absorbed, if fact she’s already clocked a senior member of one of the triad gangs, who is beginning to move in for the kill. Carmina Smith is less than secret for this very reason: knowing who she is, gangsters are drawn to her like moths to a flame. How can she be so brazen, so gauche? Nothing will happen on the station forecourt, neither will wish to draw attention as this creates complications. Later on though, perhaps in a quiet spot behind one of the broken ticket machines, the gangster will find her once again in similar pose, nose still buried in some infernal small-business publication. Here he will make his play and Carmina will then release like an over-wound spring. In one single, deadly pirouette, the whiplash from her titanium tipped court shoe will reduce the hapless criminal to a quivering mass of sinew and blubber, ready to be dispatched to headquarters for interrogation.