Criminal Justice Acts

John Barker

Text Copyright © 2017 John Barker

For Ines Doujak

With thanks to Anja, Bechaela, Matthew and Stef

THE STORIES

Stationary

The Camel’s Back

We Shot the Wrong Guy

Haiti

Ernest Interference

Chop Chop

The Island

Criminal Justice Act

Ancient and Modern

Click-Clack

9/11

Poor Body

England Ahoy

Trails on the Porcelain

Regeneration

Frank Exchange

STATIONARY

Lettie said, I'm no genius never said I was, but my memory's in shape, know what I’m saying. Had said it to Mikeymike just the day before, down by the Sanitation Area, B Entrance. Had put him straight when he'd been on about the Roller, how long since he'd been seen on The Concourse.

18 months back, Mikeymike had said, when an Economy Toblerone was 41.

Thirtynine, she'd said. And not just that, but if he really focused he'd remember it was exactly eighteen months ago give or take a week that there'd been talk of the 40 barrier being breached; and how in fact it never had been 41 but jumped straight to 45.

Which it had, a six rise just like that, a time when she’d felt something was going to happen, and that wasn’t just Lettie, like she was weird, but there’d been a buzz all around the concourse. A six rise in one go, no one had known such a thing.

Mikeymike had shrugged his shoulders that ViViD said one time, would shrug at the drop of a hat. Then he'd taken a step towards the Sani. Then he'd taken a step back and she'd said it, about her memory, at least that was in working order.

But now, like they were playing a trick, here was the 17.05 about to leave Platform Eight. Platform 4 it left from, always had. Ahead where the enclosed travelator came out straight on to the platform behind the railings, Suits rushed the train with cappuccino cartons held high. In their trail, Jackets, fresh periodicals under their arms.

She looked up at Central Clock. Two faces were visible, 17.04 about to lurch into 17.05.

One time when the Roller was still on concourse and Mikeymike was a Someone, he'd bought her a carton and said it was cappuccino. Not that she hadn't been grateful because people didn't exactly go around buying you a carton of anything, but, it was gray stuff and where was the froth she'd seen dancing in the sunlight that fell through the glass roofs above the platform area as the Suits clamoured for the 17.05 on Platform 4.

The train jumped and smoothed into glide leaving behind a platform empty but for the gently swaying signs, EIGHTS, black on white, suspended above it at regular intervals. One, two, three, four...fourteen carriages pulling away. She'd heard there were 70 seats per carriage, Even so. Did it mean the Jackets stood during their journey, or did the Cappuccinos simply get window seats that everyone said were the best, though she didn't give that much credence, because  how could you know, know like it was an established fact. Fact was, you couldn’t; ask anyone and they'd say they heard it from someone else.

She shook her head. OK it had been a while, a couple of days maybe, since she'd taken a stroll by the Platform area but the 17.05 Platform 4, it hadn't been some temporary affair with a special notice that said due to Works it would be Platform Eight for a temporary period. No, it had been Platform Four day-in-day-out for as long as she could remember. All right she wasn’t a real vet, never said she was, but she'd been on Concourse enough years to say they went together, Platform 4 and the 17.05, like a horse and carriage that she'd seen one time in a book ViViD had had before she'd cashed it in for a discount Fruit and Nut back in the days when they'd been 23.

The last of the 17.05 shimmered away on the curve. Two faces of Central Clock said 17.06.

It was darker, cooler, away from the platform area. In amongst the benches under the parasols she saw Mikeymike's shock of hair. She clambered through the crowd. So many young faces these days she'd said to ViViD who'd said, Oh them, the youthfully young, like that meant something just because she was the one who'd read the odd lost book and, now and then, a fresh periodical blown on to the concourse. Or at least held one in her carrier for a while.

Mikeymike was bent over paper, a dripping Bic in his hand. From over his shoulder she saw an envelope with writing on it. No prizes for guessing. The Roller, c/o the Station, Carlisle. Last week it had been Penrith, some other place on the map that Mikeymike said started at Platform 6. She admired him for it, how he kept at it, a different one each week when a stamp was 105, and that was 105 out of his own pocket.

Hi Roller, we're all OK, he had written.

Something's up, she said. You know what I just saw?

What?

The 17.05 just left. He looked up at central clock.

Big deal, he said.

Yes but where did it leave from? Platform 8, she said.

He shrugged his shoulders. I'll tell the Roller you send your regards, he said.

No, tell him today it was from Platform 8, he'll understand something's up.

Mikeymike jumped up furious. Are you taking the piss, he said.

Lettie sighed. She did admire him but really it was an obsession, a lost cause. If the Roller had somehow survived and reached another concourse he'd have got a message through. One way or another.

Her own personal space was the 34th, one row in from the wall by the Mars Bar dispensary. She touched base at 17.43. Once upon a time you had a space there and they called you The Aliens. Because Mars is another fucking planet like the Roller'd said. So you were one of The Aliens. Earthlings they’d called them back, them on the other side of Concourse. Now no one called you anything.

And they'd started messing about with the 17.05. Hadn't the Suits complained? Didn't seem like it. No doubt still got their window seats if you could believe anything people said about Suit preferences. She herself didn't pretend to have an opinion. Except that whether the Suits liked it, didn't like it or didn't mind either way, the 17.05 leaving from Eight, of it meant something. Course it did. Concourse prices rose now and then, but platforms didn't get changed just for the fun of it.

At 18.30 she thought of stretching her legs. The Fruit and Nut dispensary's living area looked untidy, people's spaces criss-crossing. And two of them were up fighting. She could see it with her own eyes. Two men really fighting like they meant to hurt each other. She hadn't seen it in years, not since when people called the Fruit and Nut crowd The Headbangers and some of them had thought they had to live up to the name which they didn't have to; her crowd hadn't come on all weird just because they were The Aliens. Didn’t have to prove nothing.

Bone smashing on  bone, she could hear it. And red gunge dripping over the lip of the one in the grey sweatshirt. No one trying to stop it.

Horrible.

The queue for the Pharmacy was double-banked. Near the back was ViViD all in black bar her laces that were red. Before they'd been yellow. Lette said she liked the red and by the way, how long was it since Viv had been up around the platform area.

What?

The platforms. The 17.05., it left from Number Eight. I saw it with my own eyes. And it was 17.05., two faces of the clock.

ViViD looked like she could use a Sani coupon to do Whatever, and sluice her face good and proper.

To the platforms I do not go. Jamais. A tedious business of arrival and departure.

Which was just Viv and the way she talked because there had been a time when she herself couldn't keep away from them. The Platform Prowler they'd called her one time till she’d done an image makeover

Viv, it's me, Lettie. The 17.05 left from Platform 8. OK.

A butterfly flaps its wings over the far side of the ocean and my mug falls over.

I’m sorry about your mug Viv, Lettie said, I really am, but what I’m saying is the 17.05 left from Platform Eight.

You know something Lettie?

What?

You're a fucking obsessive.

That night Lettie couldn't sleep. The concourse lights were dimmed, the platform area blacked out. After the 21.25 left with the final sprinkle of Jackets there was no point to having lights on down there. If there'd even been a

21.25. on this strange day. This horrible day.

Either side of her Mikeymike and ViViD slept peacefully. She could hear their relaxed breathing. It was hard to credit, what with the bad vibes doing the rounds, them and all.

From somewhere down by the front of the Mars Bar dispensary she could hear whispering. A voice that sounded young, a girl's voice. Suits, she was saying. Things she'd heard. The other voice sounded sleepy.

Suits are suits, end of story, it said.

No, but I mean a house and a field, they've all got one.

Yeah, so that's suits for you, Lettie heard.

Of course they'd had their ups and downs, had their arguments. It was inevitable, but not this, these bad vibes you could feel. So how was she supposed to sleep.

Jackets, they don't have a field, I’ve heard. I think it's cos they work so much. No time to look after a field.

Don't you ever talk about anything else.

There was anger in the sleepy voice now That's what it was, bad vibes ViV and Mikeymike included but like Everyone was on edge. Like everyone knew it really, that something was up. Something was happening, and it wasn’t a butterfly flapping its wings. That was just ViViD. Seen one once in a book with half its pages. Striped and spotted wings just the same, like they were mirrors.

The 17.05 had left from Platform Eight, that was a fact. She hadn’t made it up. And so much quarrelling on Concourse.

Hadn’t always been like that. Teasing OK, what the Roller called a wind-up, but not this. Like that time Roller himself had Mikeymike believing there was one flush in the Sani from entrance A that could swallow you up. Poor Mikey, after that it was always B entrance for him however long the queue. Poor Mikey, hard for him without the Roller. Still, he was at peace, sleeping well, she could hear him next to her, and Viv on the other side. Good old Viv who never complained. You never heard her moaning, not today with her cup, not ever. Jamais jamais Lettie, toujours gai. That was ViViD, her breathing steady in her sleep.

Where would you be without your friends? Awake all night is what. And maybe there was Works on the Platform Four line and that’s all it was. Get the Works sorted and it would all be back to normal. It could be, why not?

Lettie snuggled up in her sleeper and closed her eyes. A fuss over nothing it might have been, and whatever it was, they’d see it through.

THE CAMEL’S BACK

Bold had sole occupancy for the night, an unusual situation which had the potential for boredom followed by morbid introspection. On the other hand it offered certain freedoms: he could tune into a radio station and be free with the volume; masturbate at leisure; or simply relax, eyes open in vacant fashion.

For relaxation purposes, he chose the corner of his present bed which was flush with that of the walls. For maximum comfort he folded the pillow and put it behind his head which fell back to pin it against the whitewashed brick of the corner.

There was the sound of an airplane in the outside sky. He closed his eyes. He would not have it bothering him for it would pass.

The following silence was good quality. He re-opened his eyes and was surprised at the prominence of the door in his field of vision. Obviously it had not suddenly grown in size, it was rather a matter of him not having paid it much attention previously. Now that he was comfortably looking around with nothing on his mind, it was solidly there.

It was the one area of the surroundings which could be opened and did so, allowing him a set number of exits and re-entrances per day. It consisted of two sheet metal plates sandwiching three inch wood, its inner surface painted uniformly in brown gloss. The opening and re-closing which followed were achieved by means of two hinges on the right hand side of the door. Looked at in the most favourable light the hinges were full of potential which was quite something given the simplicity of their design: simple and cheap to make he assumed: no, which he knew as a fact. With minimum force solid metal cylinders would rotate in hollow metal cylinders carrying the weight of the whole door, metal plates and all. Neat.

He wondered how people had managed in the days before hinges. They had probably managed OK wherever climatic conditions were favourable. He pictured doors as curtains of all sorts: of canvas; beads; velvet; striped blanket; plain blanket; silk. They were all doors one could in effect Walk Through, the material moving aside to make way. To be fair to the present brown door however, climatic conditions would have to be good for such an option to be feasible.

Yet no sooner had he tried to be scrupulous than he pictured a thick canvas flap being opened out to reveal Arctic whiteness and jumped straight on to igloos. He found it hard to imagine these being warm inside, but accepted that they were because he had heard it was so. He supposed those ice walls did at least keep out a worse cold. The wind chill. It was a factor. To be neutralized.

That being so, what form did the exit/entrance of igloos take? Wouldn't it necessarily be a point of weakness temperature-wise? He had seen one in a magazine, a white jelly mould of a hemisphere and, as he remembered, a lower extended arch attached to it. The actual entrance/exit might therefore be simply an arch-shaped hole. If so it would make thermal sense for it to be as small as possible even if this involved crawling in and out. He guessed it did. He saw a horizontal eskimo, his head out through the brief tunnel. A shuffle of the knees and pop, he was out in the open, a sledge waiting.

There was the sound of an airplane in the outside sky. He closed his eyes. He would not have it bothering him for it would pass.

After a while it did pass. The following silence was good quality, not a car, radio or footstep. He returned to the eskimo making his way back to the igloo on his sledge. He just had to duck down, crawl a few yards and hello, he was indoors, a party in progress.

Only the sound of the airplane had lingered long enough to make it ridiculous. A special plane could land on the ice at your man’s doorstep, and the whole business of living eskimo style was pointless. The crawling and the cold, why bother.

Bold readjusted his pillow so that it took all the pressure from his neck and looked around without moving his head. The place had more of a bare look than others he had known. Indeed it might have been the unmarked whiteness of the walls which had triggered the igloo nonsense. The wall paint was not so new that it could explain the bareness: he suspected there were also sanctions against wall decoration and an embargo on felt tips. The door was equally bland. Worse, the way he was seeing it, all the hinge-and-potential stuff that was another box of nonsense. In reality it was as quiet and fixed as the walls. The very completeness of the inner metal surface made that abundantly clear. It was broken only by the four-sided chamfer around the spy-glass which, in this instance, was a strip of glass half an inch wide by eighteen across. He knew it was impossible to see out because a flap on the outer surface covered the glass. From the bed it was merely a strip of grey recessed in the brown. Otherwise the door was sheer brown surface. There was no handle. No key hole.

Sadness rushed up to choke him.

Opening, he said out loud.

The sound held the sadness stuff down below the throat. It was a luxury, speaking the word out loud as it occurred to him. A luxury, with no one to call him a crank or even think it as a fellow occupant might do. As a fellow occupant would be entitled to do.

He said it again, Opening.

It wasn't as if the absence of handle or keyhole was news to him. They existed on the outside but not the inside. It was the way it was. The closedness of the door was matter of fact in appearance. It was an accomplished fact. There seemed to be far too many accomplished facts in the world. The sadness was hovering like the red stuff in a thermometer, and the door seemed to be staring back at him. He told it to stare as much as it liked, he wasn't going to turn away.

Besides, its massive solidity was not all it was cracked up to be. Once it was in any kind of open position, one hardbacked book would suffice to rip it away from its surrounds, thus making it functionally useless. This was also a fact for when younger he had done it himself. When the door swung to the closed position only to meet the book placed between its hinged edge and the surrounds, it was liable to rip the screws that held the hinges out of the wood they had been bored into.

The heavier they are, the harder they fall, he said out loud.

So what! The door was closed in such a way he could not open it. This was the present fact. The door-ripping-off was therefore fantasy or nostalgia. The accomplished fact was the present fact unless there were things going on he didn't know about. Relevant facts. Which in the present case there weren't. There were no things going on which made the present situation with the bland door conditional on any fucking thing else

Yes? And? None of this was news. It wasn't like he didn't know. Seen it all before. This time around and on a previous occasion. Many times on a previous occasion. He'd seen it all before, the solid, stolid door.

Only the fact that he knew the situation, that it was not surprising, did not improve it. It did not. It did not make the second inch shorter than the first, which in turn meant that there could be a particular straw which did break the camel's back, the single one that was the one too many. The feller in the djellaba saying, Why Not, might as well load up this last bit while we're at it and Bosh, his camel, however fucking stoical, caved in. Down on its knees and unable to rise.

This train of thought could do him no good. He pushed it aside.

For one thing, hadn't he felt the weeks going by faster of late, now that he had a good few under his belt? Yes he had, and it was all to the good. That being the case, time was simply not in the same bracket as distance or weight. An inch and a minute were not comparable as measurements. If a distance did appear to be shorter than on another occasion this was only because the time spent covering it was less. Which was speed, another thing altogether. Or rather, speed was a relationship between time and distance in which distance was the passive partner. This was good. He was getting somewhere.

Bold lifted his head away from the corner.

The pillow fell down on the bed. He got up and reached across for tobacco, matches, and the blue Rizla on the table. The cigarette tasted good. There was the sound of an airplane in the outside sky. He closed his eyes. He would not have it bothering him for it would pass.

After a while it did pass.

The following silence was poor quality. Somewhere beyond the door distinct pairs of boots were up and down. He turned on the radio. Good reception on the one music station he could cope with.  He lifted the pillow, placed it behind his head and lay back.

In fact the door was not flush with the walls. It and its frame were recessed the width of a brick, the outline of which was visible under the white paint. Why then this exaggeration of the flushness of the entire surroundings by himself?

Why? Because it might just as well be flush and have done with it for all the fucking difference it made.

Sadness threatened.

This was no good, he must hold on to the fact that he had privacy and that it was a luxury. All he was doing was to waste it on morbid introspection. It was something he'd been aware of as a potential danger and yet here he was indulging in it. Privacy was not to be sneered at, not here or anywhere else. Not just a luxury but one which in real life, life as it was rather than how he would like it to be, depended on doors with locks. True the locks depended on the strength of their surrounds but locks were wonderful and varied little gadgets which, he assumed, had been around for a very long time. You could have this bit of space that was yours alone, where you could do just what you wanted. Not only that, you could leave it for hours, days or weeks at a time, and return to find it exactly as it was, as exclusively yours as it had been before.

All thanks to locks.

If you'd kept up with the rent and the burglar hadn’t paid you a visit.

Bold wriggled his back against the pillow.  Burglary had never been his game. He  turned up the volume on his radio. There was a sludginess to the beat. He switched it off and closed his eyes. He pictured his wife Gina's face and then the rest of her in a soft wool pink dress. The hem rode up her nylons; the neckline showed off her shoulders; the wool slithered on the skin and clung to her shape. Her eyes went foxy and stared at him till he felt horny.

He got up quickly and turned off the light with the switch to the left of the door. Back on the bed it felt good lying on his back waiting for Gina to come. The white walls looked better in the dark, softer, like he was in an old, unknown, well-built room. You are, Gina said: not sarky or severe but like she said, I Know, when he'd said something like, I Really Fancy You. I Know, said with a sparkle of a smile that was directly from her eyes and made him fancy her all the more because it was her fancying him too. Which made it all right to put his hands out to touch her soft hips and his soft skin. His hands moved on to his favourite places and lay still because there was all the time in the world like there had been when it was him and her, phone off the hook for hours on end. He wanted to put his head in her hair.

Couldn't be done, not when he wanted to go on looking at her too while she gave him the look of an equal, knowing him just as much as he knew her.

Just as much.

Just as much.

He couldn't hold her face though the stroking of himself had made it more clearly defined; not when her look wound up as poses: whether the equal, knowing Gina; or Gina triumphant; or Gina faint with pleasure. It didn't make any odds.

His skin went dead; his fingers weren't feeling like fingers any more; Gina's face faded; he couldn't feel her.

Of course he couldn't feel her, not when he wasn't with her, him and Gina talking, glancing, touching, laughing, fucking.

His fingers had a stab at getting himself excited. It was not on.

He was quick off the bed to turn the light back on. The florescent went Zap, then settled. He blinked and looked at the window which was high above the head of the bed. The thick metal frame divided it up into small panes of glass, and behind that was a criss-cross of bars.

It looked the same as usual. His tobacco, papers and matches were on the table directly under the window, the one which in normal circumstances was that of the other occupant.

There, that was another luxury, to sit at the table which was normally out of bounds etiquette-wise. He sat down and rolled a cigarette. A standard issue cupboard stood between the table and the head of the vacant bed, which was closer to the door than his own. The cupboard stood a little higher than the table and this made it feel like a space within a space. It felt good. An office. Additional privacy.

Whoa Trigger, he said out loud.

The thing was not to get carried away again, but instead use this good space to good effect while he had it. He should write a letter to Gina. Playing with himself while thinking of her turned her into a ghost which she was not. Not too playful either. Instead he could say hello and it would be to present, living Gina who might well be pretty fed up herself. He could say, This is me right now and how are you. By the time she got it of course, it would not be Right Now. It would be distinctly second-best and he did not like second-best, not at all. But then looked at objectively this dislike had got him into trouble. Several times.

OK, it was second best but that's how it was, his present situation in its entirety. Worse in fact. Not to mention Gina's. He put the ball-point back down on the table. It was at any rate a good space, him at this table. Why then could it not continue to be so. He could take the sheets, blanket and pillow from his present bed and move to the vacant one. He jumped up in excitement, took five strides to the door and came back again.

The bed switch was not necessary. When he had first moved in, he had been presented with an accomplished fact by the occupant already in residence, the vacant bed, table and cupboard all being on the same side. Now he liked this table on the other side but equally liked his present bed and its position under the window. There was no reason why he could not have both. His next fellow occupant would have to accept things as they were; bed on one side, table and cupboard on the other.

He sat down again in the new chair. A letter began to take shape and he wrote easily, developing a comedy of moving furniture. The memory of a business acquaintance who'd been in the army describing a certain commanding officer popped up. A crank who demanded frequent changes in the lay-out of the barracks hut whereby beds, lockers and so on, had been moved about with the tactical planning of a battlefield.

Here and there Bold exaggerated things. Once or twice he laughed out loud and pictured Gina doing the same in their kitchen, the letter in hand, coffee on the table.

There was still a page and half left of the standard issue letter when he'd exhausted the comedy.

The silence was good quality. There'd been no airplanes and previous experience suggested they were finished for the night. He rolled a cigarette, lit up, and waited for something to come to mind.

Despite its matt whiteness, the wall ahead was interesting. The pattern underneath was not picture neat; some bricks were chipped, the lines of mortar sometimes wrinkly, sometimes blobbed. He reached over the table and pressed his fingertips against the wall. It was cool to the touch. He flattened his hand and slid palm and fingers up and down. They played over the bumps and lumps till he put weight on the palm. The coolness, the effort, something, came back up his arm before he took the pressure off and stroked the wall some more.

He thought to tell Gina, make a joke of it: Not a patch on you darling. Something on those lines.

No.

He got up, pushed the chair under the table and strode up and down the strip of rubber-tile floor between the bed-and-tables; from the window to the door and back again. And again.

Caged tiger, he said out loud.

He turned back, turned forth; back and forth.

Caged human being, he said out loud. And stopped. This was no good at all. Whenever he had heard the words Human and Being, in sequence, it meant the people in question were being very badly fucked over. Like starving. Like getting tortured.  Neither was he a tiger. He'd looked at one once, the only time he'd been to a zoo. It had paced up and down and looked pissed off. Madrid in fact. Cosmopolitan Bold, the only time he's been to a zoo and it's Spain where, as it happened two monkeys had been fucking and well-dressed couples had blocked off well-dressed children from seeing anything, while having a good look themselves..He sat down and picked up the ballpoint.

Madrid however presented a problem. He could picture the couples clearly, the feel and smell of the place, but Madrid had been business, private, not known about. It was conceivable that a censor might actually read the letter, want to make himself busy and transform it into a known fact. Unlikely true, but the unlikely had once given him a slap in the face. As a known fact it could then itself have unforeseen consequences.

It was harder, the two monkeys in an anonymous zoo but with minor exaggerations it came alive: the monkeys very randy, the adults hypocritical and the kids dead keen. He had the tiger having a look too, getting even more pissed off, the voyeur; a gorilla laughed; and a bored camel looked down his nose at the proceedings from a great height. At which point, just when it had run its course, he ran out of space on the page. The coincidence which had turned out happy. He signed off with love.

The camel had not looked at the monkeys but he remembered it well. The trip to the zoo had been a spur-of-the-moment time-filler, his business finished, the return flight not till evening. Once there however, he had looked intently at the few animals which interested him. The camel looked like it wouldn't give a damn how many straws were loaded on its back; that it didn't give a damn period. Or it hid its feelings well in a situation where it had no privacy. Which right now Bold himself did have, and out of which had come a letter he'd enjoyed writing and which there was a good chance Gina would enjoy reading. Feeling good he turned on the radio. Dancey soul music. He turned up the volume. Soon he was shoulder dancing. That was good, good to the shoulders and him surprising himself.

A pirate station, he guessed and the feller didn't let him down, the talk between tracks kept to a minimum. Next up some slick R 'n B. Bold stretched his back to the beat and jived with his hips. If he was going to listen it might as well be a proper job. He turned the volume up some more.

The table edge on the top of his thighs got to be a bother. He got to his feet. Up on his legs he let the rhythm move the bottom of his back. The hips went with it and he felt solid on the ground. The next track was heavy reggae bass with dub inserts. He moved to the new rhythm without plan, stretching up and down his sides and into the shoulders that loved the sudden off-balance brass notes that echoed, distorted, faded and returned. Well into the track his feet started to follow the hips in a slidey shuffle. The space was small but him and Gina'd never needed much on crowded dance floors when they were out shaking a leg. She made a thing of that, said anyway people didn't have the right to more space than they really needed. Not on this planet.

Not me darling, he said out loud.

It was true, ten foot by six for all his needs.

At the end of the track his feet kept moving through the guy's intro, a skipping shuffle without the rope, waiting for whatever came next.

A clean-cut rhythm with pace as it happened. It had the feet flying, tight, in at the waist; then flying again. He felt a smile moving his face, felt it because it had been a while. The brass licks felt like he was sucking them through the stomach and out on to the roller coaster.

You had to hand it to the feller, Mr music, never put a foot wrong.

Who's a lucky boy, he said out loud, the hip-hop snappy. Something for every part of the body, he said inside, laughing; and then, Don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.

Which he could afford to because the feller played strictly what did swing. Sweat trickled salty into his eyes. He stripped off his blue-striped shirt and was down to his vest feeling sexy. He would make an effort to catch the feller’s name, if it was a regular slot. He would tell Gina.

Meanwhile the guy was doing his brain in. Out of the past, Joao Gilberto, like it was a selection personally tailored with him in mind. Joao Gilberto who Gina’d turned him on to and who cloth-eared deadheads of his acquaintance called poncey. Poncey, when the voice stroked the skin over the samba that was so light of touch he felt like he was dancing on eggshells and not breaking a one. His hips were so sure of it the feet could do anything, ballet-slow steps that stretched over two bars and more to find the beat again on their own.

Some part of his ear head the creak and squeak through the samba, and the brain knew what it was. Sure, but he was not going to look. No fucking way.

Only there was no flap-coming-down sound to follow.

The flap was still up.

It stayed up. He'd lost the rhythm. He tried. He did try. Did not want to lose it.

Only.

He swung to face the door. On the other side of the glass strip were two eyes and two eyebrows. He jumped at the door. Shouted: Fuck off you mug! The eyes and eyebrows went back a little to show some nose and forehead.

Pervert!!

The eyes came close again. Then the flap went down and the glass was a grey strip in a brown gloss surround. The radio bloke was talking,  then he blundered. Whatever the track was there was too much instrument-wise stuck to grandiose four/four. Clogged up.

Bold tried. He didn't want to lose what he'd been having, what he could have. Trying made his feet clumsy. His heart beat fast and fluttery.

He told himself not to get steamed up, just the music was crap and even the best DJ was entitled to one naff number a session. The next track should have been all right, African township with happy sax and trumpet choruses and the rhythm straight down to the heels of his feet. He tried, grabbed at the chance.

And stopped.

OK, who was he to hear it right every time. He would wait and listen till he got it. Like this: weight down from one hip, weight down from the other; funky route-march style.

Sheeeeeeit! Shit Shit Shit. All he saw was himself in a cold light, jigging about in a box as stiff and anxious as guys with fixed grins on the dance floor. He stopped still. The whole thing was a bad fucking joke.

Which was a liberty.

Which was bloody sad.

He made a thing out of being deliberate, putting the written letter in his trouser pocket, switching off the radio, placing it quietly at the base of the door. And grabbed at the legs of the nearest table. Straight lifted it. Rammed the other end of it at the wall, all his weight behind. Heard the smash and ripped out the bent-in legs. He was tooled up.

Two-handed and brought the wooden legs down on the shaped plywood seat of the metal framed chair.

Banzai!!!

The seat splintered and gave in the middle. The chair went over. He jumped two-footed on its back. It went with a crack. He was laughing. The turnkey, he wanted an eyeful the cunt, he could come and have an eyeful of this

He dropped the sticks of legs and went to work on the other two, leaving himself with a table's flat top. No problem. Down it came on the metal upright of the foot of the bed frame. His hands jarred but he swung again and it shattered, splintering wood and formica. Outside footsteps were running and louder. A splintered leg was to hand.

The footsteps stopped.

The flap went up.

Bold jabbed at the strip of glass.

The flap crashed down.

The glass cracked.

He jabbed again.

It crumbled.

The footsteps were running. He could hear other doors being kicked. Next went the cupboard. Drawers first, a one-smash job, and then he had them on their fronts. The backs were the weak point and he went for them. Pools of water stuck to the floor tiles. The hammering of other doors was going strong.

Not much time. Bold attacked the weakened cupboards till they caved in.

Tripping over a jagged piece of it an inside voice said, What you doing you mad cunt? Having a party, he said out loud and got to work on the remaining table.

By the time he got to work on his own bed the outside banging had died down. He could hear the sound of many feet some way off.

Bold pulled off the mattress. The frame was lightweight when he lifted it at the bottom end. He pulled the whole thing backwards then charged towards the wall gripping it tight. The legs of the top end smashed into the wall and buckled. He let go. The bed collapsed.

Which would do.

He was breathing heavy. Sweating like crazy. He pulled his shirt back on and carefully buttoned it up.

The running boots were louder, the nightshift heavy mob. The door would crash open inwards. It only opened inwards.

He picked up the radio and stepped back to wait. The boots were extra loud on the first flight of the metal staircase beyond the door. See close-up the door surface was not as bland as had appeared. It was marked by several dents. Doubtless some previous occupants who had wished to get the attention of those outside and found the emergency bell wanting.

Second flight of stairs. Six of them, maybe eight. His feet would not touch ground on the way to the block.

He would not let it bother him for it would happen and it would pass. In other places the door showed patches of grey metal.

The boots were loud on the landing. Other occupants had resumed kicking their doors. Perhaps they would leave fresh marks. Perhaps a similar situation in the past explained the dents he saw ahead in the brown gloss.

WE SHOT THE WRONG GUY

The horse lay dead in a shallow gully which had its own spread of iced-over snow. There were other iced shapes on the higher ground, blotches on the khaki steppe. The coldest spots evidently. The wounds were a mess, head bites and a ripped throat. Stiff trails of blood smeared the coat of hair above the skin. The full length of its mouth was filled with big teeth open to the gums. I believed I saw the terror that had been. Horrible.

The big guy, Batbayal, had stopped the Toyota. He got out, leant across from the edge of the track and felt the corpse. He said something, in Russian. Danny translated. Wolves; last night, he said. Later, on the road back to town, he said they would be back that night, that was for sure. To feed, he said. Later still as we sped past the yards, huts, yurts and horses that surrounded the city, he talked of a wolf hunt that very night. The way Danny said it, the way I understood it, this was a serious business, like it was a regular thing. These were nomads in a city; he'd said it enough times. If I wanted, he said, we were invited.

He'd been through a few ups and downs over the years. Too eager to be enthusiastic. Now he was based in Mongolia. I'd had similar problems, that and the horses, it's why we were still friends. Since then I'd allowed some shrewdness to speak up, opened my ears to what it might say. I assumed it was the same for him, we were both getting older, had a bit of money between us and the idea was sound. For a clientele, Japan now, and then there would be Shanghai, Guandong province and places whose names we didn't know, all ready to get on the map.  It was the clientele was going to be my job.

We'd met Batbayal just that afternoon, introduced by a descendant of a hero of the revolution who, it was said, was close to securing the post of Deputy to the Governor of the Central Bank. Batbayal, he said, had heard of our active interest in the development of horse breeding and utilisation in the country, and believed he could be part of the process, had some horses to show us. Batbayal nodded. He was a giant in his smart city clothes. A bracelet flashed from his wrist as he spoke. Not any horse, Bouryiat horse, he said. Top class Bouriyat horses.

We set off straight away, his vehicle, a standard model LandCruiser without the extras. They had been his business, he said. They were his business even if everyone knew Toyota had opened up its own outlet in the recent past, Sales, Spares and Repairs all under the one, vast pre-fabricated roof. The guy might therefore be in need of money, a new income. That's how it was, we had grown older and had to think of Might Therefores, and then again what they might signify. It was a fact to be taken into account.

Twentyfive kilometres out of the city we turned off the jigsawed asphalt on to a sandy track across the steppe. Mountains ran on into mountains. Trees ran down their ridges mane-style, Mohican haircuts. One ridge after another till we turned off the track, went into four-wheel low gear and up a scrubby hill towards empty buildings that had once had windows. From the time of the Russians, Batbayal said, stables from when there had been a Veterinary Service. It was up for grabs. Sure some work was needed, but here was stabling ready made.

Up for grabs?

Interesting, I said, like I did these days of whatever might possibly be of importance for the future, a scam to be sidestepped, or part of the package.

Now lets see those horses, Danny said.

Up and down we drove, hills and ridges, the Toyota showing its paces. At a yard out in the flat, a yurt stood with cattle round about. A young man was chopping wood. He pointed us further into the hills. In and out of low-gear we went over crests of scrub that were each the top of the world. Panorama.  In series.

The horses came as a surprise, grouped on a hill like so many hills before, forty or so, a mixed group. The Bouriyat stood out, a head and a half taller, sleek black and powerful. Out of the LandCruiser the air was an all-round pleasure under the wide all-blue sky. The horses were branded, small symbols that looked as though they might all be the same. Down below stood a single yurt, closer by a shepherd with a group of sheep. Batbayal went down to talk with him like perhaps the shepherd was the one who kept his eye on the horses.

What must be in his head, Danny asked, out here everyday in this vast.

I didn't know at all, quite beyond what I could imagine. Then he said: a shepherd on foot, I don't believe it, where is his own horse. More observant these days, Danny, but how could I know, whether shepherds in this country were all the same.

The Bouryiat horses were not showing off, not clannish either, heads up and down to the scrub side by side with the others that were brown-skinned and closer to the ground. I liked them, they were magnificent, the promise of powerful speed in their build, and democratic with it. Mongol horse only bigger is what we wanted for the adult clientele. East Asia, its rich nouveau riche playing cowboys in the wild, that was the plan. I saw happy families with Mongol horses for the kids, yurt accommodation to be arranged.

There were more animals than people in the country by a margin. Who owned what when the Russians had been here; who owned what since they'd left? What did it mean when it came to animals? On the other hand, the obvious facts were not always Might Therefores of a negative hue. The horses were branded and Batbayal had known exactly where to find them.

We started back to town cutting corners, down steeper hills in the lowest gear of Four-Wheel Drive, easing across fast-running, stony streams till we reached a new sandy track on the flat. It was from there we saw the dead horse. Beside its head two streaks of blood were branded in the snow.

Back in the city it had gone dark which gave a fresh chill to the cold. Queues for hard-worked Japanese buses took up whole pavements. You can't believe how tough these people are, their endurance, Danny said. Incredible.

Back at the hotel I felt tired from all that space and oxygen and turned on the TV. It ran to cable, CNN. Hewlett-Packard's General Asia Manager said that the region's economic crisis had impacted on business, but had not impacted on the company's regional prospects; for those with the right skills and attitude, it was a flowering sector. Later, after I'd moved my chair next to the hot water pipes, a heating system the Russians had left behind, Danny rang from his mobile and suggested we meet up for dumpling soup and a beer.

In the same steamy basement the food and drink were run separately, two different tough ladies in charge. A young Mongol with a big smile and a black eye offered his wife for the night. Three bottles of vodka, he said, putting up three fingers pointing to a woman at another table. I didn't know much, not this city, but if he ever made the deal she'd punch his lights out. It was obvious.

He needs money this Batbayal but he's not an arsehole, Danny said. He was a weightlifter when he was younger, doesn't drink and knows how to get angry.

It had to count for something. This was Danny's place, where he wanted to be, but it had to count for something, the not-drinking, when the young guy was still smiling and now held up two fingers.

A man I could work with, Danny said.

It's you would be doing that, working with him, the most of it, I said. But I'd still like to see those Bouriyat horses in his own corral, his own yard.

Of course, he said. And a good look at the papers for those stables.

What papers?

Oh for a proper building that close to the city, there will be papers.

Then when the dumplings were finished he talked of the future of Mongolia, how it might be if honest men ran the world.

But I have discovered something about myself, he said, now leant across the table. I could not myself kill even the worst and biggest of thieves, not the worst of people, no matter how bad their consequences. Hard to accept about myself, but it's true.

If it was that clear, I said, bad guys and bad consequences, responsible for misery, I don't think I'd have a problem.

What are you saying, you can only say it because it is not a situation you have faced, real, in your face, both the need and the possibility. When you see that the thief, the monster, is another human being shaking with fright when you hold a gun to his head.

Then you're giving no chance to your honest men. What's that, them running the world, just a pleasant fantasy to go to sleep with?

I'm talking real situations, one human being to another, Danny said.

What was he talking about, real? It was an imagined situation. Just then his mobile rang. I looked around while he spoke, saw the wife he'd tried to sell with a tight grip around him with the black eye.

The wolf hunt is on, Danny said. Batbayal will wait in half an hour outside the Ulan Baataar hotel. Don't get any romantic ideas about a chase in the saddle, it will be done in the four-wheel drive. You want to go?

Despite the qualifications it would be a new experience; adventure; once in a lifetime; life is short: the usual attractions, and we'd get another chance to weigh up the guy.

What about you, I said.

Lets go, 4-Wheel Drive or not, living in the city these guys are still nomads, it will be good for you. But wolves are not stupid, you think they are going to wait around for a Toyotas they can hear from far off. You have to admire them, their intelligence, their loyalty.

They kill horses, I said.

But they're as much a part of the world as us. Besides, that one we saw, it was old or sick, on its own.

Nature, red in tooth and claw, I said. We'll definitely want the stabling then, secure stabling.

We set off again with Batbayal's rifle in Batbayal's vehicle. He was wearing fatigues and a leather jacket. I was brooding on the real bad guys of the world and why not be crafty rubbing them out till I got tired of it, hypothetical ethics and all that, what a wank. By then the headlights on the road had thinned out and soon after we made a stop at a murky police station. Batabayl was not sure he had brought enough bullets and went inside. Sat in the Toyota out in the yard Danny started on a story about some other hunters, Mongolians, how they'd made a tape loop or some other gizmo that could broadcast a mimic wolf call. It had worked he said, a pack had appeared on the horizon and they'd shot the bitch. Afterwards all that was left of the hunters was a single shoe, They'd run out of bullets.

What, and this was a regular thing? So. So, this Batbayal was thinking ahead, leaving nothing to chance, you couldn’t fault it. A scary story nevertheless, just the one shoe left. Other places they had clay pigeons, fat grouse, and loaded duck-shoots.

What, they chewed their way through a LandCruiser?! I said.

You are worried, Danny said. No, they had obviously moved too far from their vehicle.

Not a mistake I will be making.

I am telling you, we will not find any wolves.

Batbayal came out with a fresh round of cartridges. They started to talk in Russian and I looked out at the stars. We turned off the broken highway and stopped at one yard amongst others, a small group. Batbayal went round the back of a shack. I got out for a piss under the stars.

There was no sign of any other vehicles. OK it wasn't to be on horseback but I had thought there would be other guys involved.

You don't know these people Danny said, they are individualists who do not know what it means to be individualist.

Batbayal came out of the yard with another man who wore the traditional wraparound coat with orange waistband and a red baseball cap. He carried a bulky something with some metres of cable attached. I got a look at it as it was put in my hands, cold through my woolen gloves as he opened the bonnet. It was not a speaker but a floodlight. It took a while to get the cable ends secure to the battery, testing with the light's On/Off switch. The fourth time it worked, a shock, a dark corner of the yard as lit up as daylight. A sleepy dog jumped up to bark. I switched the lamp off, passed it through the open rear window and got in the other side. My hands warmed slowly between my thighs.

It was midnight when we drove off, silent till we reached the sandy track. The man with the light powered down the electric window, and wriggled outwards, twisting sideways to sit on the window frame rider-style like they'd always done on the chase stood up in the stirrups. The light he held cut out a slice of steppe many times the range of the Toyota's main beam, first to one side then the other.

For the horse corpse the vehicle's own lights were enough, it had gone like it had never been there at all. They lit up the snow in the gully bland but for the streaks of blood iced over. Batbayal said that other people, human beings, had taken it away, the hide was worth something. Which people? Where had they come from? Get lost in Mongolia and the odds were, you could die. The wolves would have eaten it on the spot later in the night,  Batbayal said.  Speaking for himself Danny said now there was no chance of us seeing a wolf. No chance, like he'd been persuading himself and finally got there. The man with the light borrowed Danny's leather gloves and got back out on to the window-frame as we drove off into the hills. The beam stayed out to the left, then to the right. Draughts of freezing air arrowed through the spaces round his body.

On we drove past hill and mountain, the pitted track half-muffled by the LandCruiser's shocks and suspension. My eyes stuck to the beam, found their range, lost it, found it again.

The excitement came first, the feel of it in the dark of the tight cab, then the words. In a stroke we had slowed to a crawl. I followed a finger and saw eyes that seemed too big lit up on the ridge, two dull torch beams bright in the dark. The guy with the light chuck-chucked what might be wolf sounds. Batbayal flicked off the rifle's safety catch and touched the driver-window button. He drove in low gear towards the ridge, one hand on the wheel, the gun on his lap. The eyes like lit-up saucers, were stuck on the spot up the slope, paralyzed in the lights like I'd seen furry little nocturnals on tarmac'd roads. He put the gun up, elbows planted on the window-frame, eyes to the sights and the bright eyes woke up, were gone. I followed the desperate rush of the thing across the ridge face. Then it turned to look, maybe to see. Batbayal fired at the eye-glows and it was off again faster than ever to disappear over the base of the ridge.

We drove on, the cab silent after the crash of the gunshot, the guy with light steady out the window passing one hill and then another, dark shapes in the night. We circled the yurt in the yard that we had seen in the day. Close by cows moved slowly in a corral. Dogs barked. Up another slope we went to a bigger stretch of trees, silvery silver birches, then down a little, circling the higher ground. A pair of eyes glowed across hundreds of metres but there was no time to shoot. Danny relaxed. I could see it from behind, his shoulders, his neck. He lit a cigarette. Then Batbayal lit a cigarette.

Zigzag we went, right down to the plain. He was some driver when, you couldn't see the gradients, how steep or not, not till Batbayal had tiptoe'd us over the crests, front wheels already committed. And not to be lost, that was something in itself when there was so much of it that some places had to look just like other places.

We were back by the yurt with the penned cattle. Perhaps this was it, finished for the night so we could start back towards our beds. Dogs barked. They chased the LandCruiser as we circled, their eyes glowing too, till they gave up and we started the climb back up to the same neck of woods. Anything that moved in that stretch of trees would have to know we were around, blessed with advanced hearing is what I understood. But then what did I know, I'd never been hunting in my entire life, not for anything whereas Batbayal clearly fancied the spot. And the fact that whatever moved knew that some alien thing was doing a steamroller express on their patch, maybe that knowing didn't necessarily help: because there was something in those trees you depended on; or you were too slow; or the missile was so fast that how quick you were made no difference.

The searchlight stayed steady on the edges of the wood. The trees were still shedding their leaves which lay brown and papery on the scrub. We made a turn and went in, silver birches to either side, Batbayal finding a route. Out we came, round the fringes we went again, the hero with the light probing the undergrowth. How had he not died from the cold, this guy, his head out of the rushing Toyota at roof level. Minus Five, Ten even, OK in itself but out there, the wind chill, the wind chill factor, it would be shredding his skin, his face, his ears.

He was alive, he was chuck-chucking just as we came out of the trees again. His light had picked out eyes at the upper corner of the wood. The engine was idling, the safety catch off and the eyes waited, leastways it was like they were waiting. The shot report bounced round the cab, echoed back from the slope and beyond. The thing streaked away lop-sided.

It's been hit, it's wounded, Danny said like this was absolutely the worst thing could have happened. Batbayal was driving fast, taking the bumps as they came.. I hung on to the hand grip above the seat, judders up and down my arm. Down over hillocks we went, past another stretch of silvery trees and up-over a ridge. Bam-boom, helter-skelter, trees and scrub from every angle with Batbayal the hunter not letting go the pace.

It's wounded, they've left it wounded, Danny said in English.

Maybe he was wrong, maybe this was not the place for him after all, this country where he had settled.

We zig-zagged through more trees. A thin moon was out in the sky and re-silvered them. We came out like our ears were going to pop into a shallow spacious crater of scrub and caught a flash of eyes. The fast dark shape of its body was heaving as it ran zig-zag. Batbayal drove in loops to cut it off, the gun propped on his knees then out of the window. The eyes turned to look and the gun boomed. The momentum carried it on, twenty, thirty paces, its ribs in and out like trampoline, then it staggered, fell and waited. Yellow eyes stared at the vehicle. From the back Danny looked suddenly old, his head down towards his chest. The hero with the light got out leaving his light placed on the cab roof. He circled the animal, wary, his orange waistband bright in the night. He moved in close from behind, a rock in his hand. Now it was clear, the thin face of the animal and its bushy tail. Danny turned his head away. The thud on its head was soft but the lights went out all the same. Still he was cautious, the way he crept in, grabbed the tail and hung it upside down.

Batbayal got out and from the back of the Toyota brought out a tough plastic thing like a laundry bag.

There, you see what I'm saying, that's no wolf, it's just a steppe fox, Danny said as the Mongolians stuffed it into the bag.

Maybe I looked old too, the usual attractions-new experience, once in a lifetime, all that-they'd gone cold like the aftermath of a greedy wank. Leastways Danny spoke again like he felt he ought, said he'd been impressed that this Batbayal hadn't left it wounded, had had the skill to find it again which he had not, he said, expected when we'd been up in the trees.

The next day, short of sleep, I kept an appointment out of town, a guy with several permanent yurts bunched reasonably close together. I wanted a weekly price on a guaranteed full season’s rental on the lot, and filmed a sequence or two, panoramas and close-ups. The location was good, the site banked by a steep slope with trees, and not so far from town or those Bouryiat horses.

My translator, a young man over-qualified for the world open to him, said the price proposed was too high.

It would be a surprise if it wasn’t, I said.

Things went well enough. Some thrust and parry as the three of us took turns to whisk the mare’s milk in the red bucket; then the three of us taking turns in drinking it from the beaten goblet. We agreed to think about our final offers and resume negotiations in a few days. It all made sense, that Danny liked it here.

Back in the city we hooked up for a beer in the Olympic-sized bar of the hotel. I told him how it had been, the price to and fro, the parameters reached.

I told you we would kill no wolf, he said. They are too smart. Loyal and smart.

There’s always an element of ego involved when it’s obvious someone has not been listening to a word you’ve said. Nevertheless I went on to high alert. This was business, crucial to whether the figures would add up.

One wall of the bar looked like dancing heroes in cubist style, zig-zags of shady colour. I stared at it and the white piano stood in front. An indoor fountain played close by.

You know, Danny said, the hunt last night, that Batbayal, he only did it for our benefit, to show off.

A hole in the ground had opened up but I said nothing.

It will have cost him half a day’s work to catch up on his sleep, Danny said.

This was wiseguy stuff, wise after the event.

And my guess is, didn’t enjoy it himself, Danny said.

Oh.

I said I was tired too.

First thing in the morning I was at the airport. Berlin via Beijing was possible. One way or another Beijing transit would cost, time and money. I was prepared to pay and phone him from there. Thanks, but No Thanks I would say.

HAITI

Just an observer, what else is there to be when the whole of the affected area has been cordoned off. A danger of possible buildings collapsing  and aftershocks, they say. As a human being it is hard not to able to give aid and succour to fellow human beings. Nevertheless, in our house, the TV stays on. This on the principle that you never know just when there might be a change of circumstances, that would allow us to be more hands on, play our part.

I blame the forecasters, a woman is saying, She’s somewhat the worse for wear, naturally enough, dust in her hair, and a huge, bruised lump on her elbow. I mean where was the warning, they call themselves meteorologists, but when it really mattered…

Seismologists, the young chap with the microphone corrects her, you really think they ate to blame? Behind them stands Canterbury Cathedral. Miraculous, right there in the epicentre, but it has survived the quake just like St Pauls in the blitz.

I mean where was the warning, you know what I mean, so as we could have prepared ourselves. Made arrangements, provisioned public spaces. As it is, what a shock and my home…my home…I still can’t believe it.

A warning, was it possible? How predictive can science be? And had there been a warning, what difference would it have made, these are the questions to be answered? The young man with the microphone says.

Of course, when the reconstruction process is underway, there’ll have to be an Inquiry: could more have been done, and what lessons can we learn, but to be fair to the boffins, the quake was literally a bolt from the blue. My wife says, As if those geological fault lines had gone on walkabout.

From what we can gather, the media presence is strictly limited. Today it’s been just the one young man. Not just the possible aftershock, they’re saying now, but the risk of some kind of epidemic, the sewage system in the hinterland of the Cathedral having been breached. But one feels that despite the cordon, we have a right to know what is going on, and what is happening to our compatriots, that everything be transparent.

In the studio, the scientist, who is getting quite a grilling and no mistake, says nothing can yet be said for certain. We are in uncharted waters and though we have the Richter scale reading for this very localized quake, measurements on a space-time continuum are yet to be made.

That’s all very well, you and your continuums, but are we expecting an aftershock?

Nothing is impossible.

And are these unexpected, localized occurrences about to become normal.

That’s why our on-the-ground measurements, and the statistical analysis based on them are now an absolute priority. We are not alarmists and we don’t see normalization of the event as likely, but we need to understand what has happened.

My wife brought out one of our daughter’s geography books from years ago, when she was in school.

I must say that in the relevant pages, those tectonic plates do seem very far way.

II

There are priorities, and priorities.  The scientists have theirs, and we,  my wife is in agreement, have our own priorities, close to the area as we are, as fellow countrymen, and most of all as human beings. Besides, just watching when it feels like there’s nothing one can do, it’s like being a voyeur, my wife said.

A voyeur?

You know, a Peeping Tom, she said and laughed. Not your style at all dear.

Indeed not, I said and laughed too; said I was too old for all the hanging about it must entail.

It was not so far to drive to the restricted area. We’d packed some blankets and a sleeping bag our daughter had left behind and another that must have been from one of her student mates when she was at college. And just set off.

I had a rough idea of where we should head. It was cold but bright as we turned off on to the B road where the verges were covered in golden and brown leaves, fallen from the nearly bare trees. My wife said she found the sight reassuring, that the natural order wasn’t completely out of kilter, that autumn was behaving as autumn should.

The road block came as a shock. Police officers in what looked like parachutist uniforms manned a metal barrier. I got out of the car. Two of the officers were in a crouched position and another walked over to the car. I explained our purpose. He said it was good to know that such public-spiritedness still existed, but that no, I could not enter the area.

It’s still a confused and fluid situation in there,   he said. For the time being it’s a job strictly for professionals.

But we wouldn’t get in the way, my wife said.

I’m sure you wouldn’t Madam, not intentionally, but we have to go by expert advice, and we still can’t guarantee your safety. We can’t be sure there won’t be any further damage, building collapses, falling masonry and so on.

Oh, so it’s not the danger of epidemic they’re talking about.

That I couldn’t say sir, but I wouldn’t believe everything you hear from the media he said, and carefully winked at me.

We drove back home in silence. Feeling a bit sheepish perhaps. We are not do-gooders, we don’t make a thing out of it, but it may be that that’s how we may have been perceived. So it was back to the TV, the very least we could do was to give witness.

It was no longer the top story. There was a meeting of Finance Ministers. They were worried about imbalances. A crucial election, they said, was taking place in Asia.

There was a young woman now with the microphone. She said emergency services were working flat out to secure buildings and care for the injured. She asked one man how he’d been affected. It was going to do great harm to their property values, who would want to buy a house in an area prone to quakes, and that he was very concerned about what the insurance situation might be. On the bright side however, the interviewer said afterwards, that as far as was known, there had been no fatalities. Well that was a relief. One or two friends and acquaintances from other parts of the country rang up to sympathize with our plight, and I had to explain that though we were relatively close to the area concerned, we were unaffected, but that we really appreciated their concern.

III

Next morning there was no live footage, but the newsreader said that geological complications were hindering the search for those folk believed to be missing. Then Sally came round. Long Tall Sally she calls herself though she’s short and plumpish. We don’t need anyone to do the housework now that we’re both retired, but after 25 years you don’t just say goodbye to someone. The estate’s not that far away and now and then there’s something to be done that we simply can’t manage by ourselves.

She was worried, she said. We hadn’t known she had relatives in the affected area, but there was a nephew, a refuse collector with the council, and his family, and she hadn’t been able to get hold of him. The landline was down, she said, and not a squeak out of the mobile.

Course at first, Sally said, I thought it was a joke, you know, earthquake, here.  Earthquake, they’ll be plenty of work for you then, I was going to say to him, but now ...  and as for the official help line, it’s just engaged.

We told her about our futile attempt to help the day before, and she said she’d a good mind to go herself. She was a relative after all. But she supposed the authorities knew what they were doing.

Over coffee, I said that there was no reason to believe they didn’t, but that she should keep in touch, to let us know if she learned anything, and that if there was anything we could do to help, not to hesitate.

IV

It was on the fourth day my wife said, she saw through the glass darkly, and I knew just what she meant. There was no more live footage from the area, and the reports from the studio just repeated that the Emergency Services were working round the clock, and that emergency rations were being distributed to shocked residents. It was hard to know what to make of it, so my wife rang Sally to see if she’d heard anything. What she did know was that her nephew had not been reported missing. That was as far as she’d got, but that no one was able to give any information as to why no telephone communication was possible, or when it would cease to be a restricted area.

It was all very mysterious, and we debated as to whether we should make another attempt to visit the area, perhaps to try another route. We decided to give it another day or two, and that in the meanwhile we should try and live our lives as normally as possible, which is what our daughter said on the phone, was obviously what we should be doing. Chill out, she said, as if were being hysterical. Which we were not, my wife said in no uncertain terms. To which our daughter said with a sigh, Oh Mum!

To keep myself busy, I took myself off to the allotment with the polythene sheet I’d put holes in the previous month.  My wife said she was going to try something ambitious from the cook book by one of those famous chefs our daughter had given her for Christmas. Esoteric some of them, but as I understand it, just follow the instructions and you can’t go wrong.

We had already bedded in a row of leeks and I’d had it mind to do garlic and some winter lettuce.  Bob Jackson was out on the next patch  in his gumboots and his ancient mariner jersey with the threads lose. I said I was trying out this Meaviglia d’Inverno San Martino, under the polythene it was said to be hardy enough.

Turning nasty down Canterbury way, you know, where they’ve sealed it off, Bob said as his fork turned the earth.

I asked him what he meant, what was ‘nasty’ as he put it.

Violence that’s what I’ve heard, a queue for rations that got out of hand.

Hard to believe, I said, and just how had Bob heard, did he have relations there.

No, he did not. Rumour, it was rumour he’d picked up, stories of looting, vigilantes and God knows what. And whatever the truth of the matter well, it felt all the more important to get that lettuce in. When I’d finished sowing, I weighed down the polythene with a rock back by the fence and added heavy branch at the other end from when the sycamore in the corner had been pruned.

Rumour, didn’t Shakespeare say something about rumour. What you can say is that you can’t believe in them but then that’s exactly what does flourish when we don’t get proper information.  For late lunch my wife had prepared a wonderful concoction involving courgettes  and risotto. She had enjoyed doing it she said. It was some unspoken agreement I suppose but we chose not to talk about the Quake or anything to do with it and I was not going to be passing on something Bob had heard second-hand. We were just settling down to coffee when Sally burst in. Her nephew, her nephew she said, had been badly injured. No, not from the quake, he’d been beaten up.

What? How? Where? Where was he, what could we do?

All she could say was that he’d reached some safe place, he couldn’t say where; too risky he’d said.

Why, why had he been beaten up was the obvious question but my wife and I both refrained and it was she who asked what could we do, could we help in any way. She didn’t know but if there was nothing on the News, perhaps I could phone the Help line.

The Asian finance ministers had agreed to a Form Of Words, the newscaster said, but no one really believed that any significant decisions had been reached. They never are, my wife said. I nodded in agreement but I was feeling tense, waiting, wanting to hear what was happening in our own backyard, whatever it was, to hear the truth. They now had a measurement for the strength of the quake; the consensus was that it was a one-off event; the area was still sealed off till a full inspection had been made.

Our first thought was to jump in the car but my wife reminded me of our promise to Sally. I got on the phone. A voice asked me to Press 1 if I was seeking information about an individual named from A to E; E to J and so on. Of course I should have asked Sally her nephew’s name but I pressed 1 anyway.

On the telephone they are playing Mozart, or is it Beethoven, I never could tell. They have been playing it for over an hour now. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong.

ERNEST INTERFERENCE

The first time they met, Ricardo was staying at the Kensington Hilton on Shepherds Bush roundabout. He had a list of things he'd heard could be sorted on a fee basis. Didn't speak English too good, he said, but that was the gist of it.

Heard off of who? Gerry asked, under a plane tree in the park with his mobile, reading the feller's number off the display.

It took a while, his English wasn't good at all, couldn't get a grip of the question, till he said Sylvia, it was Sylvia had given him the intro.

I'll call you back, Gerry said.

Sylvia had been at home, said the guy was all right and how she was helping Gerry, giving him a leg up.

They met at the hotel, went through the list: some things Gerry could do, others not, he said. Which was fine by Ricardo.

To complete the bits of business he'd guaranteed, Gerry insisted on making the meet different, a local library,  the Herbert Morrison branch. I'll be sat where they read the newspapers, he'd said. Faultless the feller's behaviour and on the strength of it, left him a landline number. Told him he changed mobiles on a regular basis and would recommend it to anyone.

A long time back that had been. Had to be three years at least because Sylvia'd been in America for two, California and Montana mostly. Said she was tired of small ponds and wasn't coming back. And the library was never open any more, or they'd closed it down. At least three years.

On the phone Ricardo said, Hiya mate, how's it going. Lucky you've still got the same number, What's that mean, you're doing well or you're not doing well.

I'm all right, Gerry said after he'd worked out who the hell this was, and that he had left him the landline number.

Ricardo was down in South London, he said, a flat he'd had for a couple of years. There was some work Gerry might be interested in, did he fancy coming over.

Hard to say. He'd liked the guy well enough; friendly, no fantasies, paid on the dot; a good guy. Only he was tired. It was the other side of the river. He was tired, had been for several months. He worked now and then, he said, would think about it.

The next Sunday it turned out he had nothing on. He returned the call and set off early afternoon in a Peugeot 204. On the map the Rotherhithe Tunnel looked the best bet. That had to have been a few years too because it was a surprise, driving through. Fucking narrow for two-way traffic and tiled like it was the longest urinal in the country. In the world.

Another curve came and still no light at the end of. When it came it was bright and he was out on a concrete roundabout. He drove round twice to be sure of the right turn-off only that wasn't the end of it: if there were landmarks, he didn't know them. He stopped to check the A to Z. Then again at a painted map of the estate just off the pavement in front of four tower blocks. Blobs of undercoat took up half the board but he made out the letters CLEM ATTL which had to be the one furthest back on the left.

He parked and walked across a spread of scrub criss-crossed by asphalt paths.

Clem Attlee House had a call-up on the entrance wall, Ricardo said to come on up. Eighth floor. He'd be waiting by the lift. Gerry took five, flipping through the possibilities. They were too unlikely, all of them. The lift doors were housed in bruised aluminium with stenciled floor numbers and a call button at chest height. No numbers lit up when he pressed it but he could hear a kick-off whirr somewhere in the shaft.

Fair play to Clem Attlee House, after a while the doors slid open in front of him. Inside SLEDGE SUCKS PUSSY was up on the wall in aerosol red. He pressed the button under the stenciled eight. Sledge sucks pussy. What was that supposed to be, a put down, like Sledge was some kind of wanker. Envy more like it. Lucky boy, Sledge the specialist.

Ricardo was stood on the landing with a big grin. He'd filled out, stockier. His arm was round Gerry's shoulder. Hey man, you look great, he said.

It's just front, believe me, Gerry said.

They walked along a corridor, thick rubber tiles dull under frosted lighting and stopped by an unlocked door. Inside. Ricardo locked the Chubb. A TV was audible. It was in the lounge, a big affair on a high trolley. Two women in black stood up from a round table that sat six. They nodded at him. They smiled.

Gerry smiled back and they were away, out of the room. Ricardo was all eyes on the TV, football. The commentator said Parma's build-up was patient. The table was covered by a crocheted cloth. On it sat cut glass bowls, walnuts in one with a cracker thing silver on top, oranges and bananas piled up in another. Gerry'd always seen himself as a tidy bloke but here it was no contest. Comprehensively spic and span. Like for one thing it was now obvious his own windows needed cleaning. From here, through the open space between the lace curtains, it was like there was no glass at all, the view of the block across the way.

Ricardo was shouting at the TV, cursing. Then he sat down on the other side of the table. You see that, he said. Fucking blind the ref, the number three holding Asprilla's shirt. You see it. The two ladies came back into the lounge one behind another. They carried trays heavy with stuff, glasses, little plates, confectionery.

Give the ball Asprilla you wanker. Faustino, the by-line Faustino.

Gerry stood up and crossed to the window. He could see the adjacent block top to bottom. It was smudged concrete and bland windows. He scanned floors six to ten. All quiet on the curtain front. His chuckle of the day. The daily indispensable.

Hey Gerry, eat, drink.

The woman, the one who might be the younger, did it with her hands, that he should sit down. She pulled a chair out a little from the table. He said Gracias. She liked that and poured him matt black coffee into a small china cup, then pointed at a tin of Carnation milk.

His coffee was surrounded by plates, pastries, nuts, some stuff looked like jam. The two women had sat down, watching and waiting. He pushed a pastry with his fork and was given a paper napkin. His mouth was jammed up, chunks of crumbling stuff. He swallowed some coffee as it was.

Direct hit. Wham. It made you wonder, why they bothered with the powder.

The crowd roared, Ricardo roared, and a shot smashed into an Inter-American hoarding just wide of the left post. Ricardo's arms went up and wide.

Asprilla was it? Gerry asked. Colombian is he?

Ricardo looked at him like Gerry was pulling his leg.

Just lucky the goalie wasn't in the way, he said and got up to open a wall cupboard. He put a bottle of Chivas on the table and poured two glasses. The women smiled at him. Gerry wasn't sure, not after all the sweet stuff. He finished his coffee and picked up some cashew nuts. The players were walking off the pitch, blue shirts and white. On screen the packed stadium closed down. A jolly tune played. Some guy was really in the shit only it turned out he wasn't in the shit at all. He'd been prudent, gone PRUDENTIAL.

What they selling? Ricardo said.

Insurance.

Only one insurance, Ricardo said.

What, what was he going to say? Guns, death, mad stuff? If so, he was out of here.

Money in the pocket, money in the bank, Ricardo said. Hey man, you don't like the Chivas?

It'd go with another coffee.

The woman who did the coffee was up like a shot.

Pure Colombian, Ricardo said and slapped his knee laughing like there was no tomorrow.

The women were smiling at him, waving at the plates on the table. Ricardo had turned back to the TV, a new motor with its anti-theft gizmos featured. Gerry said Muy bueno, shrugged and mimed a fat stomach. They tutted like he was talking bullshit.

Too much central heating, that wasn't bullshit. The sweat was inching out all over him.

Ricardo was rubbing his hands. Faustino's going to score this half. For sure. You want a bet.

No, this was not on. Not another 45 minutes. As it happened his afternoon had been free: True there was a letter from Sylvia that he was in no rush to read, sat there since Saturday morning with US stamps on; sure the hospitality was terrific. It was, couldn't be faulted. But he was tired, couldn't any bastard see that, he was tired.

Lets go for a walk, Gerry said.

Ricardo looked at him like he was pulling his leg.

You can video it, Gerry said. Then he said he'd got an appointment.

Ricardo shrugged like there was nothing else for it; OK, if that's the way it had to be; fucking crazy guy. Then he said, We can talk here.

The women knew the score, they were gone.

No way, Gerry said.

Ricardo shrugged, said he'd fix the video because if one thing was for fucking sure it was Faustino Asprillo was going to score this half.

It won't kill you, a bit of fresh air, he said, when Ricardo came out and unlocked the Chubb.

When the lift door opened there was a guy in a shell suit and a girl with a wet-look perm, their backs to each other.

Ground floor? Gerry said and pressed G.

Downstairs Ricardo pulled a yellow scarf round and round his neck like there was going to be a vicious wind out there, Arctic. It was spring for fucks sake, sunny.

Only it was like the blocks had some kind of force field round them. A fucking hurricane the first yards.

Then it dropped down to gale force where two kids were having a kick about. The goalie was pissed off, walking right back to the perimeter railings for a shot that had just missed. The next one went spinning wide. Ricardo was on to it and played a curling cross. Then he settled down to tell Gerry the situation.

They reached the pavement by the estate map board and turned left.

You see what I'm saying, Ricardo said, what's needed.

Gerry nodded. It all hung together, he could see it.

They reached a corner building in red-brick with metal grilled windows and an all round plastic strip above door level, BENSON & HEDGES. Ricardo followed it round to the left. He stopped on the pavement.

So can you do any of it?

It's what I'm thinking about, Gerry said. Let me make sure I've got it right. Five items in all. Yes?

Ricardo ticked them off on his fingers. Right, five things.

He could definitely do three, Gerry said, standard rates. The other two maybe, he'd know for sure by Tuesday, the price on those negotiable. He didn't say it but even if they were possible it was going to take a lot of running around and the way he felt a lot of running around was going to cost. Like enough for a vacation, a month of it on a hot beach. He said he'd like a down payment on the three.

Sure Gerry, that's what I'm saying. I got the money up in the flat but you got to take us out for a walk, Ricardo said and turned back round the corner.

Lets have it right man, a few hundred yards we've walked.

See Gerry I play football Saturdays, we've got a team. We play Saturdays, train Wednesday evening. I got enough exercise.

Gerry wasn't getting through, some communication problem, but you had to try. Ricardo, we haven't had any fucking exercise.

So what did we come out for?

They were turning in towards the flats. There was a big guy in a double-breasted suit and thick round specs blocking the asphalt. An old boy, pensioner age but big with it. Smoking a pipe.

Nearly 50 years since I've been here, he said.

Is that right, Gerry said. The guy hadn't moved.

Course there's been a lot of changes since then. These blocks for one thing. They tell me one of them is called Clem Attlee House, is that right.

Sharp his tone, sharp eyes even behind the specs. Official. You could smell it, that and the pipe. And still the cunt hadn't moved.

That's right, Gerry said.

A genuinely modest man, Clem was, but not as soft as he'd have you believe. A memorial he might have approved of. So you live there yourself?

Gerry didn't like it. He could see Ricardo didn't like it either.

Catch you later then Richard, he said and stood his ground. No, just visiting, he said, if it's any of your business.

My business? No. In a hurry is he, your friend Richard?

An official and entitled to a smack on the jaw the way he was carrying on, only with a guy that age how could you know, have a heart attack just to spite you.

I believe he is, Gerry said, he's a football fanatic.

What, on a Sunday?

Gerry laughed. A false alarm. An official nutter more like. Or a born-again. Bit old for that kind of thing wasn't he?

Football? seven days a week I believe, he said. Anyway nice talking to you.

When he did move, the old boy, he was quick. An about turn.

I'll accompany you if I may, Clem Attlee House. The map's not very good is it, they need to pull their socks up in maintenance. They've let things slide and I wouldn't like to end up in the wrong building.

Gerry was moving at pace. Quiet the place was. Not a soul. That was South London for you. And the old boy was still there at his shoulder.

Just visiting you said, so where is it you're living?

Green Lanes, Gerry said.

Green Lanes eh, I'll bet that's changed a bit.

Had it? Gerry hadn't been there in years. Full of Greeks as far as he knew. And Turks. He shrugged and pushed through the block's main door. And the guy was still at his shoulder. Stepped into the lift with him.

On a Sunday, a day of rest, here was this old guy nosey like he had every right to be nosey, like he'd been getting away with it since the year dot. And he was wearing it. Not the pipe though, he told him so, to put it out.

The old geezer was surprised, you could see it. Then he shrugged and put his thumb over the pipe bowl.

What floor, Gerry said.

Oh, I think I'll have the eighth. Yes, a lot of people underestimated old Clem.

What was it, this 'I Think I'll Have'. Just what was it?

To their cost, the man said.

Mine's the fourteenth, Gerry said, pressing the two buttons in sequence.

He turned to look at his own piece of wall. SLEDGE SUCKS PUSSY. He could feel the movement, like the lift was being sucked up a tube.

A decent man with a vision, the man said. Quite a suntan your friend Richard has, still I suppose that with the package holiday of today all things are possible for the ordinary working man. As indeed they should be. For the honest, hard working man making his contribution.

The lift had stopped, the doors were open and still the cunt was talking.

Your floor I believe, Gerry said.

And what does the guy do? Takes a wallet out of the inside pocket of his double-breasted. Puts away his specs. Pulls out another pair in a case. Puts them on. Gets close up to a piece of paper out of his wallet.

Eighth floor, Clem Attlee House, SE. That's right isn't it?

Gerry turned away from his wall.

Why don't you fuck off and leave me alone, he said.

I thought so, the man said. When I first clapped eyes on you, I knew it.

He knew fucking what!

You're a spiv, that's what you are, stands out a mile.

A spiv? So? What did the guy think? Why pick on him?

Gerry pressed the fourteen button again. The guy was shaking his head like it was a sad business.

The lift doors closed. Where had the geezer been all his life? He stepped out at the fourteenth and started down the stairs. Didn't get back in the lift till he was down on the sixth. Walked straight out on the ground floor and out through the block's main door without looking back. Walked all the way to the Peugeot without looking back.

He didn't fancy the tunnel and instead headed for Tower Bridge. Driving across he looked over west at St Paul’s, its dome gleaming in the sunlight. Half way over a group of Japanese had their cameras out. He turned to look east. When he was a kid it had been full of big ships. Busy. Ships and foghorns in the fog.

Three items he could do for Ricardo no sweat. Good money, no sweat.

Straight ahead the tower was gleaming white stone, a fortress out of toytown. On the north side he doubled back round a filter, cruised round a square two times and came out into Fenchurch Street. Bank names in copper relief gleamed in the sun. Not another car in sight.

By the Barbican he pulled up at a phone box.

Hi, Ricardo, he said. We should meet up. Like I said, at least some of your workload I can handle. Not your end though, a bit smelly some of the old people down your way.

He could hear crowd noise. Then Ricardo said, What?

Like they needed a bath. Hey, remember the first place we met? There, Tuesday,four o'clock in the bar. You remember? Four o'clock.

If Ricardo grumbled: if Ricardo whinged: if Ricardo said anything except OK, that was it. Finished.

OK, Ricardo said.

He got back in the Peugeot to drive home. He could imagine it, the wrong move. Down in the lift from the fourteenth and the fucking thing stopping at the eighth. Your man standing there with a sarky comment like he was a big wheel, puffing on his pipe and stepping in.

Inside the flat Gerry locked the double Chubb and put his feet up.

On the envelope was George Washington in triplicate. Who never said a lie, they said.

Bollox.

I don't know what it is with you Gerry, Sylvia's letter said. If you don't widen your horizons soon they'll shrink for ever.

Yes, yes, yes. Sure. Oregan, why not. Only he was tired.

Couldn't any bastard see that, he was tired.

CHOP CHOP

He must press on. No time to be lost. If there ever had been time to lose, he did not remember it.  Sunday evenings? Perhaps, evenings when he should be sat down with his dreams but even then, how could anyone cross their heart and say that was lost time. How could you win without having your dreams?

This Sunday evening he could only remember his dreams. He must press on. A small misunderstanding when night was falling and the girls must be fresh for the dawn because Mr Brown too, he was pressing on. Expansion, a new contract, was what he said and the agency must supply or he would have to look elsewhere. It was nothing personal, he said, the big Englishman in his suit and the pressed white shirt undone at the collar, but that was the situation, fresh salad was a highly competitive business.

He must press on, pushing the girls like the donkeys they were, stupid girls from the north, from villages on stony ground. Hurry hurry. It was he who must say it, see how was the traffic and say Go! Pulling the handle of the fold-up shopping trolley and the mattress tied on with the octopus grip, pulling the girls at either end. And still the mattress swayed on the trolley as if the girls were not there at all. Till they reached the white line in the middle of the road, after the half-gap had come, the big red bus that had had the time to brake. And there, the sound of the brakes with the white line reached, when it was clear there was only one thing to be done, that the mattress must turn and hold itself along the white line till the next gap came, it was he, sweat on the forehead in the cool night air, him who must make it so. It took all his strength to pull them into the line, the girls and the mattress that was red with a white zig-zag, so as to face the opposite pavement. It was their next objective, the opposite pavement.

It was nothing personal, Mr Brown said, but the consumer is king. Or queen, he said, with a laugh and a slap on the shoulders. And he had said in return, No Problem Misser Brown, because it was no problem till the dice fell bad and there was a small misunderstanding over the room. These girls, they were stupid country girls, he’d said, must cook their own food like there is no other food in the whole wide world. Mr White said, read the contract pal. A rude man. Now they must press on. And these girls, what did they care when everything was laid on for them. Knowing there would always be a bed and some food because someone else would arrange it.

The half-width of road ahead rumbled under the weight of the truck, TESCO lettered along its side. The girls, what did they care. England, where nothing bad happened. Hurry hurry, pulling them through the next gap before the BMW. Pulling because they stared at the car, black, 5 series, like paradise had come to this earth. He would have done it all by himself if the double-size didn’t bend and spout itself  like the fattest, baddest serpent. He would have brought the girls separate. One by one or two by two, he’d have brought them, but when there was mattress or tow, what could he do? What could any man do?

Till they reached the promised land, him dragging the trolley when its left wheel had tilted on the camber. There, on the other side, a man stared at them . Too bad, there was no time to entertain. Stare what you like. Whereas he, he must press on: the girls must be fresh for dawn, Mr Brown says that’s how they must be. It is nothing personal he says, it is contractual quotas.

Over the weekend problems had come his way like a pack of dogs in a village of mud. Scavengers with yellow teeth.

Was a mistake Misser White, he’d said. Poor country girls, they are ignorant.

It was not his problem Mister White had replied. No cooking on the premises; contractual obligations had not been met and they must go.

On the pavement the girls stood. He must pull the trolley round,  them and the mattress with it. They must press on. Of course they must press on. Along the one block, past the All Night Food and Wine where no one gave them not a stare nor a glance. This was London town There was enough entertainment already.

A very hard man, Mr White, and then today, the clutch on the Transit had gone. More money from his own pocket and not ready till Monday.

It was not his problem, Mr Brown said but just this once-and he was serious, just this very once-he would arrange transport for the pick-up. 5.30 am sharp, and the girls must be fresh, fresher than the fresh salads, he’d said, and laughed at his own joke.

The address?

He’d said he would ring Mr Brown later with the address, waiting for a joke at his expense or worse, Mr Brown saying enough was enough.

And now, he must take the next risk, leaving the girls on the corner with the mattress while he checked the new place was safe, no sign of the bandit landlord himself or any neighbour snoopers.

He told them, stay there, and don’t talk to no one. Everywhere in the world there were bad men and in London too, he told them. And then there were the police. Any sign of them, they should walk away and leave the mattress. And then return to the corner when everything was OK again. He would be waiting for them. They moved their heads as if they understood, and what could he do but hope even these village girls had understood. They surely knew what meant police.

And he must press on. Around the corner he went, his chest tight, the breathing heavy, and unclipped the new keys from his belt. He knocked the door five times before opening up. It’s what he’d told them, the first batch: so they would know it was him, told them five times that he would knock five times.

There were four of them with the one double mattress, along with the single bed that came with the room. The light bulb in the ceiling had a pink shade that was stuck in a tilt. A studio flat, the thief of a landlord said, a kitchenette and bathroom squeezed in. But what could he do?! Pay, he had no choice; the girls must be fresh for their work.

No, they said like they were Siamese and all joined at the head, no one else had come round. On his way out he locked the door. Anxious juices were in his belly as he turned the corner, but there they were, with the mattress, just as he had left them. Donkeys waiting to be told what to do next. A couple in crazy coloured clothes were staring at them from across the street. Lucky people with time to lose. They could stare as much as they like for now they must press on, round the corner with them and the mattress in tow.

Six of them in place now, chattering away their nonsense, not a care in the world. Everything was on his plate. Six more girls, one more mattress and one hour to go before midnight and Mr White round with his friends who would not be friendly friends. He must press on. He folded  the trolley flat and told them not to speak to any one,  not open the door to anyone, and hurried out. No time for even one cigarette when this should be his own time, to sit down with his dreams.

One day.

THE ISLAND

As if I could have cared less about them, them or their precious Retirement Complex,  that's the irony of it; and yet they nearly killed me. And do you know this is the first time I've told the story though it all happened nigh on forty years ago. No one likes to look a complete fool but when you're as old as I am such things really don't seem to matter any more, ego, face or still less, ambition, not when you’ve achieved what you set out to achieve. Besides, the story might interest you.

At that time I was in the Inspectorate of Police, Northern Mainland Division, but due to a temporary absence of the colleague who manned the Islands desk, I took over that duty as a stand-in. He had been seconded to a committee responsible for the overhaul of frontier policing. If I'm so sure about that after all these years it's because of course the work of that committee was to have such huge consequences but also because I took an interest in this colleague when I discovered - after the events I am about to describe - that he himself was originally from the Island of Sheep.

Before all this happened he had been someone I knew from the canteen and the corridors of the Inspectorate building, someone to say hello to, and of course he briefed me as to my duties when I was called in to cover for him. But all I remember of him then is that he gave an efficient enough summary of what was required, which was not a great deal. Since the posting was purely temporary I was not required to think at all in terms of policy. It was just routine. Part of that routine was a tour of the islands themselves, a twelve day schedule that fell every 4 months. Though my stint on the job was to be only 2 months it happened to coincide with one of those scheduled tours. I learned later, when I reviewed for myself what had happened,  that he had strenuously sought to avoid this happening, but the dates for the Review committee had been fixed before his appointment to it.

I don't know if you know the islands at all. Despite the existence of helicopter facilities the best way to travel there and from one to another was by boat. A ferry service linked them, quite likely it still does despite your 'transport revolution'. It strikes me that any change in anything these days is heralded as a revolution. Anyway the great thing about travelling by steamer was that it helped one adjust to the slower pace of island life in general. I was lucky in that this spell of duty fell in springtime and I remember the state of well-being I felt approaching my first stop-off. I'd had a good lunch, simple but honest fare. Later I stood on deck looking at the harbour getting larger in that wonderful light you get during the hour or two before dusk. It was small and well kept with a few fishing boats, full of the bustle one associates with the arrival of a ferry. The little town built round the harbour looked charming in a certain slapdash way that you find rarely with mainland towns, the buildings themselves solid-looking and in good repair. Beyond it there was a patchwork of cultivated fields, vegetables mostly.

We were not so many of us passengers, a few of the older, quieter tourists you find in that season, one or two people on business and a few islanders. Still, the arrival of the ferry was clearly quite an event in the age-old pattern of island life, one of its landmarks you might say. Friends and family greeted each other and an old fashioned little crane that had stood poised against the skyline swung into life, for of course the ship also carried cargo. In that sense it was the lifeblood of the islands. Anyway as I say I remember feeling that all was well with the world as the steamer began its manoeuvres to draw up alongside the jetty. Of course I had a job to do but there was something of a holiday mood on me, after all just a few weeks earlier I'd never imagined I'd be on this boat, at this place, though of course I knew of its existence. I should also say that though I'd been given a schedule for my tour by my colleague, with dates, I started off several days ahead of the allotted time.

Why? Oh a mixture of things: partly because I knew I was going to face a massive workload when this temporary duty was over - something of an underestimation as it transpired - and why not make this 'working holiday' as long as possible; because by working flat out beforehand on my in-tray I created the opportunity and even then there was an element of chance, the meeting of a liaison committee on which I served was postponed; and partly because canniness was encouraged by the Inspectorate and even if it was only a matter of days, a slightly unexpected check is always likely to be more revealing. But who can say what comes first when it's a question of motives, especially when opportunity's mixed into the brew?

Ha ha, you are perceptive. Yes of course my period in the Inspectorate influenced my way of thinking, but I rather think you'll find that the axes of motive and opportunity are more widely relevant than in police work as such. There's a lot of policy decision-making where it would be hard to say which came first.

So there I was coming into harbour, and I noted the presence of three policemen on the quay. Unobtrusive but a presence all the same, as they should be. I made myself known to one of them and presented my credentials. Though I was clearly unexpected on that day he didn't seem put out, and I was taken by car to police headquarters in the main town some distance inland.

Oh no, this wasn't the Island of Sheep. You'll have to forgive an old man rambling on and not explaining things properly. It is rather amazing, all the memories that have come flooding back now I'm finally telling the story.

But forgive me, I'm being a rotten host, let me offer you a decent whiskey. My doctor says I shouldn't but if I listened to everything he says life would be a miserable business indeed. A large one for you and a nip for me. Cheers. To the future of government!

Now where was I? No, it wasn't the Island of Sheep where I began my tour. I forget the name of the place and to keep a long story short I should just say that my stay there was pleasant enough. On none of the islands was the force really stretched, some drunkenness and fighting, the odd theft, the occasional murder, invariably domestic. The one thing I saw as serious was the possibility of smuggling, this is always going to be a problem with islands and especially where the practice has been romanticised in the past. Of course I had liaised with the Coastguard Service in the past and made its local base my first port of call if you'll excuse the awful pun. There was only the one vessel to cover all the islands and it was based in this first place. Still the commander was an excellent man and they made best use of what they had by cruising at random in the waters around the different islands. I made a note there and then to liaise more frequently with their overall HQ on the mainland and provisionally to support any requests they made for additional craft.

Another thing I concentrated on was how well the local forces were using the recently installed computer equipment, how efficient their accessing and feeding of our central database in mainland HQ. Very primitive by today’s standards, but a big thing at the time.

I did manage to make it something of a holiday too, enjoying the clean sea air and peace and quiet but at the same time - what an eager beaver I was in those days - I did need to check out not just their procedures but how they executed them. There's always that risk of complacency creeping in to a force when for most of the time nothing much is happening. I remember for example that on one island I stuck tissue paper in my mouth, used a phone box and said a bomb was going to go off in some administrative building, the Tax Office I think it was. In those days bombings were quite a common phenomenon in the world and even on our own mainland. I was pleased to observe that the local force responded swiftly and efficiently. Not just that, they followed it up well and clearly had a good eyes-and-ears relationship with the local hotel and lodging house owners.

In another place I discreetly left a medium-quality forged passport in a pub. It was in police hands fast enough but the response was barely adequate, between C plus and B minus would be about it, and in this case I did think a shake up in personnel was required.

The Island of Sheep was my penultimate stop-off. I took the boat from the island nearest - my memory for names really has gone - where I remember I'd felt especially relaxed, the sea air, some excellent fish in the harbour restaurant and a freshness to the landscape. It was just a three hour trip and the ferry departed conveniently enough just after a final lunch.

The weather was perfect. The sky was clear and it was warm enough to sit out on the upper deck. I started reading an old book I'd come across on the history and customs of the islands. Of course as islands, having an intimacy with the sea, some of their customs were unique to them, but in many ways they were also, one might say, a repository of our national traditions and way of life. They'd been less affected by the impact of modern technology, urbanization and so forth than the mainland. Celebrations of those victories which made our country what it is, but which had become pallid, somewhat cursory affairs on the mainland, were there central events in the annual calendar. Nowhere was this more true than on the Island of Sheep.

I must have dozed off for it seemed that no time had passed and I'd read just a few pages when the island was in sight. Even from a distance one could see that this was a barren landscape, tougher than the other islands but with its own rugged beauty, a statement of defiance in the swirl of greens, greys and blues of the surrounding sea.

Ah yes, a little florid for modern tastes my description. Ah well. Just help yourself, the bottle's there to be drunk.

By this time I'd become quite a connoisseur of docking manoeuvres and there, given the narrowness of the harbour we went in arse-to-front. I noticed straight away that the Force was especially vigilant. There were four of them and they questioned those who disembarked at random. I know because I was one. I've said I think that a police force should have presence but be no more obtrusive than is necessary. I should say however that the officer was scrupulously polite even when I played a little game with him. Here again I'm not sure I could pinpoint my motive but I said I was a Civil Servant, which was true enough if a trifle disingenuous on my part, and on holiday. He asked me how long I would be staying and where. This I didn't know which prompted further questioning, all done in the same courteous but firm manner. I should also say that all this took place not long before the general introduction of identity cards so instead he asked to see my credit card. I showed it to him and he checked it on his handset terminal. It was when he was finally satisfied that I showed him my credentials. He seemed a bit put out, saying that I wasn't expected for a day or two while I congratulated him on his vigilance. During the short drive to the Police Compound he said little, except that he was an islander himself and proud of it.

What a laborious yarn teller I am, there seems to be nothing but context but I can see no way to avoid it. As you'll know it's been policing policy since time immemorial to have a mixture of local men and those from other parts of the country, general policy, and the Island of Sheep was no exception though here the ratio had become unbalanced. It was one of the first notes I made. The chief for example, he too was local. A wiry, leathery man of 55 or so with close cropped grey hair whose manner hovered between the laconic and the taciturn. He examined my credentials carefully in his office and sent a fax to mainland HQ.

Anyway he was satisfied by the reply and I then congratulated him on his vigilance. He apologised and said something to the effect that you never could be too careful. In another situation, and with a different type of man, I might have taken that up speculatively, raised the question of the Economy of Time, that being too careful about one thing might mean not having the time to be careful about something of equal or greater importance.

Really! You've actually read my paper on that?

What, and that old thing of mine on the nature and paradoxes of Delegation?

They're still being circulated? Well I suppose I should feel flattered but I'm more inclined to flatter you, that you should mention them together, for I rather suspect that it was there, on the Island of Sheep, that I first thought seriously about the problematic areas of delegation, though to be perfectly frank those thoughts were somewhat swept away by the events I am about to relate.

Would you just put another log on the fire.

Yes, that's better. Yes I will have just another little one, a curse on all doctors.

I was by then, in the chief's office, tired enough to at least want the matter of my accommodation fixed, though I was diligent enough, as one is at that age, to want to stay around long enough to do some work since it was to be my only evening there - I had just a 24 hour stopover penciled in - and to make something of my having arrived earlier than expected. The chief said that my colleague on the Islands Desk invariably stayed at a little guesthouse some way out of the harbour town. He commended its food and the tranquility and beauty of its situation, the coast there being at its most dramatic, as he put it.

Again I can't define my motive exactly but I said I'd think about it, and in the meanwhile I'd like to take a look at how they were using the new filing system. Yes, a mixture of things, perhaps just perversity on my part but also a feeling that staying somewhere in town was the best option for putting a finger on the pulse of the place, and because I couldn't help but notice how loquacious this man-who-didn't-waste-a-word had suddenly become, though I put this down to no more than a possible personal connection with the owners, him doing them a small favour in what was after all a small community.

As it turned out I did stay there for the simple reason that by the time I'd finished my check it was late, night had fallen and I wasn't in the mood for having to look for somewhere to stay. A good meal and bed was all I had in mind, that and the space for a little quiet reflection. You see I'd got quite interested in their database. I hadn't been on the Desk for long enough nor was I much motivated to do more than an adequate job of it to be completely au fait with the files, but it was soon clear to me that the data they held was far and beyond what was transmitted by them to Mainland HQ. Of course to an extent, that's natural enough. For one thing the accumulation of useless information clogs the system as we’ve come to know. Equally - and here was another of the seeds for my reflection on Delegation - we were seeing all over the world at that time, the failure of systems which couldn't leave decisions to be made by the man on the spot. But in this case I was curious that there was evidence in particular, of comprehensive surveillance of visitors to the island. A man described as a writer for example seemed to have been observed for just about every minute of his stay.

This suggested the misuse of precious and limited manpower resources.

At the same time the chief, while he obviously couldn't prevent my use of the facilities, dropped several hints that they needed to make use of them themselves. I therefore didn't drag it out and had anyway seen enough to be caught somewhere between admiration, worry and curiosity. Neither did I say much.

I was driven out to the guest house by an officer who said he would return next morning to take me wherever I wanted to go. He was also an islander and on the brief journey he extolled the beauty of the place. Certainly the hotel was all it had been described. It was set in a cove just off the main road. One or two other lights twinkled close by and I could hear the swell of the tide and caught a breath of the salty air.

How easily the words trip off my tongue. That damned place where I was as close to death as I have ever been. Ironic, now I feel death to be properly complementary to life and could almost welcome it, but I was young then. And I'm leaping ahead. Another log on the fire if you wouldn't mind. And perhaps you're hungry, I could ring the kitchen for something. No?

The guesthouse was wonderfully comfortable, without that ostentation and fuss which so often passes for luxury. I and the driver were greeted by a homely body of 60 or so, her hair up in a bun. They obviously knew each other well and he was invited to take a drink while I was shown to my room. I had a little smile to myself, I'd been right but it was innocent enough, only a fanatic would have called it corruption. And my room, well they'd been right hadn't they, I'd have been hard pushed to find one better anywhere let alone on the Island of Sheep. It was on the upper floor which we reached by a polished oak stairway. My room too was fitted out in wood of an earlier period. I remember a magnificent rocking chair. It had its own balcony and looked out directly over the sea.

Dinner was excellent too. There was only one other guest, a well-kept man of fifty or so who invited me to join him at his table. He was a lawyer by profession, an islander himself but who lived and worked on the mainland. He sometimes had business for the islanders which required him to visit.

I have a house myself here but it's not worth opening up for just a couple of days, not when this place here is such a treat.

To which, eating the most tender of roast lamb, I heartily agreed though the vegetables were not as they’d been on other islands. Here there was very little home-grown, they depended on the ferry. A younger man who was apparently the son of the house served us with a minimum of fuss. My dinner companion went on to say that naturally he would return to the island and his house permanently upon retirement. A well-read man of wide interests. I remember we talked about the evolution of architectural styles in the country as a whole as well as contemporary trends. And he gave a fascinating account of the pre-history of the island, having obviously a thorough knowledge of the archaeological literature.

The evening passed agreeably. I remember when dessert was being served I caught a glimpse of a very old lady and a sturdy little lad in the kitchen. The lady was mother to our hostess, my companion told me.

Eighty six years old, we live to a good old age here, he said and went on to talk of the stresses and pressures of mainland life.

That night I slept better than I had for a very long time and in the morning ate a good breakfast. It was warm enough to take my coffee out on to the balcony and a panoramic view of the coastline opened up and out to sea I could see one or two fishing vessels. The cove below was partly hidden but I could see it had a sandy beach and played with the idea of taking a dip. A track ran down there from the hotel, it would have been easy enough but then my driver arrived. I packed and paid the bill.

At the compound I decided to check the personnel records. Once again they were not altogether pleased at the loss of facility time involved but I wasn't going to take long. What the records showed was that out of a full complement of eight only two were off-island officers and one of those had married a local girl. It turned out that the other was out on duty in the harbour town itself and I decided to find him.

Which wasn't very difficult. Close to the harbour itself was a market and I found him there.  The vegetables, as I’ve said, were poor, but everything else on offer suggested a prosperous town for such poor terrain, that's how it seemed. He was a young chap of around 26. Watching him on the job I could see he was clearly well-known and respected and if the people of the place were reserved towards him I saw that as no bad thing. I invited him for a drink when he'd finished his shift.

We found a quiet corner in a pub I remember and he was soon talking away Nineteen to the Dozen in that way rather lonely people have. I soon knew his entire life story and at some point he said he'd like to be posted back to the mainland. Without rushing in I got round to asking why, had he felt any hostility for example. Evidently he found the question strange and no, it was a matter of being bored. By which I took him to mean there weren't enough Discotheques or suchlike. Still, I said I'd look into his case and I had it in my own mind to submit a memo to the effect that urgent action should be taken to re-align the local/outsider ratio in the Force to proper levels. I suspected that my colleague back at HQ had just let the matter drift.

I went back to the compound for the hours remaining until the next ferry left with the idea of copying a sample of their raw data to take back to mainland HQ and had begun on this, to the annoyance of the chief, when an officer came into say that owing to some mechanical problem the ship's arrival would be delayed. He didn't know for exactly how long, the midday of the following day at least he seemed to think. It wasn't such an uninviting prospect in fact but I did, as a matter of form, ask about the helicopter. One was not due for two days; if the ship was further delayed they might be able to get one for the following evening, I was told. With the modest degree of clout I possessed, that could be made into a certainty but as I say, I was in no hurry to leave. Instead  I thought of how I would spend the time made available by this unlooked for extension to my stay. I got them to ring through to the hotel to renew my booking, and said I'd like the use of a car for the day.

For a laconic man the Chief had quite a line when it came to moaning. If he mentioned their shortage of vehicles once he did so a hundred times. I said I would take the matter up with Equipment & Supplies on my return but for now I wanted a car. He repeated his interminable complaint. I put my foot down, pulled rank I suppose, and gave a tour de force of irritation. My God, I could be tetchy in those days. How fundamentally trivial it all seems now.

Do you need topping up?

Sure?

Yes it could do with some, a couple of small logs and that big one there should do the trick.

Finally he said that if I insisted I would have a car in half an hour. While I waited I remember that the Chief made some reference to the Retirement Complex. At which I looked blank till he said it again and I remembered that of course one of the first RCs, in fact the very first, had been sited there.

It’s before your time of course, but at that time they were an innovation, the sheer scale of them. Partly of course it was a matter of the economic implications of shifting demographic trends which exacerbated the perennial problem of people reaching retirement age without having made any proper provision for themselves. When it comes to people taking responsibility for their own pension plans, you can take the horse to water, as the old adage has it, but you can’t make it drink. Social Service and health care budgets were simply intolerable. With the economies of scale, they allowed for, RCs were the obvious answer and had great advantages for the old folk themselves: a healthy environment; clean air; peace and quiet; entertainment and amenities in situ. It wouldn't have been my cup of tea, I have to say, but then I've had a lifelong aversion to organised leisure. I was always a bit of a rebel that way, even at school.

Of course they’ve had some bad publicity in their time. In fact a journalist had tried to stir things up a year or so before my story begins. You know the sort of thing, What A Way To Treat Our Old Folk, full of the compassion they don’t have to pay for.

It seemed like a bit of a non-sequiter, the chief mentioning it at all, the Retirement Complex but I supposed he wanted to impress me with at least one thing the island was known for. Anyway I finally got the car and set off on the coast road going northwards, that is in the opposite direction to the hotel. For a while the road stuck close to the contours of the coast and inland the terrain was flat though I could see some rugged hills ahead. There were a few hamlets on the road and a couple of junctions where inland villages were signposted. Here and there sheep grazed. Strange, but after all these years I can distinctly remember the phrase 'scratching a living out of the soil' running through my mind.

Mmmm, an interesting question. In fact I rather think you'll find the simple truth of it defies any neat theorizing. Yes, the island did have its own name from an earlier time which was still used in their regular commemoration of great events of the past though I can't for the life of me remember it, but - yes the big but - it was also an islander and not some traveller who called it the Island of Sheep. I remember my dinner companion, the lawyer, referring to it.

Another part of my mind was just starting to realise what opportunities for smuggling the coastline afforded. And then I got into the hills where I lost sight of the coast only to glimpse it again at the odd twist in the road which plunged and rose through an almost lunar landscape in which the only signs of vegetation were a few withered bushes. Then the road began to descend. Lower down I saw a sign for the Retirement Complex, a massive place with a high surrounding wall. The far end of the site was back down by the sea and I could imagine the old folk making good use of it come the summer. There were sandy beaches interspersed with rocky outcrops and numerous inlets. I'd driven on another couple of kilometres when, on one such outcrop, I glimpsed a strange looking figure flapping about in enormous clothes. It was such a bizarre sight that I pulled up at the side of the road where the sea was only a couple of hundred metres away. Then suddenly into view came two other figures, a man and a woman both in white. They were running across the sand in the slow motion style you get with soft sand, running towards this extraordinary figure, an elderly woman I could now see, looking like some bedraggled great seabird. She appeared to be shouting at them and to go as wild as some imaginary dervish as they approached while the white-topped waves kept on rolling and crashing against the shore. I drove on but stopped and waited when I saw a van standing empty and which, from the signs on the side, obviously belonged to the RC.

Why did I stop? You are a stickler for motive. Do you know to this day I'm still not sure. Curiosity I suppose, the fact that it was stood empty on such a deserted stretch of road. Anyway after a while the three figures from the beach appeared and the elderly woman was screaming and spitting like a wild thing. They were restraining her, of course they were, it would be part of the job. Suddenly with a superhuman effort she broke free and came right over to my car, swearing like a trooper. You know the type: how they didn't treat her proper was the gist of her screeching; the rations were short, the place was more like a prison, it was cold and twice as boring etc etc. If her arms had been free she'd probably have poked my eye out as she ranted on that as an officer I should do something about the ill-treatment and so on. I humoured her, nodding when it seemed appropriate till the two in white regained control of the situation, apologising to me, saying that Mrs whatever her name was did have her turns.

Quite a kerfuffle just to get her into the restraint, fighting like as harridan she was. Finally they got her into the vehicle and I drove on. The landscape became bleak again, the hamlets more sparse and I suppose the road must have swung around the northernmost point of the island and started to come back down the other side. Here the opportunity for smuggling seemed even greater and I resolved to take it up with the Chief and to take a close look at how the threat was being handled. Given the limits to what the Coastguard Service was capable of, it was especially important that the police liaised effectively with them, and had their own procedures. What of their intelligence gathering, how often did they mount random road-blocks on the more remote stretches of road, these were the kinds of thing I wanted to know. True I'd already seen evidence of the thoroughness of their observation of visitors to the island, even if not enough of its results were getting through to Mainland HQ's database, but by itself this was an obviously one-dimensional approach. What of the natives! What indeed!

I found a cross-country road that took me back to the harbour town rather than driving right round the island and thought out tactics for tackling the Chief on the matter. It even occurred to me that this concentration on visitors, which implied a de facto belief that the islanders themselves were above suspicion, might suggest some police connivance, even if only by omission, at islander organised smuggling. But I rejected the idea. It was after all only a temporary posting and I had no reason to underestimate my colleague who I was sure had kept an eye on this possibility.

Dear me, you are sharp. Yes I suppose I'd already been a bit zealous for a temporary. I was ambitious in those days but there were limits. I did think my colleague had been a bit lax on one or two points but I wasn't so presumptuous as to think him a complete fool. Still I can well understand why you're in the position you are. You're making me feel positively sheepish - if you'll excuse the terrible pun - about continuing my story but as I'm getting close to the terrifying events at the centre of it I might as well continue.

This taste of a suspicion certainly didn't surface in the interview I did have with the Chief when I got back to the compound. Instead, irritation is what I felt. It began straightaway when, instead of answering my first question he asked me if I'd seen the Retirement Complex, as if it were the eighth wonder of the world. However a little sarcasm goes a long way in concentrating people's minds and he started to give me answers but with that that smug but truculent tone of the-man-in-the-field that you must have come across umpteen times. Of course we do this and think of that, you desk-bound innocent;, We know every trick-in-the-book, that sort of thing. Studded, needless to say, with the standard cheap sarcasm. When I mentioned the threat of sophisticated smugglers with human cargoes he said something like, Oh yes, thirty Hottentots wandering about the place, we'd be bound to miss them. Anyway we crossed swords for some time but I got some of my points through and as I drove back to the hotel my mind was planning how I'd get across the rest the following morning.

This time I started dinner alone and it was a young woman serving at table, the daughter-in-law it transpired. No, the lawyer hadn't left, that was anyway impossible with the ferry boat problem as she gently pointed out, and he would no doubt be in before long. So I took my starter slowly and asked if she alternated with her husband when it came to dining-room duties. She laughed and said it was all down to the shift rota at the Retirement Complex. It turned out that both of them worked there, and the father who I hadn't met. Well I was asking her about the job, if she enjoyed it and so on, when the lawyer came in and took his place at table. She was saying that some of the old folk could be a real trial when he cut in with his order, and something about a house that had been bequeathed in a will, and which he'd attended that very day. He was a fluent conversationalist and moved on without a break to the special architecture of the island with references to our previous conversation, how it was a perfect solution to its particular climatic and geological conditions. At one point he turned to the question of the materials used. I asked if the island was abundant in the good wood I saw in this hotel for I had seen almost no trees at all on my drive. He said that regrettably the island had boasted a large forest centuries earlier, but no more. He was in fact that proverbial mine of information and the evening passed very pleasantly.

Back in my room I sat for a while in the rocking chair and let my mind go free to absorb the events of the day. There was a sliver of new moon and stars in the sky which gave me a feeling of peace and I came to a decision about how I was going to handle the Chief. Then I got into bed and I suppose I must have dozed off.

The next thing I knew, I was being awakened by a loud crash. I sat up in bed wondering if it was real or in my dream but then I heard further bumps and crashes. I got up to investigate. The sound seemed to be coming from somewhere below my room. I pulled on trousers, a sweater and a pair of tennis shoes and stepped out on to the balcony. The stars were bright in the pitch-black night and I could hear the sea rumbling and rasping along the coastline. The wind was lively and carried a salty tang. Suddenly I heard a voice, a man saying the cargo had just landed in the cove.

Well go and check it, then we'll settle up, another voice said. There was a grunt of agreement.

My mind was racing with the permutations. Were the people of the hotel involved, or just some of them, or was it just that it was situated above a cove used by others? I closed the balcony door and took a torch out of my case, the one I always carried when on duty, and quietly made my way down the stairs. Whatever the situation I was in no position to trust anyone from the hotel, and I made my way into the dining room and out of its French windows without rousing anyone. You'll say I was being over-zealous and you'd have a point but then you hadn't had to listen to the Chief and his complacency.

Outside I could make out no human figures but I heard noises and a voice down towards the cove. Keeping my torch beam close to the ground I made my way cautiously down the track. Then I heard a voice saying, No rush, it can stay in the boat till morning and the sound of footsteps scrunching up the track towards me. I extinguished my torch and hid behind a big rock on one side of the path. The footsteps got louder and two dark figures came into view. One said, The quality's good and the quantity's right, so there's no problem.

I waited for them to get clear of me up the path towards the hotel which loomed up behind me, and then hurried down to the cove. At both ends of its curve waves crashed on to the rocks, throwing up columns of spray that glimmered in the dark. In the middle of the little bay however the sea was almost quiet and moored close in, just a few yards from the shore was a good sized dinghy. I could make out something bulky on board under tarpaulin and checked that the rope was secure, tracing it back to a stout stave in the sand.

I was still reacting to events and had no definite plan. All I could think of was to quickly check the contents of the dinghy so that I would have some evidence with which to justify mobilising the force, especially because the Chief for one was not going to be best pleased. I had no illusions about tackling these men on my own. It just wasn't on but I did need evidence. I waded out and the sea was up to my waist when I was able to grasp a gunwale of the dinghy. The tarpaulin was only loosely tied. In retrospect that should have made me smell a rat but it didn't. I pulled it up at the back of the boat and clambered on board to have a look. My torch beam showed up some crates and boxes. I'd just started on ripping one open when I suddenly heard a splashing sound behind me and before I knew what was happening, two or three strong pairs of arms were pushing the boat outwards towards the open sea. I shouted at them but they said not a word and I had no time to see their faces for soon they were gone and there must have been a current there to further their devilry and drag the boat into the heavier waves.

Have you ever felt yourself to be a complete fool and yet had no time to worry about it?

No? I've re-run the scene many times in my mind and it's what you feel when your very survival is at stake, when it's down to the sheer animal instinct of self-preservation. Not that I immediately leapt into action. For some time I just felt numb with shock and, I make no bones about it, sheer terror, and by then I was in much rougher sea. I could see the waves were so much bigger and feel them too as they swept towards me. What a frail craft the stout dinghy suddenly was. That's when I realised this was no mere ruse, they were trying to kill me. They will not succeed, I said to myself, feeling the salt sea spray slap me in the face. It was the shock I needed, this was no dream. I must find oars or whatever was needed to try and get some control of the wretched boat which was all that stood between me and the elements. Sea water must have got into my torch for it did not work. I cursed the heavens above and nearly tipped into the raging waters as the boat rose and fell like a cheap-thrills fairground ride. I crouched down and scrabbled feverishly among the boxes in search of oars. My fist went through one of them. It was empty. They were all empty. A narrow cunning perhaps, but utterly ruthless with it for, in addition, there were no oars.

A sudden current seemed to twirl the boat around and start it on a new course, as if the sea were toying with a bit of driftwood. Now the dinghy swayed violently from side to side. I clung on desperately, amazed each time it righted itself only to be tossed aside again. It would not be long before there would be that one wave too many. Or the boat and me with it would be tossed playfully by a giant not knowing its own strength, and dashed against the jagged rocks I could make out looming up to my right.

I had been a strong swimmer in my youth and there was nothing for it but to take my life into my own hands. I half fell, half dived out of the dinghy into the swirling waters.

Coming up I thought I'd never reach the surface again. My lungs were roaring fit to burst. The cold seeped through my clothes that had become a lead weight round my body. A fresh wave sent me hither and thither and I thought my time was up. I tried to swim underwater but it was more providence than my efforts I suspect, that threw me up on to the smallest patch of sand amongst the rocks. For a moment, lying on it, my body half in and half out of the water, I could scarcely believe I was still alive. I dragged my body full out and lay there gasping, coughing and spluttering.

I don't know for just how long I must have lain there. Minutes rather than hours it must have been for it was still pitch-black when the shivering of my body informed me in no uncertain terms that unless I did something about it my good fortune in finding this haven among the sharp-edged rocks on which my brains might have been dashed out, would count for nothing.

I don't know how long it took, weaving and tumbling among those hostile rocks. Minutes probably but it felt like hours. It felt as though every step I took was hewn out of the rock itself. Somehow I got through and up to what seemed to be a field of scrubby grass. By that time my eyes were a little used to the dark and I tried to find my bearings. From what I could make out I was overlooking the cove from the side opposite to that hotel whose bulk I could see looming up on the other side of the water that still crashed remorselessly into the sand and rocks of the coast. I had no definite plan but strangely enough what came back to me at that moment was the memory of an impromptu lesson I'd once had from an old sergeant in Northern Division on how to start a car without the ignition key. An amazing character, it was just to wile an afternoon when nothing was happening at his post. Gingerly I made my way in the direction of the hotel with the vague idea in my mind that if I could make it to my car, I'd be safe.

I had inched my way to within shouting distance of the hotel when I heard raised voices from that direction. Then I saw them, two dark figures in the Hotel's parking area. I edged cautiously forward to try and catch what they were saying and found a safe vantage point from behind a bush. The loudest voice, with the tone of someone who thinks he might be in the wrong and defends himself aggressively said, Just look at the bloody facts. The other spoke in a murmur and yet I thought there was a trace of something familiar. Someone I'd recently met for the first time. Then loud voice made his points like some barrack-room lawyer.

First remember it's a stranger this time and on top of that he arrives earlier than he should have done and then starts off lying about who and what he is.

That tantalising murmur again and our loud-voice tried another tack. How he - and it didn't take me long to realise it was me who was being referred to - had talked privately to the outsider cop; been snooping around the Retirement Complex just when one of the old buzzards had taken it into her head to bugger off and make a rumpus, as he put it; had listened to her whining, promised to look into things and then slyly interrogated the girl in the hotel about conditions at the RC.

More murmuring and then loud-voice said, It was one of those things that just had to be done. Anyway it'll be put down as an accidental drowning because that's exactly what it was.

Well, as you can imagine, I was well and truly flabbergasted. At one point I felt tempted to laugh. Because the whole thing was ridiculous but it would have been hysterical laughter, not to mention suicidal. No, I stayed quiet and tried to make something of the permutations. Of who these people were I could not be sure but of one thing I was sure, they were very well-informed and I could trust no one. Even the force might be involved and I was painfully aware that my car solution was now a forlorn hope. The figures were still there, only their voices had gone quieter.

From behind the nominal shelter of my bush I thought tactics and decided I must make my way to the town and the Police compound unobtrusively on foot. I reasoned thus, supposing the force or elements within it were involved, had become infected by this collective madness, even the chief himself, they would still not dare to do anything in the compound. I quite relished the irony of them having to protect me till I could get away.

Getting there was easier said than done. Lets just say that in addition to having to duck out of sight once or twice when I heard cars on the road, I had to dig as deep into my reserves of stamina as I'm ever likely to want to.

The fact that I got to town at all is only confirmation of what I'd already discovered for myself that night, that there is an amazingly powerful instinct of self-preservation within us all.

The town was more or less deserted of course and as I finally pushed open the door of the Police Station itself I wasn't sure what I was going to find. Which was in fact my driver of the previous evening with his feet up at the main desk in the front part of the station.

Good evening sir, or should I say good morning, he said, cool as you like.

If I'd followed my desires at that point I think I'd have asked to be locked in one of the two cells below, given a blanket and allowed to sleep. But remember, I trusted no one and was not going to give away anything to this hulk.

I've just dropped in to get a first-hand look at your working day, so just pretend I'm not here and carry on just as you normally would, though a coffee would be appreciated, I said. During the walk my clothes had dried somewhat but I still must have looked a sight. God only knows what he made of me and my sodden tennis shoes but he said nothing except that of course he would make coffee, which he duly did. Which was all to the good, what with the warmth of the place it would have been just so easy to nod off.

And that's how it was right through the morning. I repeated my little speech as first the patrol drivers came in and then the chief, just carry on as normal, pretend I'm not here and that's exactly what they did apart from when I asked for my luggage to be collected from the hotel and my cheque dropped off there.

The Longest Morning is what I'd call this last period of my story. The temptation to doze was nigh on overwhelming. Sometimes I thought I detected a gruesome mockery in the whole thing, the very normality of it in the face of me, the inspector, unshaven and in damp casual clothes. When finally I was told that the ferry was about to dock for its half hour stopover I asked the chief to accompany me to it, implying that I'd enjoyed his company so much which left him with no choice, whether he liked it or not. And in fact all that went smoothly, no one leapt at me from the shadows, though I forced myself to stay awake for the duration of the voyage.

And that's really my story. Dinner will be served in a few minutes, not bad timing. And I see you're a dab hand with the fire.

My colleague? Ah. Well of course I met up with him officially a few weeks later when I handed back the Islands desk duties to him and briefed him on my spell there. By that time I'd discovered he was originally from the Island of Sheep and that though he'd risen through the ranks and was probably at the pinnacle of his career, he had an excellent record, free of any blemish or the merest whiff of scandal, something which had clearly been recognised by his inclusion on the Frontier Policing Review Committee. So when it came to my briefing him I still held an open mind about just how much I was going to tell him. I started in routine fashion with one or two I-hope-I'm-not-being-presumptuous-buts, you know, about some of the laxness I'd seen, when suddenly he said out of the blue, the non-sequiter of non-sequiters, You know that the Island of Sheep is economically very dependent on the Retirement Complex.

For a moment I was speechless. I thought of mentioning job opportunities on the mainland and labour mobility, but in the event, I just carried on with the most routine of briefings as if he'd said nothing, and nothing untoward had happened. I think I must have instinctively known what I soon came to learn when I moved to Treasury, that there are not always pure economic decisions, that there can be social factors and other considerations. But of course you know that. In fact the only measure I'd have taken if it had been within my power would be to have signs erected, sticking out into the sea around the harbour entrance saying, Beware, the natives here are paranoid lunatics.

The Retirement Complex? I honestly don't know, still there in all likelihood. No, in fact it is still there. I don't suppose it's exactly paradise but then where on earth is there paradise in this troubled world? It has had its bad publicity, but that’s due to unrealistic expectations I suspect. As it happened I had no time to give it any further thought for no sooner was I back with Northern Mainland Division than of course all hell broke loose when the Frontier Policing Review Committee's report was circulated. You've probably forgotten now but it wasn't just frontier policing - which someone at the time described as being as porous as a teabag - which needed an overhaul but its knock on effects that had to be dealt with. Or rather the already existent consequences of the previous laxness of frontier policy and the ramshackle nature of its execution. At the time the problems it had given rise to were all too visible in some of our towns and cities, Northern Mainland Division included. Urgent action was now seen to be necessary and what a time it was in the Inspectorate. The lights in our offices burned 24 hours a day. After the first couple of days I had a camp bed set up in my office and survived largely on a diet of black coffee and cognac as we checked everything for weaknesses. An extraordinary time and I suppose my contribution must have been appreciated for soon after I made my big career jump to Treasury and don't let anyone try and kid that that's not where the real policy decisions are made. Still I'm sure you've seen that for yourself.

There's the bell, that'll be dinner now. It'll just be the two of us I'm afraid.

Ah that suits you does it, you want a bit of advice. Well I didn't suppose you'd come all this way to hear an old man's yarns. But I'm flattered and of course I'll do what I can. I have managed to stay a little in touch, policy dilemmas, old contacts and so forth.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE ACT

The drive was so as they could have a chat, nowhere in particular, the rough idea of a circle was all. So as when they'd finished Mark'd drop the feller off back where they'd met. Serious sort of bloke in his face, but so far he'd only ever done bits and pieces after an intro from Patsy K who said Steve had been sound in the shithole, and if how you was in the jail wasn't a guide, then what was? Now he was talking tens and twenties. And asked where they were as they cut into quiet roads of terraced houses.

Mark was all eyes on the rear-view, an empty road getting narrower. Leyton, he said.

Home of Leyton Orient, Steve said.

What?

Leyton Orient. Once of the First Division before it became the Premier, now of the Second, previously known as the Third.

Knew his stuff, Steve did. Football, something about the name Orient. There was definitely a West Ham because once he'd been fucking mad enough to get himself talked into going. And stood there right to the end even after cousin Gary had wound him up, saying they were on grands a week, the players. Right to the freezing cold final whistle because Gary was sound and it was his thing. He had at some point spoken of a Leyton Orient: they were a bunch of wankers.

What are they, a team of Arabs? Mark said.

Arabs? Steve said.

Then he laughed. Mark checked the rear-view and took a left, a street of terraced houses faced by sections of corrugated iron fencing.

Into a roadblock. Metal tube barriers on feet across the road and uniformed policemen. Some of them had florescent lime bibs over their tunics. There was nothing but to stop. Whatever it was. He pulled up and wound down his window, foot on the clutch, engine running

Steve didn't like it at all, wanted to know what it was, what was going on. There was a policeman walking towards them. Mark shrugged. Memories like elephants when it came to faces, the cunts. If they were old enough.

Close-up this one was fresh-faced under his helmet. Steve was pointing at something.

It's that M.11 thing, he said. The protesters.

In the distance a weird looking scaffold structure rose into the sky off of slate roofs. Close by, above the corrugated, the arm of a tall crane swung a small arc.

The road's blocked off sir.

There you were, you were sir. In addition he could see it for his fucking self, the road was blocked off.

I'm just trying to get through to Leytonstone tube station, have I gone wrong?

That I couldn't tell you, we're just over from Wembley for the day. It's the protesters sir, the squatters.

Now he came to look, Mark could see people in the scaffolding and beyond them, more people on some kind of wooden platform above the roof. Half the slates were missing.

We're just keeping everyone away for the safety of everyone concerned.

Mark reversed back to the junction, taking his time. He turned back the way they'd come. A convoy of three wire-frame-fronted Ford Transits came towards them at slow speed. Riot police, He could see them, twelve to a van in chunky black overalls like they were off to do parachute jumps. Or deal with a major clot in the sewage system.

Mark's mobile rang. He let it ring on as the vans passed. Down a right turn-off there was a half house behind some corrugated, rubble and floor boarding piled up next to it. Two hundred yards ahead was another roadblock. Mark took a left, then left again back into Leyton. He slowed down over a humped-back bridge. There were groups of people stood there looking out along the tube line.

What a performance. Fancy a look Steve? Mark said. He was already pulling into a kerb space when Steve said, Sure. Why not.

Hippies they were mostly, on the bridge. And a couple of old boys. A few hundred yards down the glinting rails, the tower of scaffold stood high above roofs. Down below it were rows of lime florescent bibs jammed against the tube line fencing. On the line itself more guys in florescent pink. On the other side of the line a graveyard stretched all the way back to the bridge. In the middle of the gravestones a group of the parachutists were stood around in visored crash helmets. Two dog handlers walked its perimeter.

A silver, blue and red tube train nosed out from under the bridge and quietly stretched out along the track. WHITE CITY it said on the front in orange digital.

Right below the bridge were two sectioned off bits of leveled ground. One contained a crane. In both stood black guys in donkey jackets with SECURITY stamped on flourescent green backing. The ones without the crane to guard had got a good fire going. There was more loose timber lying about, planking and the lower section of a tree trunk. You could see its roots.

See those crafty cozzers, Mark said.

What, Steve said.

Mark pointed down at a group of white policemen who'd come to stand around the fire with the Security guys.

Back at the car Steve said it must be costing them a packet, wages alone.

Mark was smiling. In the car he rubbed his hands. Keeps them off our backs though don't it, he said.

Steve smiled. He supposed it did. In fact.

For the safety of everyone concerned, did you hear the cunt? Mark said.

Who?

The cozzer at the roadblock.

Oh him. To be perfectly honest, well before I remembered the M.11 thing, from the telly yesterday, you know, and put two and two together, for a moment I felt...

The mobile rang. Mark pulled up at a T-junction, took a right and picked up the phone.

Who's that...Yeah I know. I just didn't pick it up...Don't go fucking paranoid on me, it was circumstances, you'll like it when I tell you the story...Yes, laugh your bollox off.

He put the phone down.

My pal Tony, he said. Ten to the dozen, the cunt. So is there anything else to talk about. You've talked Twenties and I've said a One Five-O off of unit price.

Steve took it on board. Then he said it was reasonable, it made complete sense. But in the meanwhile what about five, it would be cash.

Five? Five? Well, not to be dismissed out of hand. There were several things. Like Tony was already at the flat; John Matthew always had reasonable little parcels lying around; Patsy K had said the feller was sound, just needed a bit of time to get moving; and a grand was still a grand even in this day and age.

They were in a High Street. Not a policeman in sight. People up and down the pavement with shopping bags and hard-backed attaché cases. Mark picked up the mobile. Then he put it down, checked the rear-view and pulled up by a green card phone box. I'll just be a minute, he said.

A cold wind came with the open door. Ahead Steve saw two tower-blocks and a stretch of low-rise behind concrete-planked walls. A  dumper truck came out from the tower-block entry at speed. Steve shivered. November had been warm. Average temperatures had broken all records. Only the last couple of days it had turned, shown its real colours. All good things must come to an end.

As they had. All in one hit.

As they fucking had. Bastards.

A crane arm started moving back and forth above the low-rise. He could hear it clanking. He shivered.

Yeah, if you want that Five now. Take half an hour, Mark said.

Great, Steve said. It's appreciated.

Mark grunted, checked the rear-view and took a left. They drove through streets of maisonettes.

He pulled up in front of a modern 4-storey block behind a low hedge.

He'll be here in a minute with the parcel. We might as well wait up in the flat, Mark said.

They hurried through the cold into the lobby. There was a lift criss-crossed with black and lime flourescent tape. Stood there was an old dear with bags.

Steve offered a hand. On the second floor she said thankyou that many times, he was blushing. On the third Mark opened a door with his own keys.

All right Tony, he shouted.

Steve saw a bare room and a minimal kitchen. The lounge was carpeted and had a sofa. The man Tony got up off of it. The way Steve saw him he could have been a taxi-driver. Or in a warehouse, on the fork-lift or doing the paperwork behind glass. Either. There was a radio down by his feet.

Did Johnny ring back?

Yeah he's on his way, Tony said.

Mark made the intro and told his story, why he hadn't answered the Mobile, and what went with it. Tony raised his eyebrows. Then he said he'd seen it on TV.

You know, the regional, after the main news. They kept all the lawyers and journalists out this Superintendant said. Danger of falling masonry he said. Can you credit it?

For The Safety Of Everyone Concerned, Mark said. Ain't that right Steve? Cunts! Do they all do a course in PR?

Bobby T says it's the only course they do do.

Is that right? Bobby T? All right is he?

Yes, got his flat down by the old market, Housing Association. Very nice, you know, in a proper house, got a floor to himself. Front door and then another key to his own place.

Steve was nodding. He could picture it, knew such a place. Tony smiled at him from across the sofa. There was nothing behind it, it was friendly.

So of course he'll have bits and pieces he shouldn't have up there. Nothing much, the odd parcel, but nickable, bird involved. He's only had the place three months, comes back one afternoon and the front door's wide open with a Panda parked out front.

Steve nodded. He could picture it, not a panda, but all the rest. He wanted to look at his watch. He wanted a cigarette. He really wanted a cigarette.

So like Bobby says he's not sure, thinks of walking past, but the Panda convinces him. Whatever it is, can't be that bad.

All right, all right, Steve had got the point, it didn't need spelling out. He offered Tony a Silk Cut from the packet.

Tony shook his head and got up for an ashtray. He was still talking. Mark was pacing up and down the bare light-brown carpet. The first drag on the Silk Cut hit the spot. He felt good.

There's a woman got the ground floor. Sensible, Bobby says, so as he's walking through the front door he knows it's not going to be her and a domestic. Even if her door's open and there's a cozzer stood in it. In uniform and lucky if he's five foot two.

Steve had the ashtray in his hands. Not half way down and the Silk Cut tasted like shit.

Right, Mark said. I believe you.

He had a small mirror in his hand, white powder lying on it.

So it's the cozzer speaks first, tells him Sorry sir, there's been a burglary. Does he live here? He doesn't think any other flat's been affected. So Bobby wasn't born yesterday, he don't commit himself, he just mumbles, how shocking it is before he shoots up the stairs.

Fancy a line while we're waiting, Mark said. He checked his watch and took a snort.

I wouldn't say no, Steve said.

The cop had got that bit right, Bobby's place was untouched. Takes him ten minutes to look round then he goes back down and speaks politely, tells him, that's right, his is untouched.

Let's have it right, Mark said, his door'll be double-chubbed.

All right, it's double-Chubbed. All I'm saying is Bobby's chatting him up. It comes out her downstairs hasn't been too clever with her back door, a plywood sandwich. But that's just the half of it.

Steve didn't know, not anything: what they wanted, what he was supposed to get out of it: if and when this other face was coming with his parcel. Anything. He reached out for the mirror.

There's a factory behind the house and they've seen these four kids over the back fence and rung the law. Rung them and the kids don't know they've been rumbled, they're only kids, think they've got all day. Got to be bang to rights only the law's been late in arriving. Five foot two says they've given chase, which means they were still there when old bill got there, given chase but failed to apprehend the suspects. Bobby knows it's bollox, the cozzer knows it's bollox, only what he does is starts talking to Bobby like he's an OK local citizen who knows the score, What Can They Do. So Much of it Going On, What Can They Do.

Where is he, the cunt. Doesn't he run to a watch, John, Mark said.

Tony shrugged.

A double act, wide open but all Steve wanted was to scream out loud, all that counts is how hard they knock the door.

I'll ring him, Mark said, angry tapping his mobile.

All I'm saying is there's no one to beat old bill when it comes to public whinging. What Can We Do?!

No one there, he'll be on his way.

If you want the toilet Steve, it's just one to the left, Tony said.

A mind-reader. He was supposed to be a warehouseman, manager at most, now he was a mind-reader. Steve would be wanting the toilet, he could feel it coming on. He said thanks.

Yes, what a hard time they've got. And fair play to Bobby T. It's How they come to the door's what matters. If it's not with a sledgehammer, Bobby says, it can't be that bad. Me, I'd have done a runner. But then you think about it, like me and the TV licence.

And just how far could a warehouseman run, on the forklift or behind the plate glass made no difference, not very far. Spew up and collapse. Only he could talk. Nineteen to the dozen Mark had said, his own mate. Collapsed and spewing up he'd still be talking, telling whoever it was, just what kind of collapse it was and how it was different to all other collapses. Which of course it was, it was his fucking own.

Steve wanted a cigarette.

He really wanted a cigarette.

What, they come with sledgehammers the TV people, Mark said like he didn't know anything about anything.

Not yet, Tony said. Then he was off again, what he was saying was, what he was talking about was, the rights of people who came to your door.

These days they come two-handed in civvies, the TV people. Two-handed but they've got no rights of entry. That's why they go for the single mothers. And the training they get, not all that bollox about direction-finders, they just get taught to knock on door-knockers so as to scare the shit out of people who don't know they've got no rights of entry. There's a way of doing it.

RataRat Rat, Mark said.

This was getting nowhere except telling you that if this Tony ever had had a cab, he was the taxi-driver from hell. Stuck tight in traffic as far as the eye could see and the guy would be explaining it, how it was, why it was, and the internal workings of the traffic light.

It was getting no one anywhere. Steve lit up. The first drag on the Silk Cut hit the spot.

Mark had given up pacing, he was sat on the carpet, back against the wall.

But there's not enough, there's only so many single mums out there, while on the other hand the feller who reads the news and Wogan, they've got to get their wages. That's why they're in civvies now. So you don't know it's them. And they reckon there's enough people beyond the mothers mug enough to open their doors to one civvie, or two civvies, that you've never seen in your life, stood on the doorstep.

It was nonsense, all of it. Didn't mean a thing. Was going nowhere. Only three drags and the Silk Cut tasted like shit. Steve looked at his watch. Between fifteen and twenty minutes they'd been in the place. He took a drag on the cigarette, stubbed it out and said he was going to take a leak.

And Tony was still at it as he stepped out into the passage and saw the toilet ahead: areas this time, where they went two-handed, and where they went solo. Like he was going to get out a map and a box of coloured pins. Like now he was RUNNING the cab office.

Only that wasn't the point.

Steve had unzipped his trousers. He had his prick out.

He looked down at the stainless porcelain.

It wasn't the point at all. There was a comedian on the premises. Did they want to know. Is that what they fucking wanted to know. He turned, prick back in his pants, trousers unzipped, and pushed the green-stained aluminium bolt into the half loop nailed on to the wall. Decision time. He would give it another fifteen minutes and then he was going whether the guy came or not. He would get up, tell them he was a busy man and he was off. Fifteen minutes.

His streak of piss hit the porcelain hard. He zig-zagged it down into the still water. Not his line of work but he'd snorted enough to know, nice gear, this coke of Mark's. He'd said it was just personal but who knew. It was something he could tell them, and in the meanwhile another line would go down well. Tell them straight, he's got access to some very nice flake. Flake, you know, Class A. Tell them that instead of all these gadgets. He didn't even know when to turn it off. The other thing worked itself, he could feel it hard against his skin. He shook out the last drops of piss. If the tight bastards had just given him the cash for ten, twenty better still, if they weren't such arseholes then no need for all this sweaty shit.

Tony was still talking, some story, someone called Charlie Cook.

He's opened his door one time. Probably wants to talk to someone, the mood's on him. So they've stood in the doorway, the two of them and they can hear it. The TV's in the lounge and Charlie's got it full volume just in case, so there's no chance of him missing anything that might be important.

Not a taxi driver: not a warehouseman, behind glass or otherwise: but a fucking bulldozer. Mark must have had years of it.

So they told him the score, what it costs for the colour, and Charlie tells them he hasn't got one. He might have wanted company but now he's had enough. They can fucking hear it. But sir, one of them says.

Steve wanted a cigarette. He looked at his watch.

Mark looked at his watch. He'll be here in a minute, fancy a taste, he said.

Steve took a snort off the mirror and lit up. The first drag on the Silk Cut really really hit the spot.

Gobsmacked they are. But Sir. So Charlie says I wouldn't have one in the house and makes himself look even bigger than he is in the first place.

An economy size shithouse door, Mark said.

What? Tony said. He was frowning. Charlie Cook? Premium maybe, extra-large more like. Anyway, then he says he wouldn't have one in his house because there's voices in the box trying to get at him. THE VOICES.

Only two drags and the Silk Cut tasted like shit. Steve checked his watch. Otherwise he felt great. Ten more minutes he'd give it and then that was it.

KILL, they say, Charlie says. The two civvies, they're wobbly but they're still in there hanging on the ropes. Only then he says they've got TRANKS IN GOODMAYES can shut the voices out but that don't mean they're not real because what are tranks but FUCKING CHEMICAL SHIT and he knows they're real when he's off them LIKE NOW. But they've already gone, the other end of the corridor and disappearing round the corner.

Lets have it right, Mark said, Charlie Cook is a fucking nutter.

He looked at his watch and shook his head. He's some case that John, it's like time don't exist. Fancy another line Steve. Why not. He'd done all that could be expected of him. If they were too mean to give him the wedge for twenty there and then, on record, it was their fucking look out. Why not.

Steve took a toot off the mirror. He lit up a Silk Cut

That's where the real money is, the Tranks market, Tony said.

Ten minutes I'm giving John. I've got things to do.

Two drags and the Silk Cut tasted like shit. Otherwise he felt great. Steve felt fucking great.

All he's got to do is roll out of bed with a single parcel and make the great effort of getting himself here. Or he's gone into the tranks business, Premium Tranks and he dabbles himself.

Tony shrugged and looked at his watch. We've got the twenty at two, he said. And pay off the other feller at four, that's what we said. I've got the sixty here but we'll need the forty off the twenty, Tony said.

So at last, the warehouseman had got serious. Telephones in both ears behind the glass. Steve checked his watch. He'd give it five and then he was off. Having done more than enough and if they couldn't see that, then they were stupid. Like these guys. Mugs. Blabbing away. Did they actually have sixty? To hand? On the 20 they'd make fortytwo he imagined. A grand each for themselves. Mugs.

I'm giving this guy 3 minutes, Steve said. And if you don't mind me saying, you guys are wide-open, the way you talk. I mean supposing I was sitting here wired up, a cassette thing. Because that was right, it was possible, they were that complacent.

They were frowning, the two clowns. Like really they didn't have a sense of humour, couldn't see the joke. Like the taxi driver leaning over the sofa and grabbing his shoulders. No kidding, fingers dug in.

What are you playing at, Steve shouted, get your hands off. Tony had him pinned back on the sofa. Was calling him a cunt. Prodded his flesh. Touched on hard plastic. Shouted.

And what are you playing at, Mark said close up. He hit Steve smack on the jaw.

His teeth jarred. For a second he wasn't there. Then his arms were out: what was this: what was it about: it was only something he did to cover himself, in the event of a dispute: not of course that it would be necessary with them.

Tony held him back on the sofa one-handed. This ain’t real, Tony said. He was appealing to Mark. He pressed the arrows that looked like Rewind.

Aching-face Steve said it was just a record. So as there's no dispute. I mean I know with you guys.

Mark hit him half uppercut under the cheekbone. Tony was shaking his head, he couldn't believe it.

They just get taught to knock on doorknockers so as to scare the shit out of people who don't know they've got no rights of entry. There's a way of doing it.

His own voice tinny, with scraping sounds, a laugh and the pull on a cigarette.

Rat a rat rat.

Mark's voice. Now he was breathing heavy. A bleeper, he'll have a bleeper, he said.

Steve clutched at his balls as the trousers ripped off. His head was throbbing.

We're fucked, Tony said.

Look I've told you, Steve said in a gulp. I mean

Mark held up a flapped-over envelope of money.

Bollox, he said. We're all right. Bottled it have you Steve, can you bottle it or don't a bleeper work in your shit.

He ripped at the Y-fronts.

You bastards, you stupid fucking bastards, Steve shouted going for take-off off the sofa.

Mark hit him combination, on the jaw, in the eye. He lifted the prick, caught the gleam of plastic, and ripped it off the flesh.

No sound from the rat, out for the count.

Check the window.

He stamped on the plastic. The carpeting sucked it in. Anything there wasn't there this morning, he said from the kitchen door.

The plastic crunched on the kitchen floor.

`An Escort Turbo.

Vans Tony, vans.

A Telecom looks like.

What?

Driving past. Going, going…gone

There was a knock at the door. Tony felt it full in the chest. Mark was telling him something, arms, mouth and eyes moving together. Sit on the cunt, it looked like. He went to the sofa.

Another knock at the door. Mark was stood behind it. It was pointless because they were fucked but Tony sat. He could hear the voice from behind the wood.

Come on Mark, you wanted the milkman, here's the milkman.

The cunt, Tony said. He was smiling.

Mark put a finger across his lips. He shook his head.

Bang Bang on the door. Tony was frowning.

I got out of bed for this. OY. MARK.

Mark winced. It was madness. And it was John's own fucking fault. Late one time too many. Which didn't stop him giving the whole block the benefit.

OY

Tony had his arms out either side of Steve's face like this was bollox. Feet turned on lino the other side of the door. They shuffled off. Fucking shuffled, like John was the most hard done by man in London. And all this, all of it, down to the piece of shit on the sofa. Who Patsy K said was all right. Who had come to life, wriggling, making noises.

Mark turned the radio on loud. .Bees, a man said, the way a hive worked ought not to be used as any kind of metaphor of human society. Not any kind.

Look you guys. OK. Sorry. But they made me do it. You can't fucking believe what they did, what they were trying to stick on me. Mark turned the dial. It was House. Or Jungle. Or whatever they called it these days. Mark didn't know.

What'd you do that for, Tony said. John, he could have given us a hand.

Yeah, like lumbering us with five kees. Plus in 24 hours half of London thinks we've got old bill on our backs and we're out of the game.

Steve's voice came out in squirts. With heavy breathing. And what a sight, Tony sat on the cunt like he was a cushion. You had to laugh only you didn't because Tony would get the hump and you were in the shit.

There isn't. Really. No harm done, I'll just say you didn't want to know and

Never mind out the game, what we going to do now, Tony said.

There were no vans in the street, just the ice-cream van that was always there.

Get the money out of here. If they are mob-handed out there they'll cop it all anyway. Then put off the meets, an unavaoidable delay which is only the fucking truth. And ditch the sim card he got through on. It's on the kitchen table, in the bowl.

I can't fucking breathe. Get him off me. I don't know what you're getting steamed up about, we haven't done anything. No business. There's no harm done. I'm not going to scream or anything. Lets not get melodramatic.

What we going to do with him, Tony said.

You get the money out, and I'll mind him. Deal with him after. Here, we got any rope?

It was a stupid question.

I'll tell you who we are entitled to some help off and that's Patsy K. More than entitled, Mark said.

Patsy'll tell you, I'm no grass. I was in a spot right. I admit it. They'd got me by the bollox but I wasn't going to give them anything on you. They're mugs these old bill. What I say is, it may look good on paper but it wouldn't stand up.

If there was justice in the world, Patsy K was entitled to a call from the compromised sim card, but it wasn't on. He tapped out the numbers on the safe mobile.

Yeah let me talk to Patsy. He'll tell you, there's no harm done and there never will be, Steve said.

A woman's voice said: The Mercury phone you have just called is switched off. Please try again later.

He's got it switched off. There's that Mazda in the lock-up, fetch that after you've sorted the other. And plenty of rope.

Get him off me. I've told you. I know you're pissed off but no way were they were going to get anything out of me. I was stringing them along.

It was Jungle, the drum-and-bass stopped long enough for the feller to say it, some club in Clapton. DJ Ron, DJ Keithley, all night, all for a tenner.

You be all right on your tod, Tony asked?

Just ring me if you're going to be more than an hour. Is there sheets on that bed?

Stringing them along. They're as thick as pigshit. Get him off me. Get him off.

Still mumbling, Mark could hear it as he pulled a sheet off from under the duvet. Not fresh fresh, like Tony put his head down there now and then. Like sometimes he wanted a bit of peace. Why not put in a TV while he was at it.

He ripped at the sheets, dug his nails in. Why not? Because the gaff was fucked. Whatever else, minimum damage was that the place was fucked. All because of this tosser.

The linen strip was jagged, bits of weave hanging off. Unreal. It was fucking unreal. Someone recommended by Patsy K. Which told you what, that Patsy had lost it. Which if he had lost it was a waste of time knowing. It got you nowhere.

The second strip came off zig-zag. It was the bleeper that mattered. What it did. Its capabilities. The shit had been sat there long enough before they'd rumbled it. Sat there because with John, crossing the road was exercise.

And the cunt was still talking.

OK do whatever you're going to do with me, fucking do it if you're that paranoid. I'm just telling you there's no harm done and those old bill they only think they're smart.

Mark stood at the window with two strips of sheeting. The ice-cream van had a flat tyre. It was hemmed in by cars. And in the cars? No one he could see. He said it to Tony but Tony didn't like it. He didn't like any of it but OK, he could take the point, there was nothing to lose, him walking out of there with the 60G.

Mark had bent down in front of the settee. The cushion was kicking its legs. Mark grabbed its ankles and dropped the sheet strip on them. It hadn't shit itself but there was a smell.

Don't you ever wash your socks you no-good piece of shit, he said and got a first twist pull round the legs.

Steve was trying to shout. Tony clamped his elbow down but he didn't like it, not any of it. Just don't kill him, he said. Fucks sake whatever else, don't kill him.

-           I'm just tying him up Tone. I don't want to be sitting on it for the next hour. I don't want all this period. Here, just shove up, hold his arms tight.

It wasn't easy, his arms round Tony, flipping the strip round its shoulders, the arms flapping like it was drowning even with Tony's grip. Heavy breathing in stereo. The ashtray went scatter.

There's a roll of plaster in the bathroom, Tony said. First Aid Box.

You had to hand it to him, no TV but a First Aid Box. Like any moment you might have diarrhoea, a sliced finger, or a splitting headache, on the premises. Foresight or what?!

The box was embossed with a Red Cross. It smelled of iodine.

If he'd rung Patsy K once, he'd rung him five times. Please try again later. Then it was his own mobile was ringing and all the while the shit on the sofa followed everything with his eyes. You looked at sheets and it was hard to believe what they could do. But they made climbing ropes, he'd seen it for himself. They made tying ropes too. The shit wriggled but it made no odds. Just his eyes that were moving.

On the mobile first it was the one, then it was the other feller: Tony'd rung them to delay; they'd thought the money was going to be sorted today; so what was it.

As if things didn't happen. As if he was going to rip them off. For a hundred G. What was the matter with them.

They were just puzzled, they said. Both of them. Just Puzzled. Then they said they'd just been worried for him, that was all. Both of them.

He said he was sorry, if it really had to be today he'd sort it but a couple of things had cropped up, as they did. He said it to the one and then to the other feller. Not something he wanted to say on a regular basis, not to them or anyone else equivalent. At least you had to say thanks for small mercies, and as things were, small mercies were big mercies. Unless Tony'd got his priorities wrong he'd got the money out and safe.

The shit on the sofa, Patsy K's pal, he looked like the invisible man. Mark turned off the radio and positioned himself, back to the wall, to ask questions. Did whatever law had a grip on him know of him, Mark, as a person or was Steve just out trawling for whatever unlucky sod he could come up with.

You could see he was trying to say something, the invisible worm, the way his head was moving.

OK, Mark said. Just nod or shake your head. Did the law who turned  you, did they know my name?

You could see it, the mouth trying to move behind the pink plaster. Then Steve shook his head.

So you've said give me a break and I can net you some bigger people right? To some cozzer can see his name up in lights.

It liked it, the cushion. Nodding like it wanted the head to drop off. Which, if the cunt had any self-respect at all, it would have. Patsy K. had plenty to answer for.

Please try again later

Hard to tell with the eyes, bobbing about above the criss-cross pink, but it looked like invisible worm was disappointed. Like if only everything was all right Patsy K was going to float through the window on a Turkey carpet. Wave a wand.

If only.

Patsy K was an overweight tosser.

What's the bleeper do? he asked.

What was the cushion doing? Shrugging? Looking fucking stupid in fact. In a raggedy straitjacket.

Was it switched on?

It shook its head. Too much, like it was a stupid question. Mark jumped out from the wall and let go a right into the eye. His knuckles jarred: cross-wired in the wrist; ping to the elbow.

Blood jumped out of an eyebrow. The first drop down the cheek hit the plaster's edge. Red dripped into the pink. He looked away and at his watch. An hour and ten minutes. So where was Tony? Why leave the mobile switched on at all? Why have to put up with the one feller and then the other if Tony wasn't going to make use of this basic fucking facility?

He grabbed at blood-seeped plaster and ripped.

The cunt.

A splodge of skin came away. The cushion squeaked. By the nostrils blood smudged. From the eyebrow a drop landed on the chin. Mark picked up the thinned out roll of plaster and stood by the window. He pulled it out and cut a six inch stretch.

Unbelievable! Him standing there cutting a roll of plaster like it was normal, when he'd woken up in the morning, in his own bed, feeling cheerful: just have a chat with Patsy K's pal, sort out the money and then the evening for whatever he fancied. Boiled eggs for breakfast, firm whites and runny yellow. Normal. Now he was having to think straight. Number one was, whatever the fucking bleeper could do, they hadn't smashed down the door. Nor put vans in the street. Not that you could see.

Thumbs apart, he slapped the plaster down across Invisible Man's face: under the nose; ear to ear.

The bleeper, how long's it been switched on, he said. I'm going to count out fingers. Each finger's an hour. Nod when I get there.

He counted them out from the left and on to the right. The Invisible Man kept shaking his head.

Fuck it, just get him off the premises so he wouldn't come back. That would do. It was enough. Only he couldn't do it on his own so if Tony could just make the fucking effort to get back. So they could get on with it. Which was pulling up the fitted carpet and rolling up the cushion inside. That's what it boiled down to.

When it came, the key in the lock was loud. All by itself, Mark's chest shuddered. He looked at his watch. Fucks sake Tony, he said.

What, Tony said. It's sweet. Which is a fucking miracle.

His face was drawn tight like he'd been slimming.

An hour you said, and you'd phone. What have I got a mobile for?

Tony said he hadn't had time, had enough on his plate. The money was safe; the one feller and then the other, they were sorted for the time being; and he'd got the Mazda even though he'd had no keys because Mark had given them to Philippa and Philippa'd been having her hair done with highlights. So what the fuck was Mark on about.

Mark put his arms up. Said he was in the wrong. Said he'd just been sweating the last forty minutes. That's all it was.

Now, well, looks like we're halfway in the clear. Maybe the batteries ran out.

What? Tony said.

The bleeper. You know, cost-cutting, so they've switched to short-life batteries.

Tony shrugged.

Maybe.

Or the cozzers were being double-crafty.

Outside the window, lights sprang up everywhere in a dark blue sky. A strip of glowing orange lay around the horizon.

Well it's not on top is it, Mark said.

What are we going to do with him?

The invisible man? You met him, the invisible man?

What are we going to do with him? Tony said.

Get him out of here. Dump him. The middle of nowhere.

Tony could see crafty cozzers lying in wait. Throwing the book at them. Making a name for themselves. Kidnapping. False imprisonment. GBH. Attempted murder.

Gives us time, Mark said. Dump the mobile, clean this place up then leave it a while. All he's got is our first names.

Tony's hand was back and forth across his forehead, the speed of windscreen wipers in slow mode. Mark had a point, only the feller was a headcase. Had to be. Brought it down on them, brought it down on himself. Saying it himself, I could be wired up. And how could you tell with a nutter? How could you tell with old bill, if they were just biding their time? How could you tell? He'd checked the street going out, he'd checked his mirrors coming back, but they could have umpteen motors radio'd up. He'd seen it on telly.

Well I'm not sitting here with him for the duration, Mark said.

All right. All right then. Invisible Man was looking at him. Staring at him. The cunt.

OK, lets have him out, Tony said.

Just got to get him down to the Mazda. You get the rope?

It's in the motor. That was another thing, and you're asking me why I never phoned.

No Tony, I did ask you, and I was in the wrong.

The Invisible Man, his eyes were back and forth, back and forth. Like he was watching Wimbledon on telly. When there was no telly. And never would be, not in this place.

I was in the wrong, Mark said again. You've been brilliant. And I'll admit it, when you rumbled him, that moment, I thought we were fucked. I did. But now, we're getting there. One step at a time Tony, and we're getting there. There's just Patsy K's pal now. Wrap him in the carpet. We'll need the rope. Either end.

The Invisible Man, just the name, Patsy K, and he was excited. You could see it, wriggling in his ripped shorts, his head up and down. He'd wear himself out.

You tried him? Try him again, Tony said.

Who?

Patsy.

Mark shrugged, picked up the mobile and tapped out the numbers. Tony was looking at him. The Invisible Man, he was always looking at him.

The Mercury phone you have just

How irresponsible could you be. OK, you had a night on the charlie; you needed some sleep come morning; you turned the fucking thing off. But not the afternoon, the afternoon whatever your timetable, you were entitled to be available. Patsy K, from the moment he'd given toerag the nod, he was entitled to be available every minute of every day.

Tony said he'd go and get the rope.

Mark started on the carpet, the far side from the sofa. It was tacked down. Some bastard had done a proper job and nailed it down. He got his fingers under the carpet either side of the corner tack, and yanked. A two foot triangle came up with him. Upright, he pulled at the triangle. He saw the whole edge length coming up ping, ping, ping.

Nothing happened.

He kneeled down by the next tack and ripped upwards. A stretch of carpet came up. He was getting there. One step at a time and he was getting there.

Tack three. Tack four.

Tony was stood with a canvas holdall.

Tack five. Tack six. Invisible man, he was half up out the sofa, wriggling .

Tack Seven.

He was up.

Tack Eight.

He was falling. Tony let go the holdall, he reached out his arms. You could hear the crash, anyone could. Mark turned. Said to use some rope. Round The Bastard's Knees. And in fact, get him out of here till I've finished. The kitchen. Or the bathroom.

Tack Ten. Close to the corner. Tony was pulling the guy, dragging him across the oatmeal. You could hear his breathing. Mark went on round the corner .Round the back of the sofa, sweating. He called to Tony to leave him and give him a hand. They grabbed either end of the edge opposite. It looked like the sofa was sliding backwards. Tony grunted. He was pulling hard, waiting for the castor to squeak on the floorboards. The carpet came at them hump-backed. A castor squeaked on the floorboards. When they'd pulled it free, Tony tamped it down in the middle and draped the far edge up on the sofa. Like a hammock, he said. The whole thing, it was fucking madness, so why not like a hammock.

The Invisible Man, the way his cheeks were working, he was still talking. They pulled him back into the lounge and wrapped him, rolled him towards the sofa. Tony saw the problem, the Mazda's boot-size; the capacity, however bent the cunt's knees, he couldn't see it.

Not with that much carpet, he said. It's a stiff tube, the way it is. And how's his breathing. He's got to be able to breathe in there.

Kidnapping, false imprisonment, and Murder. No

No. No. No.

He was bent down at one end of the carpet roll, his ear to the hollow centre. Like pistons the feller's nose was working, or it was full of snot. There was just too much carpet. He said it again.

I don't believe this, Mark said.

One step at a time, fair enough. But this was fucking ridiculous. He wanted to kick the carpet, punch the wall. All the dust and shit off the floorboards and still they weren't finished.

There's a Stanley knife under the sink, Tony said.

Was there? What and a larder full of tinned food? And a fucking generator for all he knew. Tony the Quartermaster.

There was a Stanley knife under the sink. Tony had it in his hand. They pulled the carpet back two rolls. Tony got a first cut into the edge and walked backwards, slitting the soft stuff on top and the stringy weave under.

Out the window the street was bright under sodium lights. The orange strip on the horizon was losing colour. The ice-cream effort was still the only van in sight. Mark looked at his watch. The slit was a zig-zag, gobs of carpet and fluff stuck out in ragged triangles.

Lets do it now, before the workers come home, he said.

We'll hit the rush hour, Tony said, stood up for a breather. Before we get out of town. It'll be murder, choc a bloc.

The rush hour. Tony, I don't give a fuck about the rush hour. Once we're out in the motor with him tucked away, that's all I'm bothered about. You want to sit here with him another two hours? Here, give us that blade.

He cut straight, hit a snarl up and slashed his way through. At the far end the two pieces flopped to the floorboards.

Looks like half the fucking world wants the M11, Mark said.

They were pulled up at lights, traffic ahead as far as the eye could see. Tony was tempted. He'd said it at the time. So what did his pal expect, that the entire commuting community of East Anglia were taking the day off. Were they fuck, they were busy. It's what he'd been saying.

Come on you cunt, Mark shouted. What was the point of the lights turning green at all when you had a prick in a Polo in front of you who was letting a cheeky Transit do a cheeky right turn. Have them off the road, he said. Just give me the equipment.

What

A bulldozer for a start. Oy you, you can't drive to save your life. Bosh. Scoop them up and off the road. And the bulldozer's got a floodlight attached. Oy you. Me? Yes, it's you I'm talking to, you down there.

He made fifteen yards in first before the lights turned red.

Bosh, the beam comes down and they know. It's down on them and them only. Sorry pal, you're off. See what I'm saying, traffic problems, bollox. Just give me the powers. Him, him in the Polo, he's off.

He'll appeal. Undue haste, undue severity, undue process.

Bollox, wheel-clampers do it, no appeal there. Their problem, the clampers, is it's a half-way measure when it comes to congestion. Bring On The Bulldozers. Better still, a crane in the sky. Lift the fuckers right off the road, have them dangling in the sky. How's that for a deterrent. You can appeal all you like, fact is in the meanwhile, you're off the road.

All right. All right. Mark, it was like he was off the leash. Like they hadn't had that caper carrying Trouble down the stairs in his carpet. Like it had never happened. Like they'd done abracadabra to the lift and it started working just for them. Not half an hour previous as if none of it had happened.

You see what I'm saying, course you can appeal. Meanwhile however, Mark said.

None of it. Not twisting and turning down the stairs with a deadweight carpet. Not the old dear popping up in the doorway of the flats and smiling at them like they were good boys when Patsy K's pal was likely to start performing in his tube any moment.

Tony, you were brilliant, fucking brilliant. Oatmeal, I don't like the oatmeal, shows the stains too easy. Brilliant. I was shitting myself, the old dear in the doorway when I'm just waiting for the Invisible Man to throw a wobbler.

All right. All right then. It hadn't been that hard. He'd lifted a corner and shown her. Oatmeal, of course love, a Vodka and Orange, knock that over and you'll see it, stains easy. And she'd smiled at that because they were good boys and you could see, it was obvious, she'd had a Vodka and Orange in her time. So he'd said you didn't have to put up with what you didn't like, which was only right, and he was going for a red flocca.

And that was a cracker, the flocca, you know, the hairy one. The hairy one, she loved it. Lapped it up.

Not bad as it happened, for the spur of the moment, and him shitting himself come to that. Lucky someone had kept their wits about them. He leaned across and turned on the car radio.

…left with the feeling that NATO hasn't yet formulated its future.

That was their diplomatic correspondent.

It has emerged tonight that squatting protestors in Claremont Road, Leyton, are about to spend their second night in makeshift structures above the dilapidated houses. The protestors are objecting to the extension of the M11 Motorway into East London. A police spokesman said that the safety of all those involved was paramount.

The mobile was ringing. One hand on the wheel, Mark took it up off the dash.

Who's that...Are you taking the piss John, thirty minutes I was waiting, no forty...Yes, so...it so happens I've got other things to do in a day...No.

He turned to Tony. Cheeky sod, he said. He's only expecting me to take those5  kees off him.

…In the run-up to the launch of the National Lottery. A spokesman for Camelot, the organisers, said…

Here you know what, we're up five grand apiece on the day, Mark said.

Tony didn't cotton on, you could see it in the oncoming dipped beams.

He did have the money for his Five, silly bollox did. You remember. Mark said.

Well well well. He had forgotten. Mind for what he'd been through, for what they were going through, you'd be wanting a few grand. Several. Walking out the door with 60G into who knew what; sweating over carpet; telling the old dear he didn't care for oatmeal. Several several grand.

Mark had taken the wad from his pocket, was telling him to split it.

On the other hand, a grand in the hand was worth a few on a promise.

Did you hear him, that John, Mark said. No one to beat him when it comes to a whinge.

He slowed down for an intrusion of cones in off-red and white hoops. Tony had relaxed, was tapping his feet to the Eric Clapton off of the radio. Cars were closing up ahead.

A Car Supermarket, Tony said, pointing out to the left. It'll be a struggle pushing your trolley. Give little Davey a shock. Me, Me, I'm going to push it. I want to push the trolley.

What is he, seven? Mark said. It was true, CAR SUPERMARKET it said, and in all the windows, smaller type in red, AUTO HYPERMARKET.

Tony nodded. I want to push it, he said. And bosh, there's a chassis on the trolley. Ugh...Shove. Ugh...Shove. But he'll never admit it, never admit he's beat. He won't say nothing so there's the trolley just stood there in the aisle, if that's what they've got, aisles, and Davey stood there like pushing a trolley with a motor on top is the most boring fucking thing in the world he's just discovered so why bother.

Seven? So what's that make you, a proper grandad, Mark said as the traffic took a lurch towards the dual carriageway.

It makes me feel old, Tony said. Like this whole caper. I mean it makes you wonder, who the fuck can you trust.

Mark shrugged. The dual carriageway, it looked like the promised land. Tail lights hurrying away into the night

So the strength of it is, all he knows is you're Mark, the general use number sim card now down a drain, and that you've got a mate called Tony.

Plus he's seen my motor. It's in Christine's name. Mind you he's such a div I can't see him remembering the reg, Mark said.

At last. On the dual carriageway. It felt private in the Mazda. And after his experiences of today, he said, he'll be doing well to remember his name.

Plus the flat, that's fucked, you said it yourself. This afternoon. Whatever else, you said, the flat was fucked.

A slip road took them off the dual carriageway and on to the Motorway. Out, into a barrage of orange light and speedy cruising speeds.

I did say that, you're right. But you know what, look, we've made it. So I don't know, just leave it for a month. Or clean it up and leave it for a month. Get Charlie Cook to walk past it now and then in the meanwhile. Here, do you think he's got any of those Premium Tranks spare?

The Mazda was going bump bump. Like it had hiccoughs. Bump bump bump. Like a flat fucking tyre. Just when you thought you'd done the hard bit, bosh, you were out on the hard shoulder with a jack in the freezing fucking cold.

Look at it, Mark said. And they call it a motorway. Slabs of tarmac stuck together with squirts of tar. That's if it is tarmac. As it happens, it's oatmeal. Look at it. Fuck that,  BRING ON THE FLOCCA.

He was shouting, he was banging the wheel. Black on yellow signs were looming up to narrow his options. He could see the bulldozers ahead straddling the hard shoulder, surrounded by cones.

He spoke quietly, What matters Tony is we're away. Nothing terrible's happened.

What about him in the carpet?

That's what we're doing isn't it? Dump the cunt. Look for turn-offs after Newmarket. Dump him. Take him out of his carpet, tell him what's what and we fuck off. A forest, somewhere off the road.

But still tied with the sheets. It's fucking cold out there. What if he gets exposure. What the old dears get, hypothermia.

Lets have it right Tony, this is 1994. Naked and cold, if he can't handle that what chance has he got. He's getting a result, anyone else, and I'm not just talking yardies, anyone else and he's dead. Here, look, more fucking cones. They're taking over. The cone empire, see the way they're spreading out. Before you know it they'll have reached John O'Groats.

John O'Groats, that's where they walk for charity.

Is that right, Mark said. For charity?

ANCIENT AND MODERN

When to gratify a private appetite, it is once resolved upon, that an innocent and an helpless creature shall be sacrificed, 'tis an easy matter to pick up sticks enew from any thicket where it has strayed, to make a fire to offer it up with.

Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy.

It was a job,it paid the outgoings and provided a portion of disposable. Barry was content. In the economic climate as it was, pleased enough, manning a turnstile in the multi-purpose, full-time Capital Stadium, that had been designed with versatility in mind. To be economically viable, and responsibilities to be honoured, two events per twentyfour hours was the minimum required. As to the turnstiles, they’d made a comeback, the old style foot operated ones. Nothing fancy, a simple lock-open, lock-open mechanism which also registered the numbers passing through, each click of the half-gate. In the modern world they said, people liked a feature or two from the old days. That was the turnstile, tickets on the other hand, boy oh boy. Screen-read for falsies, paper, print colour, print density, watermarks, all analyzed on the instant on the flat-bed in each cubicle, and shown up on a screen above the operative’s head. Anything untoward and a beeper would beep, the gate lock automatically, and Security be on the scene in double-quick time. That was the theory.

She said it herself, Sandy, his line manager. Sounds good in theory she said, but it's no guarantee. It’s you who’s the failsafe. In his book, top marks for frankness, you couldn’t fault her on that score. She wasn’t claiming the job was easy-peasy, he’d be earning his salary. The double-check was his own glance at the screen, even when the beeper-and-lock had failed.  Any fault and a shadow would fall instantly on the ticket segment in question. And then you’ve got to ring the alarm, she said. But you’ve got to be quick. There’s a fine balance between proper security and the queue getting shirty. And this when venue economics also demanded that he often muck in with changing those stadium advertising slots that were specific event focused: ditto, sweeping stadium areas.

He started on the day shift. Another employee did the late. Inside the cubicle apart from the screen and a stool, there was room for a locker each, his own handy for fresh chewing gum and a pair of half-finger gloves. The first few events, the first few days even, he could see it now, and it was only natural, he’d been on the slow side. Sandy’d taken him aside. She wasn’t making threats, she said, his job was safe for now. What she wanted to tell him was some stats he might have missed. You’re a bloke yourself so maybe you do know, she said, but men in queues have short fuses. We’re catching up, us girls, but for now, you guys, three minutes in a queue, on average, and you’re as stroppy as hell.

OK, he hadn’t been to college but, message received. On the other hand, when he’d tallied up all the tickets from his gate and passed them on to Sandy and then God knows where, they were lucky, those people who could do their double-check at leisure. Of course since then it had got easier, practice might not make you perfect but you did speed up, developed a sixth sense, the face on the other side of the mesh and the screen itself, absorbed on the spot. But back home that evening, after work, message received,  when he’d finished helping old Mrs B in the flat below with her grocery order, that evening he’d taken a good look in the mirror. Asked the question of himself, if he too became ratty after 3 minutes in a queue? When he hadn’t bothered with ordering, his needs too small, and waited to pay in the hypermarket, how long? Five minutes sometimes, his foot tapping on the spotty mosaic, fists bunched. There was something in  what Sandy’d said. And the girls were catching up, she'd said, not whistling a happy tune after ten minutes at the box office. No siree.

Meanwhile he’d fallen into conversation with a colleague on the turnstiles. Jake was a veteran, had seen it all and more. Not that he had it mind to stay on the job forever, there was a wider world out there, he said.

True, Barry said, but with things as they are, well I’m not complaining.

You wait for your first Go-Karters’ meet, then you can talk, Jake said.

What? Barry said, half amused, a small shake of the head.

Jake winced with an open mouth, as if all his senses were under attack, all of them.

They were certainly up for it, the Karters and their friends, when the time did come around. Any and everything they were up for, so long as it was fun. Hadn’t bothered him. As it turned out, it was soon afterwards he had his first ‘incident’. An early-evening Thrash gig. Nervous as hell as the shadow seemed to fall on the screen. Make the call and the ticket valid after all, and he was for the high-jump, simple as that. Hadn’t needed to even say it, Sandy hadn’t, but there it was, no bleeper but the shadow and other side of the mesh the blonde girl, too nice to be true. He went for it. Locked the gate. Rang the bell. The girl turned, the queue behind held her in. It was a mistake the girl cried out, a mistake had been made. Security came in strong, armoured, in numbers, and polite. Would she come this way please, so that the matter could be resolved. Next day, just before the lunchtime spot, an All-Righty-With-The-Almighty event, tickets-only gathering, Sandy passed by with a Mr Carl. A good spot Barry, he said, and she backed him up, Good spot, she said.

It’s early days yet, Mr Carl said, and we believe quite a few slipped in…

Which is all the more credit to you, Sandy said.

Early days but we think you may have given us an important lead to a very unscrupulous bunch.

I was just doing my job, Barry said.

Back home and downstairs to give Mrs B’s a quick going-over with the vacuum, he found her watching a repeat of the All-Righty event. She was singing along, then cut-off in full voice by the News. An evil man was on the loose, his photo on the screen; neighbours said he was a weirdo. A typhoon circled Minnesota: exchange rates were in turmoil: advertisers were asking for tougher spectator and audience ratings regulations: polar bears were making a comeback: shots had been fired over intellectual property rights. He said he’d pop back later. Soon there’d be a change in the shift-pattern and he’d be mid-afternoon to late evening but he wasn’t sure she’d understood. Later he found her quiet in front of a crossword on screen and zapped the kitchenette surfaces in double-quick time.

Sure enough, the change came. The whole shift. Change, it was the nature of life, Sandy told them, the nature of nature. And then they'd been thrown in at the deep-end, a nightime gladatorial for scrappers, winner-takes-all.

In at the deep end, Sandy said, it was what they wanted. Sink or swim? They were going to swim. As a team. Speaking from the upper tiers of the lower South stand, she looked great in a navy blue trouser suit. The highlights in her hair shone under the floodlights. For this event there might be some protestors but she had every confidence in the Security team. Just a few of the chattering classes, would be involved in any protest, the elitists, she said. On the other hand they would have their work cut out in the ticket department, for this event they could have filled the stadium three times over. It felt like she was looking directly at him when she said it fell on the shoulders of turnstile staff to take some of the weight off the Security boys and girls. Barry felt a shiver, he was up for it.

Then it was all-systems . Barry found himself at the end of a TURBOVITE hoarding in fibre glass. Heavier than they looked the Fifteen Metre jobbies. Out came the COOL4U in its blue,  which then had to be carried back to the hoardings storage unit under the West Stand, after the TURBOVITE, had been slotted in.

You felt it in your arms, the weight of it, and a relief to be back at the turnstile. Eyes down for a full house it might be, but he was up for the challenge. He could see Sandy  on the video link in the turnstile area. No one would be letting her down, otherwise they'd be letting themselves down.

In the event he'd  have put it down as being on the quiet side, but then who was he to judge, he just totted up the numbers as usual, 523 paying customers through his gate.

He dropped in on Mrs B in the morning. She was chatty, what she'd seen from the window and what she'd seen on the screen. How interesting his work must be, she said, all the stars he must see. He smiled. Didn't want her deceived, once in a blue moon the stars. No, what he saw was the punters, in all their moods.

He was very kind, and she did not want to impose, but some milk, sugar and the weekly Guide, she would appreciate it when he had a moment.

Didn't want to deceive her, didn't want to deceive anyone, but who knew, there were promotion possibilities. The dressing rooms, changing rooms, the hospitality suite, that all had to be staffed.

The 24/7 Local was out of his way, how he'd planned the lunchtime, but he saw no harm in being flexible and pre-empting shortages of his own: washing-up liquid, maize-mash, long-life and air freshener. And by removing any anxiety, it made Mrs B's day. She was a lucky old woman to have such a neighbour, she said.

The afternoon shift began with some hoarding re-allocation in readiness for the six o'clock gig, him at one end, Jake at the other. They could have done with a bod in the middle, that was the truth of it. But them, their situation, that wasn't the whole picture: don't kid yourselves, Sandy'd said, margins were tight.

It's still not right, Jake said, and I'm not just talking this caper, do yourself an injury no problem, no, it's the responsibility.

Barry nodded.

And that's what I'm saying, Jake said, look at the programme guys, where's their responsibility.

Well they have got the Interval bars, I'll bet they can get busy.

Busy's not the point, Jake said, I'm talking responsibility.

I'm talking rest a minute, Barry said. They were Half way down the North Stand, another half to go until they could turn into the West. It's a heavy bugger, he said.

Must be all that gold, that's what you get when sunshine's gone digital. But you get my point, no responsibilities, what, they're going to turn someone away from the bar because they don't think they are who they say they are. Then no one would get a drink and there would be ructions.

I don't know, Barry said, leading off with the hoarding.

So what I'm saying is, where's our bonus in the wage packet, Jake said.

Here we go, put the old sun away for another month, Barry said.

Some dodger gets through and it's our fault, you see what I'm saying Barry.

He could, he could see it, coasting through The Sunshine, its Saints and Sinners and then the VJ Spangle Show in the half eight slot. Easy-going crowds the both of them, 600 the Sunshine, you'd never have known it, and a stunning 713 for the Spangle.

He could see it, not all crowds were the same. By no means. Most time they'd arrive- five hundred in five minutes-all at once, two minutes before the start of whatever it was they were barging to see, and in a mood. And amongst them, someone who might not be who they said they were. Responsibility? Jake had a point. Stress too, but it was the way of the modern world, and to be fair, the programme/bar guys didn't exactly have it easy. The bar getting stroppy under the influence. And the programmes, it wasn't like they didn't weigh a thing, lugging them about. Yes, and they could be pricey which some folk didn't like. And then, often enough, they'd be re-arranging the stadium in double-quick time, one event to another. It wasn't like they had a cushy number.

No one had it easy, that was one way of looking at it. Mrs B, she didn't have it easy. Ask you for a favour; go down the shops, if it's not too much trouble, she'd say. But you'd never hear her moaning.

Break an arm with one of these and you'll see what I'm saying, Jake said. And then it seemed like no time at all, the Hologram Nostalgia Show was round again. His very first shift ever, in the turnstile and nervous as hell. Time flew. Seemed like only yesterday. Knowing what he knew now, how lucky he'd been for the Hologram audience to be his first crowd.

Don't think anyone ever gives you anything, Jake said.

He had a point, Barry said, the Absinthe MerryGoRound board safely packed away in the storage unit under the West Stand. But other people had their difficulties, he said.

It was the next day, he'd done an egg and salad brunch for Mrs B., Sandy was down in the South Stand concourse. Had a smile for him. She'd like a chat; up in her office. Better than humping hoardings around, she said, and you couldn't help but laugh. Only his second time up in the Upper East and her office, the job interview and now this.

You've been here a fair few months now, she said.

It just seems like yesterday he said.

To the side of her desk, pinned up, he saw lists of turnstile attendance figures.

I think you'll find time has passed Barry, she said with a hint of a smile, and we've been impressed. Your commitment, loyalty, it's second to none. Have you ever thought about management?

Me? Management? No.

Well start thinking. I'm not going to be in this position forever because I don't want to stay where I am, the same rung of the ladder.

I see, Barry said.

By the way, she said, smiling, you turnstile guys, I hear rumours of discontent  money-wise.

I'm not discontented, he said.

Ambitious but not discontented, that's you and me both, she said.

Her mobey rang. He knew the tune. It was on the tip of his tongue. He could see Mr Carl on the screen of her flip-up.

One moment, she said to the screen. Excuse me a moment Gary, she said.

Barry, he said.

Silly me, bear with me a moment, she said, stepping out on to the office's own terrace.

He scratched his head. Smoothed down his nostrils. He got up. Sat down. Stared at the wall. His name was up there, one of several. Top of his attendances list,  BARRY in bold capitals. He sat down. Sandy was up and down the walkway, he could see her through the plate glass, her head bent to the phone, body language expressive. Talking nineteen to the dozen by the looks of it.

He stretched himself across the shoulders and stood up. Glanced at the lists, stopped at his own column. He frowned, pursing the eyebrows. On a horizontal of the grid One Thousand and Seven against his first evening shift, the Gladiators, Winner Takes All. One thousand?! Someone had made a mistake.

Anyone at home? Sandy’s voice, amused. This is Sandy to Barry. Come in.

She’d startled him, back in the office so quietly and him confused.

I couldn’t help but noticing, he said, turned top face her.

What’s that Barry. What couldn’t you help but notice?

It’s nothing really, he said.

Well that’s all right then, if it’s nothing really.

But he couldn’t stop, not when who knew where a mistake might lead, for Sandy as well as himself.

It’s just the attendance figures, you know, my turnstile, some of them are wrong, he said.

I don’t think so, she said. She was smiling. They’re computer-generated.

OK, no one wanted to admit they’d made a mistake, but that wasn’t the point. Take the Gladiator event for example, he said. A thousand and seven. Definitely not.

What, do you keep your own list? Mr Efficiency himself?

No, I’ve no call to do that, you never mentioned it, he said.

Well then, she said. And like I said, they’re computer-generated. And if we can stick to the point, I want you to think seriously about management, really think about it. Of course you may want to stay as you are. That’s how it is with the majority of people, and that’s fine. If it’s OK for them, that’s fine. But from what I can see, that’s not you. And when you’ve thought about it, come and see me again with your ideas.

Next day he dropped in on Mrs B to see if she was OK for lunch. She asked if he was feeling peaky, out of sorts.

No flies on you Mrs B

I should hope not, she said.

It’s been suggested I take on more responsibilities at work, he said. There’d be more money of course, but I don’t know.

I’m sure you’ll make the right decision, she said. To help, she let him microwave her Fresco.

He laid out cutlery and a paper napkin on her tray. A thousand and seven?! If it showed anything it was that computers made mistakes too. Same as everyone. And there’d been others, the figures too high. Only it didn’t seem to bother Sandy, like it really didn’t matter, or she was sure his memory was wrong.

He singed some fingertip on the plate out of the microwave.

Now then, Mrs B said, keep your eye on the ball.

His memory was not wrong. It might be that some kind of formula was involved, but a Thousand and Seven?! He couldn’t see it, whatever the equation. Not his affair however. If Sandy’d been sloppy and let it pass, that was her lookout. He wasn’t one for telling tales. And to who? Mr Carl? He was kidding. No way.

You should be getting your own lunch now, Mrs B said.

He supposed he should.

You need your fuel, she said.

There was a lot to be said for routine. He hadn’t fancied this shift when the change had come; now he wouldn’t fancy changing back to the old one. Making something of your mornings and the lunchtime, he liked it, knew where he stood. On the other hand routine was routine and could do with a bit of spicing up, which was in everyone’s interest when you had to stay focused throughout . A new batch of falsies was on the go, as close to the real McCoy as could be. Certainly good enough to beat the automatic bleeper-and-gate-lock. So much for technology, there was always talk of human error, but it was down to them, humans like himself to keep the falsies in check. The technology wasn’t up to the job, computers and all, which was exactly his point. He would prove it. Prove it and stay on his toes all in the one go. He would keep his own copy of the log of admissions through the gate. It was something to do, and he’d prove his point. Management?! Ideas?! Keep an independent record of your attendances, that’s what he’d say. Not rocket science, it stood to reason, get into management and you’d want your accounts straight.

For a while Security was run off its feet, the ‘incidents’ that cropped up, and it took its toll on turnstile staff. Jake was at him again. See what I mean, he'd said. He had a point, Barry admitted, and he'd think about it, what Jake was saying.

By the time you've thought about it we'll all be dead, Jake said.

Barry smiled said he was exaggerating and abracadabra things quietened down again. Arrests had been made, forgers who'd thought they were smart. Soon after, when it seemed like no time at all, the Go-Karters were due again, cycle completed. Time had flown by. And for himself, he'd seen it all, was now unafraid of anything the job might throw at him.

Had their fun, the Go-Kart crowd. Where the cap fits, shouted the one, shoving a cap under the mesh, D for Dunce. G+T steward if you don’t mind, another. And Basher, he was odds-on for the overall, he heard. Five to four on, they said. Basher who could cut corners faster than a greasy. A Greasy Who, the crowd shouted, he could hear them from the cubicle. A greasy pole they shouted back at themselves.

Quite a night, he said to Mrs B, giving the carpet a vacuum.

Too noisy for me, she said, and the advertising breaks were too long. I switched to a murder.

Now then, he said, stern and laughing, no flipping.

I’ll flip when I want to, she said. Old peoples’ rights.

Lucky for some, he said.

On the news: a zonal IPR ceasefire; the advertisers were whinging again, they were being short changed; Siberian wildlife had found a second home; jitters had struck the image sector; and Syrah Syrah had announced a reunion tour.

Are they still going?

They’re not that old, Barry said, dusting her Venetians to finish off.

Back at work, Sandy’s timing felt perverse, choosing to summon him just as he and Jake had lifted out a Lube Tube ad board. It left his workmate having to find someone else to give him a hand, and giving Barry an Oh Yes look, as if now he understood everything. It wasn’t fair.

So what had he come up with, what ideas did he have, she wanted to know.

They’d climbed up to her eyrie up in the East Stand. There were no charts on the wall, no attendance figures. It was something he could not help but notice.

Fire away, she said.

Well for one thing, he said, I’d improve the system for recording attendances. In my experience there’ve been some shocking inconsistencies.

In your experience, she said. She was smiling. Vast as it is. What I think Barry is that you’ve got a bee in your bonnet when what we’re looking for is vision. Isn’t that right Mr Carl?

So quiet these management types were, so quiet the sliding doors, he had heard no one enter.

That’s right, process we’re happy with. It’s vision we’re looking for Barry.

Perhaps that’s just not your forte, Sandy said.

Now then, lets not be harsh, Mr Carl said. Let’s give it another few days, see what Barry comes up with. Scope, lets see some scope.

It was not for him, management,  that was obvious. When it came to the figures, they believed they were right, and that was that. As to vision, he didn’t have any, only enough to see that his locker in the turnstile cabin, his that was alongside the bloke who did the earlier shift’s own locker, was not as he had left it. The two fresh packs of chewing gum that were always ready and waiting, they were crooked; his notebook with the turnstile figures, it lay flat on the grey metal when he’d left it propped up on the back wall.

The evening’s work passed in a whirl. It was as if he were not there in person but looking on as first the Saffrons came for their twice a year do, and then the floodlights glared down for a smart crowd to watch the greyhounds. He was present again only to write down the attendance figures, Seven hundred and thirtyfour for the religious lot and Five Seven Four for the dogs. The events named and dated.

The next day was quiet, chatty Jake had nothing to say for himself which suited, and a quiet evening too, the Brothers and Sisters of Sion, a full house, One Thousand and Forty through his turnstile, but as good as gold; and then the Nineties Nostalgia Roadshow, on its last legs, Three hundred and sixtyfour. Three hundred and sixty four it was, Three hundred and sixtyfour he noted down in his book.

He had reached a decision, management was not for him whatever anyone said, and woke up after a good sleep ready for a good breakfast and a good clean-up of his own space. When all was spic and span he thought he should look in on Mrs B, see if anything needed doing down there. Only the Entry code for her entrance door, it did not work. FourFiveFiveFiveOne. Her code, it was their secret she said, but the handle did not budge. Overconfidence was possible, the familiarity of it and him having been too quick and a finger nudging an incorrect digit. He tapped them out again Four Five Five Five One. Nothing doing. The electrical sub-circuit likely as not. He ran upstairs and tapped out his own code. The door opened. OK OK, there were many possibilities and he was doing the right thing, a process of elimination. A malfunction specific to Mrs B's looked to be the most likely. He went outside to check the windows. ]

Something was up, her venetians were closed tight. The Emergency Services crossed his mind, but it would not be fair, her embarrassed if it was just one of those things, her sleeping in and an electronic malfunction, coincidence.

He gave it an hour, stretched his legs and got in some groceries for himself. Eleven o'clock and the situation had not changed. It would make anyone anxious. He tapped gently on the middle window. Then louder, calling out her name: Mrs B, it's Barry are you all right? No reply, until he was making a right exhibition of himself and he heard her voice, saw a ripple in the venetians.

She was shouting. Don't you dare come near me. I know your sort.

What? What are you on about? He called back.

This was crazy, it made no sense.

Don't come that with me, she shouted. I should have known, acting like butter wouldn't melt in your mouth.

It made no sense at all, not unless she'd flipped, what they called paranoid symptoms.

The nerve of you, she was shouting. Men like you, they shouldn't be allowed near decent people. Get out of here!

Barry was dazed, he was reeling, he began to walk. He should ring the Emergency Services, she might do herself an injury: he should not ring the Emergency Services for who knew where that might lead. Mrs B in an institution? It would not be fair.

If he was honest with himself her remarks had hurt. He did not understand but he was hurt, it was not fair either, but then he supposed that with what they called paranoia people might say anything. Like a worm in your head is what he'd heard.

He was distracted at work, it could hardly be otherwise. His sort, what was his sort? What had got into her head? Remarks from Jake bounced off him as they were seconded to the crew adjusting the giant screens. When it was time to get in place for the early evening slot, a multimedia extravaganza, he bumped into Sandy in the turnstile forecourt. She looked good in a short skirt. She was smiling, how was he she asked? He didn't look so good, she said.

Are you all right Barry? Everything all right at home, no problems there?

No, he said, his voice clear. Everything's fine thank you.

You couldn't tell with a multimedia audience, there was talk of drugs but if so they were quiet drugs. And besides, what did he care when he had the morning's hulabaloo on his mind. When he didn't know if he'd done the right thing, when Mrs B might be in who knew what kind of state.

Out of habit he wrote the figures in his little book, Five Hundred and TwentyOne and left it sat on the swivel stool when he went out to sweep the forecourt. What sort? What sort can she have thought he was? He was Barry Brown, had always been Barry Brown. No needles on the tarmac, just the usual wrappers and cans. He knew the event was over when the floodlights came on followed by the distinctive sound of a crowd of feet, but still nothing made sense.

The first trickle of the Polo crowd came while they were still fixing the playing area. It was new they said, under lights, but it was catching on. And then it was the usual last minute rush, big fellows with hip flasks and loud voices with a pretty girl on their arms. While Mrs B, goodness knew what was happening there, spiders coming out of the walls as likely as not.

Cattle shed or what, said another of the big fellows squeezed in. Barry glanced up, saw a shadow fall on the ticket segment. He pressed the alarm.

What's the meaning of this, the big man said. This is an outrage.

They all said the same thing: different words, same meaning. But Security were backing off. Some misunderstanding, the leader of the crew was saying.

Damn nerve, there had better be some good explanation, the big man indignant

Now what?! Just what was happening? Had today taken leave of its senses and now here was the crew leader telling him, Barry, to step out from the cubicle. What for?! There had been a shadow on the ticket image.

Mr Carl was there. Mr Carl smoothing the big man. A mistake had been made. They apologized without reservation. One of their employees would be entirely at his service, would he like to come this way through the gateway.

And then he turned on Barry, Mr Carl in a fury. Did he have any idea who that was? What was he trying to sabotage the very business of the stadium. Did he know how many peoples' livelihood depended on it.

But there was a shadow, I saw it. You know me, Barry said.

They were all staring at him, the spectators queuing at the other turnstiles, horrible stares.

A shadow? The President of the most prestgious Polo Club in the land, Mr Carl said.

You're fired.

I was doing my job, I want to talk to Sandy.

And I want to talk to you Barry. It was Sandy, in a rage. Months of work this has taken and you balls it up at the first opportunity because you haven't been focused. I could see it this evening and you lied to me.

There was a shadow, Barry said, the Security crew moving in around him.

Escort him from the stadium. Mr Carl said. With immediate effect.

This is not right, Barry said as they took him by the arms. His breathing was frantic and left him breathless. There was a shadow. And I've got things in my locker.

Take him away, Mr Carl said.

You've let me down badly, Sandy shouted and he was out on the street, the big door closed. Breathless. Without a job and a neighbour gone mad, when he'd woken up and it had been just another day. There had been a shadow on the ticket image. There had been a shadow. No one was going to drive him mad. No, this was going to be sorted and they'd realize it was them who'd made the mistake.

Which got him at least walking, knowing that it was their mistake.

Nearly home and he couldn't help but see it, the brick wall of a end of row terrace house, the letters big and red. BARRY BROWN IS A PEEDOFILE.

No. No no no. This is false. This is false. He was shouting, shouting at the wall. And then what would happen, he would draw attention to himself and they'd know, people would know, it was Barry Brown was doing the shouting and assume the worst, believe the lie. Yes, like Mrs B had believed it, that’s what had happened, someone had cooked up a story and she’d believed it.

He turned and ran. Ran all the way to his one-bedroom'd. He wasn’t stupid. He ran, and then he packed what could be carried.

CLICK-CLACK

An acre of click-clack flooring, it was new to him. Should not have been the case; wasn’t like he’d been out of touch with the years gone by, nor too well provided not to be bothering with public transport in general. Fact was, if you weren’t watching, things happened. Lucky only that he was not of a paranoid way of thinking, that somehow it was him they’d had in mind when the architects had gone for just the six seats for the six thousand. Nevertheless, that it was not now how it had once been, a pub in situ for one thing; that a development had occurred, the bare marble, the no pub, and the no seats, it gave him a cuff on the nose.

Bollox, a light cuff at most, no nose-bleed involved, and whatever his thoughts on the matter there was a job to be done. All bollox, when it wasn’t like he’d been a habitué of the old station: only there was nowhere to sit down, not even if you was paying, not the CRUSTY CROISSANT nor the CHEEKY CAPPUCCINO. No fuckingwhere to sit down when he was early.

Of course he was early.

Because you just never knew. Not 100%, not even when you’d strived for it, done your level best. A laugh in the face that would be, the one time in a hundred and the train was early just when you’d been cutting it fine. As it happened, twenty minutes overdue. Not late. Overdue it said on the board. The click clack flaps said SWANSEA CARDIFF BRISTOL TEMPLE MEADS READING, the train due to arrive 20 minutes behind schedule. White letters on a black background, the turnover of the name flaps click clack. Commuters for Berkshire, and beyond, a wider world, delays regardless because a late arrival meant a late departure to come. Cause and effect, even if these days it was like the most naff thing in the world when there was uncertainty everywhere, and had proved to be, so they said, integral to the nature of things. To the universe large and small. But he was not about to ditch the concept, the old cause and effect, not when the law said a nod and a wink was enough to send you down. Not when someone might imagine they’d seen the both when they’d seen just the one. Or when someone with no morals wanted to see the both when there was just the one. Not when by chance, there might be the both, the nodder and the winker with nothing in common, neither mutual acquaintances, business, nor leisure pursuit, but who simply happened to be in the same place at the one time, nodding and winking at unknown parties.

In the meanwhile you could be the most virtuous person in the world and still face delays.

Due to previous engineering works and their subsequent consequences, the tannoy said, words to that effect.

Departure was what you wanted, Get Out of Here, Have a Break, but Arrivals was the job in hand, the job to be done, before Departure could be considered. Bold crossed the click-clack. Thought about an express espresso; thought of his heart; and walked on. Click-clack, like he was in a film, which would be OK only it was CCTV, some other prick's movie. So you walked, like you were every other geezer with somewhere to go. Crusty Croissant smelled of butter; coffee from the CHEEKY CAPPUCCINO tickled his nose. On the board it was now plus 15 minutes,  Platform 4. He walked on. What, they were trying to wind him up with the coffee smells? Lucky he was not of a paranoid frame of mind. There was plenty of that elsewhere. In the atmosphere. If the voice loop on the tannoy had said unattended luggage was liable to be destroyed once, she’d said it a few times. Resolute, he walked on, head down. Bold, first name Adam if they was that nosey. Date of Birth? Flexible. Face recognition? Smudged, unless you really was paranoid and thought yourself the center of the universe. Smudged, like it had been with the old pen nibs in primary school, your blotting paper at the ready. What???? Baffled the daughter, never mind the grandson. Blotting paper? Ink? Wossat?

The feller in the CRUSTY CROISSANT baseball cap was a black feller with the hump; fair play to him, had the hump but still handy with the tongs, the pastry in the serviette in the pin-stripe’s hand untouched by human hand; and the black feller polite even when you could see, anyone could see, feller had the raving hump. You wanted to pay your own way through life and you'd no choice, self-control or bust, but fair play to him with the tongs all the same. Didn't make it any the easier, the no-choice. Meanwhile, not a care in the world, the pinstripe, teeth into the croissant like he was doing it a favour.

Click-clack, Bold glanced at the racks of newsprint and glossy. 12 minutes approximately, earliest time of arrival. He thought of a Standard. OLYMPICS: LONDON BID, the headline said. He couldn’t see it, Hackney stadium as was, the old dog track, they could revamp it a thousand times till 2012, and still he couldn’t see it. On the other hand no future in being a miserable old cunt. Maybe another time, another bid, and it would be the making of the grandson. It was possible, a fortune in construction or an interpreter's salary. Because you just never knew. Otherwise pointless, the whole shebang. What you could do, was pass on some tips as to what you did know. Nothing he could tell the daughter or the grandson but they had eyes and ears, had seen something of how he lived, which was in accordance with the some things he’d learned along the way, or which tried to be. They’d seen for instance in what circumstances he’d had the hump, with whom, and when not. Seen it and appreciated that there was rhyme and reason for having the hump on those occasions that he did have it. What else could you do, to pass on the few things you did know. Write your last will and testament plus a couple of pages of life philosophy?! Give over! For one thing, you’d be too far gone on the morphine to care and if not, unless you were one hundred percent fucked, you’d be making the protest, demanding  more: the proper dosage if you don't mind.

As it was there was a job to be done, a follow-the-rules job, a job in a situation in which he himself was strictly an observer, a pensioner in effect, no longer on court with a racquet himself. The board heaved over ClackClack. By his watch, ten minutes to go. He turned back, past the tube entrance on the concourse itself, to the point where the architects, the refurbishers had given up, where it was beyond their brief. Dirty tarmac, tile walled and railing’d, rose up the slope past smudged gothic pillars to a main street where the lights strayed all over the shop just like it was the London town of old. CCTV cameras here, in this light, not a chance, the worst brief going would have it laughed out of court.  Ought to, only you just never knew. Some bright spark making a name for himself and the CCTV just one piece in the circumstantial jigsaw. Lucky he was not of a paranoid frame of mind, otherwise nothing would get done at all. If the feller came off the expected train, and if the feller had walked past the CRUSTY CROISSANT and then the tube entrance, and up past the gothic pillars with no tail in sight, this is where he would catch up and have a word, a camera blind-spot as he saw it. It was not his business personally but a very good pal still playing the old serve-and-volley, he would like to know if, how, and why the feller had had his collar felt, when it appeared that the feller wanted to carry on as before. As if nothing had happened. As if all the questions had already been answered when in fact they had never been asked, not at this end, not in the detail without which no reasonable judgment could be made as to possible consequences and a future course of action.

He turned and walked back down the slope. The concourse, seen as a whole more or less, it was choc-a. No panic however, commuters, they’d done it a thousand times, stood around in a crowd. Had their little routines. Coping strategies the daughter’s new boyfriend called it. So, you're up shit creek without a paddle, he’d asked, what’s your coping strategy then?  Only the daughter’d given him the glare like he’d farted in his suit. Which was not fair. He’d been there. And lived to tell the tale. He'd been there but No No Never,/No No Never No More. The old song like a knot in your hankie or the entry on your palm-held, it was a message received and understood. Pay attention! Here and now! The immediate environment!

Under their caps the girls in the CHEEKY CAPPUCCINO they had this look, like if you didn’t work at CHEEKY CAPPUCCINO and know how it operated, you didn’t know jack shit. They were tired, course they were, but they knew how to give the old espresso holder a wrist twist like they were pissing on you, and bored with it.. He hovered close by for the smell. The girl on the front line she was what, Filipino? Thai? Her eyes ran across him blind, and back to the woman waiting for her paper  cup.

Eight  minutes to go. What, time had stood still?! Just to spite you?!

He stopped. Breathed in. Breathed out. All right in its place, impatience, when something could be done with it, a flick-of-the-switch service provider giving you the blank for instance, a case where retribution could be taken if you could be arsed, instant retribution, but a train with its rails, points, signals, human error, not a lot you could do. Course you could tell them not to be so stingy with the track and train upkeep, but for that approach to yield  results, unguaranteed results at that, persistent whinging by a large number of people over a fair length of time was the bare minimum required. In the meanwhile, misplaced impatience, it was bad news for the old ticker. Didn’t need the doc to be telling him.

Instead a gentle stroll in relaxed manner towards Platform Four and take a dekko. Which was in part just for the form because it was obvious how he was going to go about it. Fact was, he knew the feller and the feller knew him from when he’d still been playing the old backhand himself. In part only, because on the other hand, you just never knew. You looked things straight in the eye, in an objective manner, weighed it up and looked for the probable, but in the death, you just never knew.

Click-clack Click-clack.

The crowd was thinner within the semi circle of people with an interest in Platform 4’s exit/entrance. A few, he assumed were waiting to welcome arrivals lucky enough to have anyone that cared enough to be waiting for them, maybe carry their bags to a parked car. The rest, it being a specific platform, evidently keen to guarantee themselves a seat for the train that would depart once arrival had been completed and then some.

The opening words had been mangled in the tannoy till it got to saying delayed due to an earlier incident. An incident! Which was what, any of a multitude of sins? Lucky he was not of a paranoid frame of mind or a scenario wherein the feller clocks the tail on board and throws a wobbler, might come to mind. Lucky altogether when otherwise, nothing would get done, not if you were that way inclined. Besides, the arrival time of the train in question had not changed as a consequence of the announcement. It was the Maidenhead local where the arrival time flicked on 25 minutes. Lucky he didn’t have the ego to get that paranoid when glances in his direction could take on a meaning they did not have. No, if there was any picking out to be done, that was his job, and what you were looking for, was the cut of a person, their stance. In this instance someone else awaiting the arrival of the feller, someone with the professional hump when it came to passing shots, the overhead smash or backspin of any sort, and showing it. Someone who’d convinced themselves it was a game for spivs and lowlife only.

Your eyes could deceive you, no getting round it, but all he could see was tired people, even the suits that were veterans and knew the score when it came to waiting for the old 7.10. That wasn’t your spiv-hater’s style, no, not even if he was clocking up the overtime for the second home mortgage, not on the job. Besides, the real job would be when the train arrived, watching for anyone coming off it with an eye on the feller. Or the pair of them coming off the train with an eye on the feller. Unless the feller was playing far bigger tournaments than their business over time had suggested, it was not at all certain that the spiv-haters at this end would take an interest. Nevertheless you followed the rules: you did the check.

The feet were aching like they did when you were stood still. He turned for a quick tour of the CHEEKY CAPPUCCINO, Platform Four in easy reach. The smell of it was free only it turned out was shit, like you could spray it in the toilet and call it coffee-fresh. Just doing her job, the Asian girl, ping-pong, the ring-up on the cash ticker. Ping-pong, like you should be able to do it for yourself, make your own cheerful cappuccino, only you was too stupid. As for eye-contact with the customer when a single shot cost just a nicker, don’t kid yourself.

All right, his view of the world was jaundiced, it was his mood of the moment because fact was he didn’t want to be here, had retired. OK, it wasn’t like he’d done that well and now owned a yacht, an ocean-goer, and called it Fuck Off, but he was comfortable. Only his very good pal that was still playing the grass-court, if it so happened that the feller on the due train had it in mind to drag his very good pal into whatever misfortune had occurred, who knew where it might end. So you dragged yourself all the way across town to this shithole because that’s what you had to do, and, as a result, saw the world through shit-coloured specs. Get back home and put your feet up and lo and behold, they’d changed of their own accord, the lenses shiny and bright.

This is a security announcement. Unattended luggage is liable to be taken away and destroyed.

Out in the open spaces were darkened platforms long enough for an Airbus take-off, and Underground signs for an alternative part of the system. It might be that the feller had the tube in mind, the entrance close by or these ones out in the gloom, dependent on the line he chose. He hoped not. Fings were not what they used to be, not where the Underground was involved, but if, if the feller did plump for it, he’d have to follow, engine breakdowns, signal failures and dodgy holdalls notwithstanding. And with them,  how would you know, like you were on the Piccadilly coming in from Heathrow, how would you know that the holdall with the tick-tock was not belonging to the young lady with the bum bag sat opposite and looking at her Tube map every two minutes. What, ask her straight out and bring attention to himself?! When he had a job to do?! But if that’s what the feller decided, that he was going to use the Underground regardless, did it before there’d been the time or opportunity to see how the land lay, then down the fucking escalator he would have to go.

Click clack Click clack. At the railings close by the gateway to Platform 4, he turned and leaned back against them. Out on the concourse each person had their own plan. Course they did, if no one knew what they were doing next, the whole thing would come to a stop; gridlock. Three minutes? Two? Any time soon and the train would be doing them all a favour by turning up, so as he could see if the feller had pals he shouldn’t have. The hope was that he did not, and then it was just a matter of a quick chat, and a judgment made, before making a call to his very good friend.

Out in the crowd there was a fair few with their cheeky coffees in cardboard cups. It was tempting, something in the mouth, when you were stood around with nothing to do, and more time with nothing to do than you’d bargained for. Just as likely, from the little one did know, that there was now official interest in the feller, that he’d played one passing shot too many. In which case you were banking on them not coming mob-handed, and then on quickly spotting what had come with, the one or the pair of them.

No train that he could hear, when by now the delay had run out of time. Should be gliding in as of now. Anything other than them mob-handed and everything was OK, the very good pal would have to shut up shop for a while and that was that, and he couldn’t see a crowd of them on the job, not looked at from the cost-benefit point of view. If on the other hand, via circumstances he was ignorant of, or by a misjudgment on their part they had underestimated the feller’s status in the game and now discovered he had a fan club, it might be that they- he and the very good pal- would have to review the deletion and shredding process completed upon his retirement. There might even be questions to be asked of the very good pal as to his subsequent updating of that process. Still, no point in imagining the worst, and it was easy, course it was, all too easy to get morbid when something you didn’t want to do in the first place was delayed, but still had to be done.

Blimey, it was in, caught him unawares the way it had glided in, and here were the first of them, a suit in a hurry, a girl with the boyfriend waiting, and the feller himself dressed for the gym in a sober blue tracksuit with white stripe and two-tone trainers. Not full of the joys of life by the look of him, course not, because whatever it was, something had happened, and unless you was dead unlucky, things didn't just happen, for no reason.

He gave him a head start with an eye on the slow crowd that followed. Through the barrier. Then he'd better get a move on because the feller, the gymnast, wasn't hanging about. Past the CRUSTY CROISSANT the crowd thinned. The London Underground logo was lit up, a design classic, and the feller walked straight past it. He'd have done the same himself, and it could only make you feel good about yourself, that your own way of  seeing things was not some cranky viewpoint, was not exclusive to you alone but shared by people still playing the old lob and  stop volley. He stood still for a moment, turned his head and scanned whatever bodies were still in their wake. No one was infallible, you could bet your bottom dollar on it, but he was as sure as was possible that there was no fan club, no one pretending not to look and looking. Meanwhile the feller himself was heading for the dirty slope that was off court and lead straight to the big world of London town, streets and street lights. He upped a gear, not bad for a veteran even when you said it yourself, and moved up closer to the gymnast's back. Had to get it right, you could overdo the startle, he'd seen it, like someone was out to prove a point, when all you wanted was to see how it really was, the lay of the land.

He overtook on the inside and stopped, leaned on the wall.

I thought I'd come and meet you, catch up on recent news.

Surprised the feller, Nick he called himself, course he was, but that was the sum of it. No freak out; no guilty start; said hello; no followers.  There were not, he had the time now for a good look leaned back against the mucky wall tiles, there were not any followers, not unless they had binoculars for eyeballs and that, as far as he knew, was biotech for the future. What there was, from the street, starting down the slope and past the fluted pillar, was a good-looker in a trench coat coming his way.

So what happened? We like to make our own judgment, you know what I mean, for own sakes, he said.

The stunner had a briefcase and a small bag of apples.

Nothing that involves you guys, I'd have let you know if that's how it was.

He watched the apple in slow motion, shiny and green, rolling into his foot. It was good what the feller was saying. He bent down, lifted up the apple, could feel the smile on his face.

A rare opportunity to be chivalrous, he said, the apple towards the looker in the trench coat..

Only what a coincidence, the very moment he makes contact, the very moment and she drops the apple. Yes, only she was coming from the street. But who knew, if it turned out Nick was Wimbledon semis material, all it needed was a smartarse amongst the spiv-haters and they might have staked the place, anticipated the gymnast's movements on alighting from the train while his dabs were now on the apple skin. Post-CCTV tactics. Supplementary tactics.

Still smiling  he pulled back his arm, wiped the apple round and round on the wool of his jacket, pulled down its other sleeve  so that it covered his hand and held out the wool- wrapped apple towards her.

Untouched by human hand, he said.

Because you just never knew so all you could do was to do your best.

He gave her a wink, She gave him a lovely smile. Her long black hair that swung with her walk, coming to a stop as she took it. A lovely smile, like they'd shared a joke. Then she was gone, down the slope and into the click-clack.

He turned back to business.

The facts Nick, just them and all of them, he said.

9/11

What’s the matter with you, the money you must have tucked away, living like you want to be poor, the sister said.

Yes, well; well as far as Mark was concerned there was nothing wrong with the place; wood floors, a working fireplace, windows. Wasn’t even the tidiness or lack of tidiness in the gaff – on which he could accept that a difference in standards did exist –which got her going. No, it was the wooden-bed structure he’d knocked up himself and which with a single mattress and the odd cushion, doubled as a sofa.

But it’s comfortable, he said.

Comfortable, what are you a hermit, I thought you still had that Lisa on the go, the sister said. And how romantic is that when you could have a proper sofa.

‘On the go’, that’s a bit crude sis, he said.

All right, I’m sorry, what I meant was, still-in-a-relationship- Lisa, but don’t tell me she wouldn’t like an evening cuddled up without banging her elbow on a wood frame. You know, an evening indoors and watching the telly. Or are you above the telly, bit conventional for you is it?

For the record, we have, me and Lisa, spent several, indeed many an evening  sat together, cuddled up, watching the telly…

Making sarky comments, no doubt, the sister said.

Yes, it’s how we met.

Over a sarky comment?

OK sis, OK, Mark said. He was surrendering.

Anyway don’t change the subject, the sister said. Look at this place. You’re not 20 you know.

That was below the belt. What, he didn’t know it for himself?

He protested.

So, follow through, she said. Get rid of it. Look I’ve banged my shins how many times.

Follow through?

IKEA, brother. This is the 21st century, ever heard of that.  IKEA. Listen I’ll drop round the catalogue. And you’re not going to be skint on account of a comfortable, and I mean, comfortable, two-seater. I’m not bullying you into it, I’m only making a suggestion. And while we’re on the subject Karen, your niece just in case you’d forgotten, is going on this demonstration tomorrow. An arms fair or something, and you know what the police are like. You could keep an eye on her.

As it happens I was going there myself which has nothing to do with Karen. She’ll be with her own pals. What, and you think she’ll want an aged uncle keeping an eye on her. The old geezer…oh him, he’s my mum’s brother.  I’m going for my own self, and if I do see her, at least we’ll know we’re on the same side.

Shouldn’t have had to say it at all. If the sister couldn’t see it for herself, what chance was there?!

All she was saying, she said, was how mean the cops could be.

Yes, like that was new? Only you had to make a stand against them, the Remote Control, which is what the niece and her pals called it. Remote control, which, in the case in hand was exactly how it was.  Over fucking continents. Geezer gets his mark-up on the gross of casings in Hounslow, the ones with the add-on of breaking up into fatal slivers, and Bosh, there goes some bloke’s leg out there in Africa some place. Out with his goats, him, the animals and the big blue sky, no worries because whatever had gone on before, one bunch of chiefs against another bunch of chiefs, that had been long ago. He’s not on tiptoes with his herd, can’t be done; and besides all that chief aggravation is over so why be worried. Only you weren’t exactly dumb out there with your goats, couldn’t afford to be, so what had finally convinced you to do your job without the tiptoes. That the mines in the ground had a shelf-life? That the victorious big chief had said he’d got it all sorted? That all those charities that cleared them up had cleaned them all up.

An arms fair, the sister had said, and though he’d had an earful from the niece already, it was the ‘fair’, government approved, that got him going, that made it certain he would go, however daft and pointless the exercise, and make some noise. And if him and the niece had come to the same conclusion, coincidentally so to speak, it gave him a little glow that there had been some contact over the years. Flesh-and-blood Karen had her eyes wide open, and still not gone stale.

Course, it was all a waste of time. Nothing would come of it. The busies would ring the place. Years of experience in that kind of thing. Accumulated knowledge as a result of years of keeping the order-givers far from the madding crowd. And these days what you did with years of experience, is to feed it into a computer, and hey presto, they would ring the place good and proper.

I’m just saying, the sister said. No need to sigh like I’m not supposed to miss it, that sigh, and oh, what a drag it is, just  because I worry about her. That’s you, same when I make a suggestion.

OK sis, tell you what. I’ll go to IKEA tomorrow, early. There I’ve committed myself.

There you see, you can listen if you put your mind to it, she said

Canning Town was where they’d built the Excel Centre for arms fairs and other upmarket events. Canning Town, that was a laugh in itself. His pal Mickey, and he came from the place, brought up there, he said it was OK as shitholes went. You know what I’m saying, Mickey said, half of them think there’s no world beyond the A13, and since they fucked the docks, well, there’s not much to it.

Mark hadn’t been there for years. A look at the map said public transport might be the best prospect. Even had its own station on a line out of Stratford. And if the law’d closed down the station itself, he’d carry on to the next one. Either way General Mark would  get a dekko at  troop placements, and given that individual Private Mark did not, under any circumstances want to be stuck in a police cordon, this was a basic precaution.

Stratford Station was as normal. His train pulling out of the station felt normal. Out the window it was a wasteland full of scrap and poison. Or it was a prime development site. Build over it, and it was never there, never had been like it was. Canning Town was the next stoip when he saw Karen and her mates, thousands of them. Pink fairies was their costume and he could see slivers of pink in a crowd that was not moving on. The crowd was stuck. General Busy no doubt falling back on a tried and tested tactic, the cordon sanitaire, in order to fulfill the strategic goal; armaments must be allowed to be sold in peace.

As it happened, that next station had come up trumps. Close up to a hotel catering to weapons dealers, he’d met up with some odd bods and women out of the launderette over the road. Given some abuse when a buyer or salesman had adjourned there for business to be done over afternoon tea. Hadn’t liked it either had they, Child Killers! Child Killers!

But that had been then. Back home via the train full of weapons pornography, the gloss and smell of it, and through the window Karen and her mates still at a standstill, the answerphone was blinking fast. Gina; turn on the telly NOW. Cousin Brian; You won’t believe it. Then Lisa in real time, still in Bristol, on the mobile he’d left on the table before going out; Didn’t he know, the twin towers. New York. It’s on TV.

Unreal. It was fucking unreal, the plane looking like it was going at ten miles an hour.  And Plosh. The more they played it, the more unreal except it didn’t need  construction experience to see there were going to be a lot of people killed, nor a degree in  political analysis to know there was going to be hell to pay.

Later in the evening Karen phoned Only just got back she said, and she was steaming. Yes, course she knew, the news had gone round the demo: the Twin Towers  though they’d missed the Pentagon, but did he know that this old bill had told her it was her fault, ‘you and your sort’ he said. And that was after him and his bloody sort have bottled us up all afternoon, she said. We’re trying to stop guns being sold and it’s our fault, I told him, very logical.

The sister had talked emphatically of following through on things. It was no good just having good intentions,  he should know where they lead to. It had him up next morning and into the Transit with the thought too that it would be a nice surprise for Lisa when she got back from the West Country. On the radio a serious person said the world would never be the same again. Other persons linked in to the studio agreed. An American expert with the same name as a war criminal in the recent past, talked of how the previous Administration’s weaknesses  had been taken advantage of. The number of casualties was into the thousands. It was said, nevertheless, that we should not change our way of life, that that would give victory to the terrorist. Corporal Mark after going through the logistical pros and cons plumped for the North Circular on the grounds that there would be no searching for access to the place.  Decision taken there was no going back when faced with the customary stop-start as two lanes became three or became one.  A security expert said it was a wake-up call, he personally had been warning for some years. An increase in the defence budget was a matter of urgency. The guy in the studio said the world would never be the same again.

He turned the radio off as the traffic sped up after the M1 turn-off. The sky was blue, the sun was shining and here he was, taking time out from the usual non-stop to follow through and actually purchase a real-life sofa, built for comfort. Blue with yellow lettering the sister had said. Can’t miss it.  And there it was, IKEA.

A weekday morning, couldn’t go wrong, enough empty spaces in the car park. Inside he saw people take a leaflet that had the appearance of a map and followed a couple who looked like they knew score up to the showroom. If you were paranoid you might think you were being lead by the nose; if you were paranoid you might think you ought to be a couple, but you didn’t have to go far for sofas. There would be advantages to being a couple however when it was a sofa for two you were interested in. Like him and her in matching-logo’d sweaters, having a laugh as they bumped up and down. Which is what you did naturally, tested out the cushioning, under your bum, against your back. He followed their lead, tried one and then another. Choice, what a fucking performance: price, style, comfort and  Corporal Mark at a loss, a virgin when it came to the varieties of household comfort. His own fault of course, lack of practice that could be easily ascribed to laziness as the sister had, in effect, done. The pioneer couple had moved on, dissatisfied or perhaps a sofa had never been their real priority, but the Living Rooms section was now buzzing with newcomers.  He’d had enough and chose an Ektop two seater. Only it didn’t stop there, there was the matter of a covering. The one in pastel stripe looked cheerful which is what counted. It was an occasion for a pat on the back, decisive action had been taken. Follow-through involved following signs that took him with a false turn or two through kitchens, workspaces, bedrooms, bedroom storage and out through an exit that lead  down into the Self-Serve furniture area.

The self-serve revolution; off the IKEA trolley and into the Transit once payment had been made and it was more than a pat on the back, it was Mark, a concerned citizen but now also a certified adult. The sister had made a suggestion which he, after serious consideration, had decided would improve his quality of life, and he had followed through.  And while on such a plane why not drop by cousin Brian and pick up the vinyl he said he didn’t have the room for and all the aggravation when an LP was 27 minutes max , the hassle of changing them. Logistics was in favour, nip up the M1 to the M25 then round to the M11 and from Brian’s straight back down again and home with sofa and that analogue sound digital just didn’t get. Holistic home improvement. Not that Lisa had ever complained. Wasn’t the point.  No, from him to her this was, it was, what it was, was a bunch of flowers, a de luxe bouquet. It felt good, sat there in a car park that was filling up, mission completed. In fact half completed,  all too easy to make assumptions So, mobile to landline he rang the cousin. Yes he was home, yes he could take the vinyl but that was some set-to, aeroplanes into skyscrapers, made you wonder what the world was coming to. Full of people those buildings, Brian said, and what about the FBI, what were they, asleep on the job. It made you wonder.

Up on the M1 traffic flowed easily. On the radio a woman was now anchoring the studio, he knew her voice. Investigations would be focused on how the attackers had learned to fly. Was this a declaration of war by the Islamic world. No, nearly all Muslims were as horrified by what had happened as anyone else. What could be agreed on was that things would never be the same again. The security expert, he couldn’t wait could he, you could hear him licking his lips, what powers needed to be taken.

He joined the queue at the M25 slip road. Busy busy. He changed stations and heard something classical with slow, heavy chords. A Beamer, Five Series, indicated from the outside into the centre lane ahead of Mark and accelerated, space ahead, overtaking cars in the fast lane. Did it again, an opportunity in the slow lane with space ahead. Traffic news broke into the solemn music. M4, an accident  before Reading, small tail back. Broken down vehicle on the M25 between Junction 26 and the M11. OK, there would be delays; so, the cousin wasn’t going anywhere. Solemn music returned. It was too solemn. He turned the radio off, saw brake lights ahead, heard screeching of tyres, screeching of metal, smashing of metal. He braked, dropping gears. Pulled up. Traffic sped by in the fast lane. Skewed across the slow lane and on to the hard shoulder the Beamer Five Series, the front buckled up, spread from passenger side across what had been the bonnet. Way ahead on the hard shoulder a lorry full of aggregate. Ahead cars edged gingerly into the centre lane. Mark pulled on to the hard shoulder. Emergency number on the mobile. Where? What? He told them, coming up to Waltham Cross or it was Enfield. Through the splintered windscreen of the Beamer,  Christ, the man was still  alive, skewered on the steering wheel, mouth open trying to scream . The fucking door was  jammed, course it was . Jesus.  Should he try and force it? Whatever was best but the man, just a young man, he was dying. Could see it in the eyes that said Help Me from a head twisted to the side hard down on the concertina’d dashboard And the chest crushed. The door was stuck. Just wouldn’t fucking budge. Just wouldn’t…

He had to do something! The back door still worked.  Someone else had stopped, was at his side, shrugging like what could be done. From the rear seat Mark stretched out his hands to the young man’s shoulders. Helps coming mate, you hang on in there, you’ll be alright. Which was bollox cos the guy couldn’t breathe, just big gasps that weren’t doing anything. He could hear sirens getting closer, lent right across for an inside handle for the driver’s door which whatever else, whatever fucking else meant the pros with the sirens could get him out that much quicker. Or try to without breaking the guy in two. It would not budge. You’ll be all right mate. Just hold on there, you’ll be OK, he said. It was what he could do, say the words. The sirens were loud, vehicles braking, police, ambulance. The driver was mumbling. Insurance. Was he really saying that? Don’t you worry about a thing, Mark said. The ambulance crew assessed the situation. Mark got out. This was for the professionals. If you weren’t trained you weren’t trained and just did your best. The woman was easing off the driver’s sweat shirt at the shoulder, hypodermic in her hand but there was tremor and droop in the smashed body just as before the needle went in. Mark stood on the green stuff at the edge of the hard shoulder. He was trembling, his whole body from inside like he was bollock naked in the Arctic. The fragile body. Te fragility of  it. He turned to look away from the scene, the professional drill. Walkie-talkies. Instructions. Away from the cones and the traffic. He had to take it easy, give it a minute, the heart was bouncing in the rib cage, legs unreliable.   A busy in a peaked cap came across the hard shoulder to ask him, man to man, what he had seen.

POOR BODY

Welcome to our country minister, the chauffeur said

.           Ungiving eyes paused. Pupils, iris, they were as one, mirrors of the limousine, its reflector windows.

Minister? No, not me. Someone didn’t do their homework. the esteemed visitor said.

The leader of the Reception team, mayor of the capital city, stood holding open the limo door. He blushed. He thought of things to say. Of course the chauffeur should not have spoken at all. Of course not. How then to explain that he had been head driver for as many years as one could remember, had an unparalleled collection of mementos from the visiting dignitaries of the epoch. Remarks that were apologetic but light in tone came to mind. Far-fetched fears of a diplomatic incident came to mind. The light remark would not come. Awful how shrunk the chauffeur now looked in his cap and suit as he hurried round to the driver’s door in an elderly man’s hurry. As if he had been slapped and shriveled on the spot. The mayor had never been slapped. A morbid corner could imagine it. One’s cheek ringing, those who saw laughing or embarrassed.

The esteemed visitor was looking at his watch, stretched out on the back seat in maroon plush. The limousine he could find no fault with, surely not; it was a classic colleagues more widely traveled than he had told him. Strange though that might appear, they had said, a classic car.

Lot’s wife, a bad fate, the visitor said. To be avoided.

Not dignified but the mayor spoke as he scrambled into the limo.

Lot’s wife?

Forget it. The Presidential Palace in ten minutes right, that’s the schedule, lets not screw up.

Dear me no, the mayor said. Driver, step on it.

The chauffeur’s head half-turned. Half-turned, it seemed, for the sole purpose of giving a hurt look. Things had got off on the wrong foot which was, if looked at objectively, the driver's responsibility, veteran though he was. So no hurt looks please. Just drive safely and smoothly. No, no hurt looks. It was not he who had taken the sufficiency of bare charm for granted, not checked, not revised the vocabulary of protocol. These were the defects of seniority. Just do your job now please, what you are paid for.

Remarks, light, modest but purposeful, came to mind.

Presidential Palace, I hope it will not disappoint. Of course I have traveled very little but I fear our own…

No problem. I have traveled a lot and seen an awful lot of ostentatious infrastructural projects in the process, specially this part of the world.

Oh indeed, I fear so. We in this city on the other hand…

Sure, I know the figures, my team showed me the stats, the not-Minister said and turned to look out of the side window. The airport highway. He’d seen worse and knew its construction breakdown. His Trade guys said the same, could have been better for them, the contracts distribution, but they’d seen worse.

Palm trees and no sea, sad shit. Import firms; spare part franchises; a club façade, half a dancing palm in neon: inside the mayor or whatever he was, the city rep, sat there smiling at him. With a shopping list, for sure, smiling like he could smile forever till he made his pitch. You want to shop pal, go to the mall. Fucking guy, spoke like he was Ali Baba and the Thousand and One Nights. More Spare Parts. Palm trees. Who did they think they were kidding? Who was he kidding, Ali Baba? The highway’d run out of steam, run out of tarmac and bumped into two-way traffic in a narrow street. Same fucking story, half-arsed projects. You tried, tried to explain, but with these kind of people, no, they were always the special case: net result, more fucked-up infrastructure.

Between stained apartment blocks he saw a stretch of wasteland, grass stuff coming out of the cracks, and a bunch of kids sat on a half wall. They were laughing, not a care in the world. He turned away. He frowned. The mayor feller was smiling, Ali Baba with  sweat on his face. He was wanting to say something. The children, he said, he would like to provide them with proper facilities. But. Then he shrugged, still smiling.

The visitor eased back his shirt cuff, checked his watch, checked his wrist, its tanned skin. The children, they were the future, the future generation, the feller said. Moist face, moist eyes. He turned away and saw four storey blocks. One had balconies, washing hung out. At ground level a kiosk on a corner. Old boys with hats stood there. Passing the time under the sun. One guy’s arm around another’s shoulders. The limo’d slowed down to a crawl, he could see them clearly. The old boy with the cap waving his arms, the others laughing like it was the funny of the century. The not-Minister frowned.

Tell your guy to drive around town a while, he said.

Ali Baba, the smile faltered; he looked at his watch; he was going to say something. He rapped the limo glass.

Drive around town for a while.

Drive around town for a while? Drive where? How long was a while? Play safe, keep circling the Presidential building, keep it close till someone changed their mind. The atmosphere in the vehicle was terrible, it was obvious. He could not recall a worse atmosphere. What had he done? So, the esteemed visitor was not a Minister after all, and just for that the Mayor spoke to him as if he were a dog which was no way to create a good atmosphere among men. And now they wanted to drive around town for a while. It did not make sense. Unless of course the esteemed visitor wanted to relax. Perhaps that. Why not, it was understandable. Even with their responsibilities they would want to relax, it was human nature.

Did you see the game last night, the chauffeur said out loud. What a prima donna, the referee. How could the game flow, and even then he was blind. And here on the right, the Botanical Gardens. The courting gardens they call them, at least they did in my time.

Would you please stop talking and concentrate on the road ahead, the mayor said.

Goose pimples, the chauffeur could feel them under his starched shirt, under his jacket that was tight, chafing at his armpits. And here he was, past the Botanical Gardens. Left or right. What did they want, left or right? Heartburn spurted up his gullet. Stayed there, locked. What was he talking about, concentrate on the road ahead? That was his job. Which did not entail a terrible atmosphere. He'd always seen the mayor as a relaxed man, human. Not big enough for the job more like it. A ball bounced into the road. A boy was chasing it, a red shirt. He trod on the brakes, dropping gear. Mashed the gears. He must not stall, not that. Anything but that.

Jerked head towards head, the mayor’s body tensed, withheld the collision that was coming with the esteemed visitor, who himself had ducked. Then the vehicle’s terrible sound. Everything, it was all going wrong, things had got off on the wrong foot and had stayed that way. Now this. The efforts of the chauffeur had been uniformly unhelpful. A good man no doubt who should have been pensioned off. He would raise the matter officially, a generous pension, a recognition of service rendered over the years which had come to an end. It was not his fault. He was old, perhaps no one had seen it, it had happened suddenly. The esteemed visitor had sat up again. He said nothing, registered no complaint, the situation could perhaps be saved. He must try for the right touch, the right words. He must try, it was his duty.

I have not yet had the privilege of visiting your wonderful country but there I am sure the automobiles, the course of traffic itself is wonderfully smooth. Here alas we are novices. See there however, yes, just here, our sports stadium, conserved, maintained  in the style in which it was built.

The sports fan of today, what he demands is comfort, facilities. It's an entertainment business in a competitive environment

Of course, competition, the very essence of sport, prowess, the quest for perfection.

There, it was not so difficult, the words flowing easily, the hiccoughs overcome.

I too, when I was a young man all too many years ago, that was my dream, now it has changed, now it is to encourage our young people, to help them reach international standards.

The esteemed visitor did not disagree, he was looking out of the window. It was how things should be, a man who came to see things for himself.  And would see a city which had got the basics right but which for that very reason was crying out for investment. For resources. It needed them, it deserved them because the basics were right, the building blocks were in place and had been well-laid.

And now we cross the river, he said. This bridge is very old and appears many times in the history of our city. Of course we have built others and adapted this one to the needs of modern traffic.

Fucking guy, you pressed a button, out came words, and more words. The talking machine. How it was all a matter of balance, he was saying; competing priorities, he was saying, the needs of traffic circulation, heritage, and social life.

Heritage? They were back in among slapped-up apartment blocks, enormous underpants flapping across their balconies. Athletic prowess? That was Ali Baba talk, fucking guy. You could kid other people, leastways you could try kidding other people, but start kidding yourself and that was it, finito la musica.

Didn’t he agree, the mayor guy wanted to know.

The not-Minister grunted. What was it with the underpants, rows of them draped over rusty skid marks down the concrete of the balconies. Indigenous production they called it! Indigenous construction they called it! Indigenous, as if that was OK then, whatever went.

Of course, Ali Baba was saying, time didn’t stand still, they knew that, were well aware of it. Of course, like he knew every fucking thing.

An open square lay flat among the buildings. Too big for itself, just a café-type thing with a few outside tables. Otherwise nothing but one or two public benches in the distance. Altogether too much open space. The limo was barely moving. A bus thing ahead with a serious emission problem. You tried to tell these guys, you really tried; priorities, you had to get your priorities right. And they smiled, it was in one ear and out the other.

At one café table were sat couples. Looked like couples, three of them, post-war types, middle-aged. Ali Baba, had his face up close. A road-widening scheme, how he had the plans; they were sat in his office; sat there at this very moment.

The bus had not moved. Except for the emissions, could have died on the spot.

Had been there for some time, the plans, the city rep said. It was just a matter of finding partners for a joint venture.

The couples were on their feet chinking glasses. One guy stayed up on his feet, arms wide apart, mouth wide open like it was the fucking opera. The others laughed. They clapped. They banged their glasses on the table. Not a care in the world. It was mid-fucking-day.

He frowned, took a minute mobile phone from his pocket and fast tapped numbers.

Something’s wrong here, he said. You can tell those assholes in the Embassy and their fucking analyst, tell them from me, there’s something wrong here.

Ali Baba, his mouth opened and closed.

Saint Peter, the visitor said, third time and he fucking knew. Lets step on it, the Presidential Palace.

Driver, the Presidential Palace. Immediately.

It was fate; it was the atmosphere; it was a joke. It was, a joke from above because he’d seen it coming, known it would be just a matter of time till someone changed their mind. Only how could he see, how could anyone see that it would be just when a bus decided to cough its guts up. The chauffeur blasted the horn to edge out into the non-stop stream of oncoming traffic. Low-key they’d said, without outriders, a low-key visit it was to be. What could you do. Of course the midday traffic on the Avenue heading  towards the Botanical Gardens  was heavy, of course it was, he’d taken it into account which was precisely why he was going away from it so as to be able to double back down the Boulevard when someone changed their mind. He blasted the horn again, imposed his look on a guy in a first generation hatchback and was out around the bus. In the mirror he saw the mayor wincing, the mayor furious.

OK, OK. The road was clear, the limo’s acceleration, you couldn’t beat it, as smooth as a horse into the gallop up to the roundabout, one of the mayor’s innovations. Coming, coming. And round. A tiny, slow saloon hooting him, metal close to metal. Idiot. A curse on him. In third gear round the curve, the limo went, smooth as smooth could be.

OK?

Back into fourth and he was on home turf, knew every pot hole. Avoided every pot hole. Eye, hand, steering, as one. Up to the traffic lights for the Boulevard turn-off and they stayed green for his turn off. Into the Boulevard. Two kilometres straight run to the Palace. Only he could see them already, the gang of men, picks in their hand, the stretch of Boulevard roped off. The mayor was shouting. The airport to the Presidential Palace, that was how it should have been. Yes, that was his job, until someone changed their mind.

Water, a labourer shouted, water pipe had problem. The chauffeur’s jacket was tight. His shirt was tight. His chest was tight. The mayor was shouting.

OK. OK. By memory, as if he were a taxi driver, a right here, to the square with the blossomed trees, left then right again. He took the tight right at speed, dropped into third for the square’s one way. Felt the back wheels slide; the shock absorbers, he’d told them, renew the shocks, straightened, took the left, pictured the alley back on to the Boulevard, his chest tight, his chest bursting. A waiter crossing the road to tables on the square, all the time in the world. He braked, felt the swerve, felt his chest, heard the mayor, the Palace, Immediately, let off the brakes, dropped into second, pain in the chest, Pain. Saw the alley. Chest exploded.

Chauffeur dead. Limo on its own. Smash, full tilt into the alley wall.

ENGLAND AHOY

Approaching the chippie, pavement went trampoline. Walter went with it, Popeye the Sailorman, with his spinach and his biceps, the way he walked. The sailorman. Mental.

They'll see I'm weird, they'll see it in my face. It was Jimmy, Jimmy close by, Jimmy’s mouth open and closed. Walter turned. His pal was tense. Tense face like there’d be no more balloons coming out of his mouth unless they was doom and disaster. A woman who was half an old dear, came out through the door. He could smell the warmth inside the wrapping in her hand; heard the bubble and sizzle through his cock and up his chest.

I just can't handle it.

Jimmy was whispering like a foxy, foxy gangster.

Why was he doing this?  And too late to contemplate.

What do you want, fish and chips or a couple of spring rolls,  Walter said instead. His voice sounded a long way off from his dry throat.  Maybe he was shouting.

Jimmy was nodding like Noddy.  Meaning?

Cod and chips then, Walter said, making the decision because anything else would only be grief, him standing around on the same patch of trampoline. Standing? On trampoline?

Whoosh…

In the doorway was bubble and squeak in the headphones, the promise of fry and crisp up the nose.

Jimmy nodded like someone had told him to nod. The director of nods and winks. Message received and understood partner.  Too risky to speak out loud? Except the glass and brick wall of the chippie had no ears. Oh he was tripping OK, but he wasn't stupid.

Vinegar?

Jimmy nodded.

Course he did.

Inside the woman was bent over a vat of the bubble-and-spit all gnome like, a gnomey, gnomey gnome.  The feller, the Chinese, with the big smile, his wrinkles were smooth. Like the floor, shining at him, the rush streaming out of it, through the soles of his shoes, his socks, his feet up and up, a loose weave python of sparklers, up some more, then seamless on and on.  Walter smiled back right through the colours of infinite pattern.

The woman was still a gnome even after she'd gone upright and showed herself Chinese too. Her smile had a gold tooth in the middle. It lit it up.  Lit up her whole face and she wasn't a gnome at all because he was feeling horny and it was lovely, the rush up from his feet without the light show and straight into his cock.

He smiled at her.

She went on smiling. He ought to be saying something.  He said, Cod and chips twice and four slices.

He knew he'd said it because he could hear it.  The woman with the lovely mouth turned her smile away and went. Fast Forward: inner wrapping laid out, the fish in grippers out of the keep-warm and on to the wrapping laid out; wire pan into the sizzle, in out in out you shake it all about...

Six pounds twenty please.

Chips into paper bag one.  Chips into paper bag two.  Walter went slow motion for the money in his back trouser pocket and felt some stiff crinkle.  In his hand it was a purple twenty. Ying yang slap bang.  She'd rolled the lot in a neat parcel and was saying funny words.  Madness! The feller replied.  Funny singsong.  Maybe he'd been staring at her too much and the bod was saying, don’t you stare my wife or I cut your throat; or he was saying another nutter but he's OK, he got money.

He shook his head: the paranoia dropped out; but the rush drained out of his cock and up through his head and beyond.  Walter moved in close enough to him at the till to hand over cash money.  It was warmer there close to the counter and she was smiling again.  Beautiful.

The Chinese bod took the other end of the twenty.  Walter stopped the flow of colours to let go of his end.  Had to, would be a christmas cracker job otherwise.  Without the bang.

Not so difficult after all, money changing hands The feller had it and was started on the change business.  She was close on the other side offering him the open package in a newspaper overcoat across the counter.

Pukka, he said smiling back.  He wouldn't have minded staying where he was but there was the salt and vinegar biz still to be done. That first then the change, one thing at a time.

The salt container was too light, had to be. But it was there in his hand, no question, light as you like; he could see it, white plastic. And the sprinkle coming out. The falling white sparkle set off a roller belt of greens, mauves and golds. Mental. Flowing. The motion potion. He jerked the container back upright and looked down at the batter. Too much salt? An accusation ready to be made? Ready Steady Go. The vinegar slapped him in the nose. Aroma. He doused the golden stuff, gave the wrapping a soak, and re-wrapped.

He turned and there they both were, the Chinks, smiling like they'd been before.  The sprinkling felt like it had taken a while. Maybe it had, maybe it hadn't. Maybe they were like that, the chinks. Wasn't his manor, wouldn't know if they were or weren't. Nice anyway, wasn't everyone who smiled.

Your change mister.

Right. There was. Course there was, and this time it was the Chinese would have to hold out the money to him.

Walter tucked the parcel between left elbow and left side, felt the warmth.  He moved to the correct distance away from the till and held his hand out.  When the tenner and the heavy coins were in his palm he closed  up the palm, and shoved the stuff in his back pocket.

Pukka, he said and smiled. They smiled back. Her gold tooth winked at him, jerked his cock. Outside, instant goose pimples and Jimmy stood there like a  dodgy gnome. On a billboard WATCH OUT MUGGERS ABOUT.

Walter had got the gear - Superman blotting paper - and the cod supper; Jimmy's contribution was having his own place and to be fair, a working gas stove, tea bags, Long Life milk and sugar that had gone into crumbly chunks stained with the tea drops off a teaspoon. All needed for the night out because the batter and fish, it took some chewing in a dry mouth what with the thrill rushing up non-stop to fill it. Had a ghetto-blaster too, Jimmy did, bless him.  Walter turned it on to FM in the low 90's. The bass slid into funky heart-monitor, and a non-stop band of colours he couldn't touch stepped on the escalator. A piece of fish sat in his mouth to give off its own flavour in its own time.

Jimmy went out into the lounge leaving half his fish portion and a clutch of chips out in the plain paper inner wrapping.  Walter went into the music with sips of tea that cleaned his throat of its dusty crud. Crud stripper. Wicked!

Later, or it was not later, Jimmy's half portion grabbed Walter's attention.  It was unwelcome.  It was ugly. The batter had caved in and lay like a damp rag on the cold wet white stuff.  A cold chip was a dead chip, he could see that and didn't like it. He did not like it. Result? Goose-pimples. It took a while to put on his jacket the sleeves looking to give him a hard time and  not being where his arms went.

Watch out, paranoia about! Time to go active, show who was boss around here. The half-portion was still there and he'd had enough of it.  He covered it with a half-sheet of newspaper that showed some soldiers sitting in the desert with guns. On his feet he picked up the radio and took it into the lounge.  Jimmy was flat on his back on a sofa that showed patches of its yellow foam innards.  His eyes were closed and his arms up in the air were dancing.

Walter sat down with his back to an arm chair and got involved with the whirligig of the carpet weave until he felt coins digging into the flesh of his bum through the pocket cloth.  He pulled the money out and laid it on the carpet in front of him, coins, a tenner, and his own door key, mum’s place. From the radio a loop of Hammond organ.  His torso went with it loping back and forth, his face closer to the floor with each forward sway.  There was a splash of red on the tenner that lay on the whorls in the carpet. He stayed crouched for the close-up.  The red went up the queen's neck and over her chin. Otherwise she was clean cut like a statue out of white marble, only someone with the hump had thrown a can of red gloss, and it had dribbled down over the small letters and numbers printed there in black, like it had its own ID.  It was not any old note. It was Tenner number HX7642 and some.  Serial numbers said the cops on the telly, like a fingerprint, only the robbers were cunning fellows and always liked their notes used.

He got fed up with being crouched and picked up the note.  The HX 76 etc was very sure of itself.  It was in black, black print that jumped out at him all neat and proper and correct.  Weird when the stretch of wavy lines next to the queen was very different stuff.  It danced up and down and lifted off the paper. He followed it upwards and got a glimpse of Jimmy who was down to hand and finger dancing. He heard tenner HX going crack and crinkle in his hand.  Put close to his ear it was loud.  The pattern from the radio was bass line overlaid by single piano notes. He knew their rhythm. No mug he! He was the man in charge, could control crinkle, bunching up the tenner and letting it out again.  So it went in and out with piano notes and continued while he caught a bunch of words.  Hearing Things, a bird said. Hearing Things? What Things?, a feller said back like he hadn’t heard nothing.

Open Your Eyes Are You Satisfied?, she said back to him, and started again Hearing Thing,s like he’d stayed shtum.

Yeah, a tenner, Walter said out loud. Jimmy didn’t move.

Down in a corner where the red hadn't reached there was another statue woman.  She was much smaller and held a spear and shield.  He stared at it and went off on one. Helmets and swords were flashing in the sun and there was a rumbling across the steaming grass.  The English were rallying round in bare legs and arms, hairs growing out of their pale skins and goose pimples.  The rumbling was louder. He could fucking hear it. The Grand national on the telly, gallop and thump. Bodies scattered as a horse-drawn chariot burst through with her on board.  For the sacred soil of England do or die, she shouted. She swung her sword at soldiers that had helmets with purple plumes like they were the business, when really they was just squaddies.  A head shot off in a spray of blood.  Another face with whiskers was shit-scared in stereo, and round about was a din of shouts, screams, metal on metal.

The soldiers were left behind and from round a hill came a horse looming large and black, all muscle. Steam went frothy gasping from its mouth.  It was galloping and falling.   Its rider was off, a hunchback in armour with a plain gold crown on his head standing on green grass with small bushes that stretched on and on.  His chest was heaving, his breathing desperate but he had his sword up.  Horses whinnied in the background and the hunchback was fighting fifty armoured soldiers who'd come from nowhere.  Two went down, three, four but the hunchback was coming away in slices.  He was down.  There was a crash of thunder and raindrops beat on the ground.  His head came off and rolled.  The crown came off the rolling head and rolled a fair bit faster.  Into bushes.  Unseen feet squelched in the mashed grass and watery mud.  Men in khaki pulled a horse that pulled a cannon on wheels half sunk in the slimy grip of it, and was drowned out by a bumper de bump dum dum big brass drum.

With a musket fife and drum, a voice said. It was a tubby old guy weighed down with medals and puffed up like a fart. He spoke with a down curled mouth and floppy jowls.

With a musket, fife and drum, he said again.  For England and Saint George.  He got smaller, a  figure in red uniform standing on the up-down up-down top of a castle's walls.  Below were cheering soldiers on horseback waving red cross flags.  Ahead, an open portcullis.  Inside, a paved courtyard and in one corner, slippery, stone spiral stairs going downwards to an underground stone doorway.  Its thick wooden door was open wide.  Inside stood a Beefeater geezer with a white beard and twinkling blue eyes under his black velvet hat. Along the passage were carved cave like openings.  There were shaped caves behind them, each one smaller than the one before. In the last one was a man thing crouched sideways-on like he was holding the roof up on his back.  He wore a long beard that touched the floor to which his legs and arms were chained.  A drop of water dripped.  Paused.  Dripped.  Paused and went on pausing till it dripped and the man turned.  One eye was an empty socket, his nose a sliver of chicken bone and his mouth...

Walter shook his head.

Mental.

Was this a bad trip?  What they called a bad trip? Fuck that for a game of soldiers.

Jimmy was there and looked like he was asleep.  No he was top-finger-joint dancing to a furry bass line that was pukka.  And no it couldn't be a bad trip because he wasn't feeling bad except maybe for some wind trapped inside and going hard.

He burped. Did not feel bad because it was only a film, and it was him who'd cooled sister Debbie out watching The Fly when the geezer'd turned to slobbering steak and liver but was still half a human in his bontz. Yeah, even though Debbie was five years older and dead straight except for nights out with the girls on double vodkas. Calming her down, telling her it was only what some special effects bods had put together.

The tenner was still in his hand. Right, special effects, the red stuff was only some clumsy git spilling something on the note, teacher’s ballpoint with a leak.  On the other side of the note was another clean-cut woman in a long dress.  She looked a steady sort and held a lamp because it was Florence Nightingale like it said in smaller, quieter print.  18    to  19    .

Walter followed the light of her lamp into a cave where a man was lying on something with other men around him. Or it was a tent. Some of the men were bent over for a better look, doctors maybe or soldiers because he'd been hurt.  With her and her lamp the corners got swept too, the place neat and tidy enough only the bloke had a wound, a hole of a wound…

A bit of cannonball was slap in the guts that were all thin sausages tumbling out because there was no skin to hold them in.  The cannon that fired the cannonball that  made the hole that let the insides outside, it was one of several set up in a line on the low green slopes of a hill.  From the front they were a row of glaring black holes on metal wheels.  Behind them stiff and neat little soldiers moved back and forth to light fuses.  Puff!  Puff!  Puff went the cannon. Whistle and scream. On the other side puffballs exploded one, two, three times among redcoats with muskets, slow-motion, silent mushrooms of smoke and sand.  Puff went a golf ball out of a bunker and on to a green in an arc.  A tubby old geezer with a down-curled mouth and floppy jowls waved a golf club. Good Shot, he said. Little puffs came from the front of the muskets.  Out on the plain a redcoat on a galloping horse, got hit. A red that was darker than the red cloth spread across the front of it.  The rider went small and slumped.  His hands were stiff and tight on the cracked leather of the reins.  The foot of a leg in a shiny boot was taut in a shiny metal stirrup.  The horse was crazy, zig-zagging flat out, its hooves up and down, its soft brown eyes fit to burst.  The redcoat was slipping. He was off the saddle.  His foot in the stirrup took all the weight of his body and his hands white and boney stayed gripped to the loosened reins.  Bump went his shoulder in the ground.  Bump went his head bump bump bump. The horse reared up and down to stamp the ground and he went  tumbling after.  The reins ripped out of the white pads round the bones of fingers.  Rain fell instantly into puddles and the white face was splash freckled as it hurtled along lumpy turf and through sudden stiff, low bushes.  The shiny foot was bent and slipping out of the stirrup, the red of the rider's coat was ripping.  Bam!  He was flat and still, the horse was free.  A plain gold crown rolled bump into his body.  Hands on red-robed arms picked up the crown.  Red robes was a tubby bod with a down-turned mouth and floppy jowls.  He was holding the crown above the head of a younger man.  An organ without the Hammond played solemn in a solemn cathedral.  God save the King, red robes said.  The younger man looked solemn and the crown came down to sit on his head.  The congregation were modern people in suits and dresses.  They were going to cheer but it was too solemn.  The man with the crown on was smaller in the distance.  He was on his feet with a sword in his hand. There was quiet clapping, Big Ben rang the hour and a tidy woman in a long skirt and a bonnet curtseyed and knelt in front of the man with the crown on.  The sword came down lightly on her shoulder.  Red Robes said, Where once there was darkness now there is light. Florence Nightingale who with courage and valour has performed her sacred duty and lightened the darkness.

Which she had and fair play to her. Walter could see it. She was leaving the men there to get on with it, just making sure they had the light to work in and keeping an eye on them.  It was still and quiet in the cave place, none of the men gathered round were saying anything. What could they say, tough shit mate, or everything was going to be all right. No they were waiting for him to die, and for something to happen at that moment, like his soul going balloon under the steady lamp.

Walter shook his head.

He was in a rut, shellfire and mangled bods; mangled bods and shellfire.  He didn't want it. He’d had enough. Felt  a surge through his feet. The patchwork quilt conveyor belt came up and into his head and faded away.

The old battery wearing down, Walter said out loud. If he found out the time he would know cos there was only so many hours of intense in a tab before the wind-down, and Supermans were no different. He saw his hands holding the tenner.  It was a stupid picture and he dropped it on the carpet.  He lit on the fifty pence coin and picked it up in one hand where it felt chunky. With the other he bent his thumb and pushed it nail first into his hooked forefinger.  He placed the coin there and flicked it.  The fifty pence slowly somersaulted up and then down again giving off flashes of black and orange spiral.  On his wrist it showed heads, the Queen's clean cut head.  The king was in his counting house counting out his money.

The coin came down heads again. The king was a mingy scrooge.  No he was an old king Cole, a jolly old soul in a Father Christmas get-up.

The coin came down tails. You gave him your fifty pence and chose the gift in his left hand.  It was gnarled and knuckley and opened slowly.  A pink plastic ring lay on the palm. Mental. Only he could smell a terrible smell.  It seemed to be coming from his hands.  He put them up close to his nose fingertip to fingertip.  They stank.  Not a fart, something colder and dirtier.  Walter shuddered.  His fingernails were dirty.  Madness, they had been clean but there they were, worms of black stuff in the rind of each nail.  They stank too.

There was no point in just sitting there and accepting it.  He got up.  His legs felt empty but he got to the bathroom.  That was dirty too, and small.

It took a while but he worked out that the hot water did not come out of the hot water tap. Which was a pain in the fucking arse cos it had to be hot water. Coin grime, cash grime, nothing else would do. OK, so he wasn’t a brain box like Jimmy, but rocket science it was not: boil the kettle, and score the bonus: two cups of tea with what was left.

For a while time stood still till the kettle did the Shake Rattle and Roll. Steam in puffs. The sink was mucky enough for Debbie to have done her nut but it ran to a plug and a sliver of soap.  Steam rose .The warmth was a direct hit that spread faster than a vodka. Colours did the escalator show. Underwater the slip of a soap was sexy slidey.  He pulled his hands out and played his palms in the lather, mingled his fingers and plunged them back into the water.  There was no nail brush in sight. OK. So? OK. Instead he made a transparent screen out of the lather between thumbs and forefingers.

Mental.

Oil-on-water colours ran about on the flat bubble.  He gently blew it spherical and let it gently back again.  Mini-bubbles formed around the edges of the screen.

Madness.

After a while he put his hands in and out of the lukewarm water to rinse them.  Then they smelled good.

He took the warm mugs of tea from the kitchen into the lounge.

A cup of tea bruv?

Jimmy lifted his head a little.  he had a big smile.

You been somewhere good, Walter asked.

Fucking hell.  Yeah.  Where've I been, the stars, inside me.

What, And soap bubbles?, Walter said and edged up the radio volume. The bass line was motoring, electric soft.

What what? Soap bubbles, you been on them all night?

No, just lately. Before that it was visuals out my head. Sort of history. England.  And all that, like this bod fighting with a crown on.  Then it went grim.  Lot of killing.

The brothers.

What?

The brothers Grimm.

Walter frowned.

Who were they?  What before the twins, Reg and Ronnie?

Jimmy was laughing. The twins? Where’ve you’ve been in the interval bruv.  Lucky The Sun don’t know about you.

What?

Security Guard is mad acid freak. Shock horror. It's an issue isn't it? You know what I mean, issues, where would we be without them. Cowboy security firms and no vetting of employees.

It's only the Thames Barrier.

Only!  The man says only. Terrorists. Imminent danger. All those nutters out there plotting to blow it up, flood London, panic and mayhem, and what's the oppo?  One acid head artist on four seventy an hour who says Only.

Five quid, Walter said.

You coming down?

Yeah, said Walter and picked up the ten pound note.  It was just a tenner that he saw clearly and without feeling. A little rush now and then but mostly I feel cleaned out, peaceful, you know what I mean.

Jimmy nodded and sat down on the sofa with his hands round the tea mug.  The radio was playing a chirpy interchange, drum machine and synth.

She was a nurse wasn't she, Florence Nightingale, Walter said.

Crimean War by all accounts, a right shambles till she got it sorted.

The Crimean War?

You know.  Into the valley rode the six hundred Five four three two one. Charge of the Light Brigade. Shot to pieces. The only time we fought the Russians thank Christ.

Walter held on to the note and  picked up red felt tip off of the floor.

The music had stopped.  A radio bloke said there was an event in Rainham, Essex, DJs by the dozen, strictly no trainers. And remember this is a private function, if you aint got a ticket, you don’t get in. Entrance is a mere twelve pounds.

That's stronging it., Jimmy said.

Twelve quid.

A mere twelve quid.

Walter supposed so. On to the tenner’s lamplit scene he wrote in small neat capitals, THE SIX HUNDRED MET MAD MAX.  Then he put the notes, the coins and his door key into a trouser pocket and got up to stretch.  A thrill rushed up his body and fell away in sparks.

The music came back on in computer game mode and opened up into Blackpool organ sound.  Walter went over to the window and pulled back some curtain.  Outside it was dark blue-grey.  The moon was still visible, it looked good.

You got the time?

The time bruv.  What's time between friends. Coming up to six. .

Shit. Got to go.

You're not working are you?

Fucking right. Half seven sharp.

How you going to stay awake? More to the point, how can I feel secure when the Arabs are plotted up and determined and there’s you. Asleep.

Me, I drink coffee all day. You, you do get to sleep you lazy tosser.

Our reporters checking on security at strategic points in the city found guard Walter Hanson fast asleep.

Yeah yeah yeah.

Out on the street Walter got the goose pimples, then he felt good.  The few stars he could see were faint but steady. Fucking hell. His heart jumped up into his mouth, the dog snarling like it was ready to let rip with the mad teeth if it could just get its snout through the wire of the fence. It was trying hard enough. Hated everything that moved. Just when he felt pure and reborn, and raw with it, mad fucking fangs like they had it in for him personally, scaring the shit out of him. What, for some poxy scrap metal?!

Up on the hoarding WATCH OUT MUGGERS ABOUT.

It took a while, his breathing back to where he wanted it, took him right up to the tube station. Bethnal Green, steep escalator or what. Like the granddad said, first choice when the bombs were falling cos you knew you was deep. Framed posters eased by, some real lookers with long legs. And, as if you didn’t know, report any suspicious bags. The platform and its stretch of tunnel were walled in yellow tile. One early bird had a paper. He walked to one end of the platform and back again. Slapped up across the shiny rails there was stuff to read, like how you never knew just what was round the corner. SAFEPLAN. CCTV was also in operation. He heard the rattle from inside the arched black hole of tunnel, then went flashback with the twang of the shiny rails. Vibrations up and down the bod, till the shock of the heavy train and its speed turned it to tremble.

In the carriage he stayed on his feet, swayed on his feet. Popeye man, he knew the drill. The bloke with the paper was sat down. TERRORIST THREAT REAL AND IMMANENT, on his front page. At first stop Mile End he could change lines for one more stop to be that closer to home, but didn’t fancy the wait. Second wind. He was buzzing. Outside daylight had kicked off and the pace quickened. On the billboard too, things had developed, Muggers had nowhere to hide; underneath, a face behind bars. He walked fast down to the short cut The gates were locked. He bent and curved himself through where the railings were bent. He took the foot worn path diagonal towards the trees. In the dip, leafy mud rubbed against the cracked gravestone that he knew had been a beloved husband that had been a clerk in the Pool of London and died 1907. A cheeky grey squirrel ran up a tree. Birds rabbited away. Peaceful, it was peaceful like a cemetery should be when you got a stone to mark your spot, and didn’t wind up dead like you was a rolling pin on the battlefield. Or bits of you rolled about.

Out through the gap at the other side, he turned the first corner under the iron bridge. He smelled it first, burning rubber and wood then saw the raggedy bods sat around the smoke. No eye-to-eye contact, not on his part. Law of the land weren’t it. Only he couldn’t help but see the fellow nearest the bird with the greasy puffa, couldn’t help but see his shiner, black, purple and green around the eye-socket. Or the scar on the other face with the jumbo White lightening in his hand.

By the flats he said All Right to Billy Michaels. Indoors Debbie was in the kitchen, radio on.

I’m sure all hard-working, right-minded people will agree…

Look what the cat’s brought in, Debbie said.

We have to strike a balance but we cannot ignore the threat…

Debs, I’ve got fifteen minutes to make myself coffee and breakfast, so no lip.

Oooh. Excuse me for opening my gob. I thought it was a free country.

Well you was wrong.

TRAILS ON THE PORCELAIN

Over the years Davies had used the place several times without getting to the bottom of how they were still on the map, Department Stores in general, the ones that were left, still less the top-floor Cafeterias; not when the whole concern, top to bottom, had to be an appendage, a hole in Corporate Accounts. That he thought about it at all was due to the Doc being late.

In the photograph he'd been given the Doc looked like a serious person. A late

forties guy with a professionally trimmed beard. Situation: the guy in the photo, the

doc, has some joke cushion slipped surreptitiously on his chair. He sits down. Fart,

fart. The doc gives a severe look and the jokers go sheepish. Or it's like HoHo but

really, the Doc just hadn't realized they were quite so childish. Or HoHoHo, the

unfazed Doc laughing with the best of them.

The guy looked serious, he could handle situations. Hadn't stopped him being late. Fuck him, either he could push his own Spanish omelet and salad right around the Self-Service slats or, if it was on the late side for lunch, and that's how Davies had already judged the situation for himself, he could stumble his own way along the queue for select snacks to get at the coffee next to the Cashiers.

Of course if you weren't in Retailing yourself - and Davies had not been for some years - you never would properly understand, but what with Hypermarkets on the Perimeter and Specialist Shops in the Centre, you did have to wonder. And what with Tea Urns, Cona and downmarket Plats de Jour for him with the plastic mac over his tweed jacket, and her with the furry beret you had to double wonder.

And the doc was even later than he'd been before, which inevitably narrowed the parameters when it came to assessing the authenticity of that seriousness apparent in the photograph.

Even if now it was him in the doorway which it was, the trimmed beard in evidence as he looked around. Then he was gamely into the flow around the Self-Service. Davies saw him reach across for a segment of Lemon Meringue and, stood behind him, a shithouse door in semi-official togs.

The doc looked round again from the cash desk. Davies wasn't going to start waving the FT when it was anyway pink and laid across his table. And to give him his due, the Doc spotted it. He came across. The big feller behind took up an empty spot two tables away and put down his tray.

Mr Davies I presume, the doctor said. He placed his tray down on the top of the newspaper.

For Davies, Here We Go/ Here We Go/ Here We Go came to mind.

You're the doctor right, he said, making a gesture at rising from the chair.

The doctor nodded and looked round, then back down at the tray. He slid the plate of meringue off and lifted a cup of HotDrink on to the table. He asked if there was a place to put the trays.

Rested against the legs of your chair would do, Davies said.

Really.

Why not.

The doctor shrugged and leant over to place it there.

Davies smiled in friendly fashion.d back.

Amazing, I haven't been here for years, the doctor said. Not since I was a child, a teenager perhaps. I hadn't realized it still existed. An oversight on my part. Wonderful it's still here.

He with you, Davies said nodding at the large guy who he could now see had gone for the all-day soup option.

My chauffeur, Greg, the doctor said.

Davies stared at him as he spoke, grey eyes and no distinguishing marks other than the beard.

My factotum.

Close up, whiskers and flesh formed a clear border. Professionally done, or the guy was a dab hand with the trimmer himself. Or it was Greg did it, it was something factotums did. Greg looked like he could handle himself. Except there was a dribble of soup out of the corner of his mouth.

I don't want to know his name, Davies said.

The doctor frowned. He forked at his Lemon Meringue.

And you Mr Davies, your position? the doctor asked, putting his mini-fork down on the plate.

Position? I enable.

Her in the furry beret said something to him in the tweed. She was Laughing. Then he laughed.

The doc had raised his eyebrows.

It's like this doc, lets say we've got a passive talent A, a man, or a woman, who, on the scale of a wedding reception say, has the ability to turn water into wine but has no recognition. Unrecognized this talent will wilt. Meanwhile, elsewhere, there's Wine Merchant B who's nowhere reached his full potential even if he is on excellent terms with one particular chateau.

You're a middleman, the doctor said.

Davies copped Greg looking at the doc like it was him could turn water into wine.

No, you haven't been listening. I'm an enabler. You know how it is, our man at the wedding, for him it's just a party trick. He doesn't understand its possibilities.

And I am such a person.

If that's the way you want it, Davies said watching Greg wipe his mouth with a paper napkin.

The doctor wiped his mouth. And you represent this hypothetical vintner?

I represent no one, I enable. Look I don't want to make a big deal out of this Doc but that's what I do, believe me.

II

In just the semi-official trousers and rolled up shirtsleeves, the jacket off, Greg was sweating. It wasn't nerves. No. It was not. No, the Blender was quiet and the toilet door locked. It was more like the stuff whipped round at speed, Centrifugal the Doc said, gave off its own heat. Or more like it was him crouched over the toilet bowl and the thing heavy with the weight of the batteries he'd rigged up to operate it on the spot.

He'd taken some convincing too, out on the High Street walking towards where he'd parked the Jag. ‘Davies’, he'd said to the doc, pull the other one. Which was right when the feller had Smooth Thug written all over him. Only the doctor, brilliant man though he was, was naive when it came to real life and wouldn't have it. Oh not a saint, he'd said, But not pushy.

To which Greg had thought, Big Deal, but the doctor only stared at him and said, Puritanical Greg, Greg the Puritan, and waved his finger.

Which was possibly true because he, Greg, had never been exactly keen on the idea. But then the doc had spelled out how it was that they would be making something useful out of what would otherwise go to waste. And make a few quid, he wasn't denying that. By which time they were at the Jag and there was the traffic to contend with.

He switched off the blender once more, emptied the liquid off into the toilet, flushed and decanted the left-over into the self-seal polythene.

He refilled the blender.

He was careful. It cost to be careful in the cramped space but he looked at it this way, A spot on the white tiles could become smears with a life of their own.

The doc had said that there would always be fresh supplies of superfluous pints, pints that would otherwise just be slung, and that it was this Always which would make it their project worthwhile. Seriously worthwhile, the doc said.

First time out there's bound to be teething problems Greg but if there's more to come...and more.

That was before he'd said it was going to have to be the toilet. His toilet. Not that, when the situation was looked squarely in the face and from all possible angles, there was any alternative. This is where it had to be because for one thing, like the doc said, he couldn't exactly be carrying gallons of the stuff around the hospital's corridors without some bright spark passing a remark. It was just a bit cramped was all. And airless.

The blender was vibrating in his hands. Holding it out from his body he sat down on the toilet seat. It took the weight off his feet but it was weird, sitting there on top of the empty space above the surface of water below With His Trousers On. Bollox really, it wasn't like his sphincter opened automatically when he sat down on the pan. Not at all, if things were as they should be there was no better place for reading the paper. But With The Trousers Off.

He got up and peered through the murky transparency of the Blender's casing. A pallid liquid was forming in the top half leaving a thickening deposit of what the doc called the stuff with all the goodness in.

What you had to do with an itch just under the shoulder blade was to ignore it. Was true of an itch anywhere. Ignore it and it would subside. At worst the blender would be the lightest of buzzes in the doctor's consulting room and if he couldn't handle that, then he should not be having any truck with men who called themselves Davies.

He switched off the Blender and placed it on the tiles between his feet. He breathed out. He scratched at his shoulder blades through damp cotton. A fresh itch popped up in the calf. He scratched at it. And must have nudged the blender. It was toppling. Greg grabbed it before it was over. His heartbeat jumped. He wished he was a smaller man.

Holding the blender he rose from the toilet seat and siphoned off the liquid with a steady hand. He flushed the toilet. There was nothing wrong with that, it was what people did after they'd used  toilets. It was normal.

Another treble strength polythene bag, self-adhesive, was filled. The Blender was momentarily replaced on the tiled floor while the stack of wobbly containers was pushed more upright with the foot.

Not ideal conditions, the doc had admitted that himself, not tried to pretend it was otherwise.

The fucking thing.

He refilled the blender and switched on. It juddered in his hands.

An itch Could be conquered. Scratching there, where it was no more, and there, just above his ankle where it dug in like an insect, where it got more itchy and more, scratching had been a moment of weakness. He took two steps to a wall, the vibrations of the Blender smoother in his hands.

He turned and took two steps to the bulging polythene bags. He turned again.

There was no point in being fanatical about it. If you ignored an itch it would go away after a while, true. After a while. There were also times when just the one scratch would satisfy the itch and that would be it.

He switched off the blender, bent down to place it on the floor, lifted a trouser leg and scratched. He waited, crouched down. Just in case. It was quiet with the blender off, just the murmur of the Doctor's voice in consultation.

He scratched again, stood up with the Blender, and switched on.

III

From the window the doctor could see St. Pauls, the river, and beyond into the smudged layout of South London. The skyline was full of distortions. Slapdash development. He supposed he should be grateful that Wren's dome was visible at all. He had suggested a Heathrow area hotel but Enabler Davies had been surprisingly adamant and wouldn't entertain the idea, which in turn had made Greg even more byzantine in the nuts & bolts arrangements of their side of the transaction. Apart from that he was starting to think that there might after all be something in this 'Enabling' which Davies zealously insisted was his role, blandly evasive though it had originally sounded. For one thing he was not haggling. The doctor had not been altogether surprised but after a fortnight of the steady drip of Greg's parochial suspicions, it was pleasant not to be surprised. Not that Davies was soft, in his own adjacent room he had an analyst doing a run-through on a bag chosen at random from the van. Had made quite a speech on the subject.

Maybe I'm old fashioned doc, you know how it is these days, it's like there's no such thing as objective truth, it's just one more mental construct among others, that kind of stuff. Me, I look at the methodology of testing and if I'm satisfied, then the evidence of the tests that are made is what I believe, that's the truth plain and simple

Almost passionate he'd sounded though from the doctor's point of view it was a ludicrously unnecessary passion. He was after all a medical scientist and had pointed it out with gentle irony. At which Davies, no angel but looking reasonable in a lounge suit, had shown a human side and laughed.

From somewhere below the doctor heard the chime of bells. Muffled by distance they still resonated. A reassuring sound. He checked his watch and turned away from the window. It was to be expected, he'd said it to Greg, that this first time there might be teething problems, and he'd allowed time despite the intricate juggling of his Appointments Diary that this had involved. He sat down on a sofa at the window end of the room and stretched out. He played the Remote Control, channel-hopping, and settled on a herd of zebra. They drank at a parched pool for a while. Then the picture showed some African women with pots on their heads. He closed his eyes and switched off. When all was said and done and he was honest with himself, from the logistical point of view it was just as well that Greg was Greg, and had become involved. Wouldn't have been brought in otherwise, if he hadn't had a shrewd suspicion that Greg was the kind of man who needed some sense of purpose beyond the humdrum. And the money of course, none of them were saints. What anyway did saints ever achieve.

A point he'd tried to make to Roberts at Society meetings, with little effect. But then he supposed all committees needed their Robertses. They also needed someone like himself,  that is if they didn't want their achievements to be a footnote to a footnote.

There was a knock at the door and Davies entered carrying a bottle.

He'll be another 25 minutes or so, Davies said.

He came over and sat down  in an armchair. He put down the bottle, red wine by the look of it, on the low table between them.

Still we may as well pass it pleasantly.

From the label the doctor saw it was a St. Emilion Premier Grand Cru Classe. Enabler Davies well prepared, brought out a corkscrew from a jacket. The doctor said he had driving to do but yes, a glass. He took tumblers from the tray by the mini-fridge. The St. Emilion had a velvet edge, a taste that could come from the soil of that côté and no other. The doctor could almost picture the patchwork of Merlot and Cabernet Franc vines across the hillsides in the early evening light of summer.

Just that slight hint of blackcurrant, hard to beat, Davies said, breaking the picture.

Yes indeed.

Just the one glass nevertheless. Yes indeed. For there was some driving to be done. All that could be said of it was that it was at least on the way home. He'd gone along with Greg's taste for complications - the parking place where the final exchange was made to be different to that where Davies had made his random selection etc etc etc - but having done so, had insisted on Harrow for the second of the multi-storey car parks.

You know Doc funny thing is, you think about it, the Jehova's Witnesses were right. You remember how it was, open a newspaper and there they'd be, in a drama. Life or Death situation, the father in an open-necked shirt, looking haggard, the mother's face away from the cameras. Got a bad press, yeah even though there was Hepatitis B to consider, even then.

Perhaps Davies was an essentially lonely man. It was possible. He certainly liked talking and talking well beyond the call of small talk. Only in this instance he was talking pure bosh. The doctor said so.

At that time and in this country they were completely wrong, those people. Even then the Service and its product had an enviable reputation. They were the Fundamentalists of the time, innocuous by today's standards perhaps but think of the children. What of their rights!

OK doc, OK. I was just saying, you know it was like they knew how things were going to pan out. Not exactly, but that anything was possible virus-wise. I mean do you ever see them badmouthed these days, spotlighted? No you don't. You ever thought how it is, being spotlighted? Every arsehole in the land coming out with a personality profile of You. Doesn't bear thinking about.

So why was he thinking about it. Aloud. The doctor had felt a tremor in his ribcage at the mention of it. And he'd been going to say No, but there was Davies pouring a refill into his tumbler. It didn't mean he had to drink it however. He looked at his watch.

Another ten minutes is it? Not that I'm arguing with testing in general but this is from an impeccable source.

For once Davies responded how the doctor supposed second hand car dealers did, arms outstretched and with a mannered innocence.

Have I argued about price, he asked. Have I cast cheapskate aspersions on the product, buyer's aspersions? No I haven't. We're talking people who want quality, guaranteed quality. People who in no circumstances want the fee-paid contributions of intercontinental lowlife.

Davies was making some valid points. Indeed they were valid but in his considered opinion the Enabler was a lonely man. And on he went. Talking for talking's sake.

People who appreciate the unique trustworthiness of the British product, given freely, the authentic generosity which is anonymous. And I, in my small way am enabling its international dissemination. You in your bigger way. But I'm responsible, thus the final check so as there can be no disputes further down the line.

After the purple prose the doctor felt at ease. Busy Greg would just have to sit a little longer in Harrow for paranoid Davies, whose name it was true, was unlikely to be Davies, to make his tests and bring in the case of cash, a sample note of which, Greg had advised, he should look at under a strong light.

IV

The batsmen were on top. The bowlers could hope only to contain them and wait for a loose shot. But not with a long hop like that, dispatched to the boundary without effort, just pure timing.

Greg had the Walkman clipped on his waistband, loose cotton pants with an elasticated top. He stayed seated on the toilet seat, the blender whirring gently on his lap. The next ball was of good line and length. The batsman played it defensively back down the pitch. All well and good but you needed your line and length six balls the over.

He switched off and pushed the headphones back through his hair to hang loose around his neck. The stethoscope look he called it just to wind up the doc. A brilliant man, no question, but you had to laugh sometimes. Release the tension.

He let his head rest back against the tiles.

It was not and never had been the ideal place to work when installation of in-house air-conditioning with a bit of oomph, was out of the question. But what he had done, rigged up an improvised fan with a lead to the encased overhead light, was to take the prickliness out of the heat. It sat secure on the tissue paper dispenser.

He switched off the blender and looked at his watch. More or less spot on, just a second or two short of what he'd discovered with a little trial and a little error was the optimum time for separation to take place. Sometimes he didn't even look at his watch because he just knew. The proof of the pudding did lie in the eating and there'd been no reject batches, no complaints from Davies, nor any funny stuff either. Like he'd said to the doc, right at the start, let Davies or whatever his name was know they hadn't been born yesterday, then if everyone had their facts right, there was no reason the whole thing couldn't tick along nicely.

As it was. And would continue to do so, if he got off his arse.

He got up, holding the Blender in one hand.

Which was thanks to him that he could, having tracked down down a lighter weight model.

The left over liquid fell smoothly into the toilet bowl leaving trails on the porcelain. He flushed it and turned in his flip-flops to make the two steps to the stack of polythene containers.

When he'd refilled the Blender with some of the fresh stuff, he pushed down the toilet seat, sat down and switched it on. Kept it steady in his lap with the one hand and pushed the headphones back up with the other.

It was the wicketkeeper at the crease.

The wicket keeper. A wicket had fallen then. Whose? The newcomer fended off a rising ball. It was amazing what a wicket could do for a bowler. There was a new spring to his step. Yes but who was out? Why didn't they just say that? The sky was cloudless. There wasn't much in the pitch for the bowlers but a wicket had fallen, they said, and that the wicketkeeper with the bat in his hands didn't look too comfortable against the short-pitched stuff. Still scored a single though. And kept the strike. Kept it from who? Who was it who was still there at the other end?

He put his other hand on the blender, fingers touching fingers around its casing. Sturdy casing. No question but that it was quality. Good motor too, just ran and ran.

Some prat was moving behind the bowler's arm. In the Pavilion seats. They were right, you'd have thought someone there would know better. He switched off the Blender. With any luck he'd finish the batch by the Tea interval. Which wasn't bad, considering.

V

You take my point doctor, Colvin said.

The doctor nodded. The talk in the committee room was getting louder, he could hear it.

Yes, said the doctor, just tell me again, in a couple of sentences. So I'm absolutely clear. Earnest, honest Colvin looked aghast. Or that it was a hopeless task, such brevity, which he yet must have a stab at.

That our advertising, whatever you want to call it, publicity in general, and that is leaving aside the fundamental question of its compatibility with not so much our aims as our whole ethos...

Got you, yes, but I think that's your ration. Two sentences. The doctor's eyes were twinkling.

Doctor, Chairman, said a voice with a hand on his shoulder. Or does that sound a bit Germanic?

It was Forsyth. The doctor half-turned.

Leaving that aside, that this PR budget should prove itself cost-effective. That at least might justify it, Colvin said.

And how's the world of haemtology doc, busy? Forsyth said.

The doctor looked at his watch.

Bloody, Forsyth, he said. But unless I'm much mistaken, we’re about to start.

Forsyth looked at his watch, made a play of surprise and had no choice but to grin wryly.

It's good someone's on the ball. It must be why we have chairmen. Determinedly decadent Forsyth.

So, said Colvin.

Taken on board, the doctor said with a mock salute. Taken on board. But now it really is time to get started.

Some members were already seated. The rest of the room turned as the doctor tapped the bell at the head of the table. Better a bell than a bleeper as he'd said in one memorable speech.

This time after a reading of the Minutes of the previous meeting the doctor opened the meeting by dwelling on his vision, Their Common Vision.

An England in which the past is not an appendage but an essential part of the fabric of people's lives now. Now either we say that this is important, or we say it's a luxury we can occasionally afford, take an interest in now and then. If the latter then I would submit we really are wasting our time as a committee. I'm not moralizing here, not saying we should all become fanatics. As private individuals it would be quite laudable to fight a particular demolition or modernization of a particular listed building say. Or to get a particular building listed. Laudable obviously. But we are a committee, the committee of a Society with aims. Yes aims, and if we are serious about them then we must for one thing, be making inroads into public awareness. It is after all their heritage we are talking about. This as well of course as fighting those individual cases, which remains our essential work. And it is precisely because our wider aims are also essential that we should not be frightened of expanding our scope.

When he'd finished they did get down to some specific cases.

Some decisions were made.

Others were postponed, more information was required. In one case they were in danger of getting bogged down; a Devonian farmhouse, Sixteenth Century Mrs Wheatsheaf said.

To renovate or not to renovate that is the question, said Forsyth.

I say we pressure to keep it as it is. A building will stand or a building will fall. Just let it be. Give it that freedom. Ferocious furry Roberts, fundamentalist. And on he went. And on. Till the doctor did his job, and intervened. The point was taken, he said. Mrs Wheatsheaf was waving to be heard. She was scornful.

Let it Be, Let it Be. Sixteenth Century Builders did not have acid rain in mind. Which is why we have to intervene, to try and redress the balance.

She went on to elaborate a vision of the farmhouse as a working farmhouse.

Roberts counter-scorned this vision.

Jenner re-scorned Roberts.

Mrs Wheatsheaf re-scorned Roberts.

The doctor intervened. The decision was postponed and they moved on to Programme and Accounts.

It did not take long for the doctor to detect concerted action. When Forsyth began to speak it became Conspiracy. A full-frontal attack on the Publicity Campaign. Followed by Colvin with the details. What was there to show for it he wanted to know.

Shrewdly, the doctor allowed Roberts to portray publicity as close to sin. At length. Colvin sighed. Colvin shook his head. Trusty terrier Colvin.

That's not quite the point I'm making, he finally managed to say. What I'm asking is, has the increase in membership justified the campaign and the expenditure involved?

The doctor excused himself and launched a counter-attack from the chair.

I don't think that anyone promised, or indeed that anyone had the right to expect, an immediate increase in actual membership, not on a dramatic scale. But I think you'll find that the increase in donations by members of the public has already almost paid for the next stage of the campaign.

Money, money, money, Forsyth said.

It's the almost paid I'm worried about, said Colvin.

And on they went, Surtees, Captain Legge, even Lady Mary, carping, complaining, essentially small-minded. The doctor bided his time. Mrs Wheatsheaf sat on the fence. The doctor made an announcement.

I don't seek to be dramatic but I think it incumbent on me to show evidence of the depth of my commitment to the campaign and thus to the work of this Society. I propose myself to donate a sum of fifty thousand pounds to the Society. This to cover the annual salary of a professional fund-raiser and as a contribution to the future of the campaign.

Which shut them up. Yes indeed.

VI

Even on the two-inch Greg could see Highland Fling was buggered two fences out. Either you lead from the front All The Way, or you were a pacemaker and that was all was expected. Or it was true, the going was on the very softside. Or your jockey was a dickhead. Because it wasn't all that was expected, not of Highland Fling Coming up to the last it was Sunset Strip all the way. Didn't even need the picture, you could hear it in the Commentator's voice.

Greg was ready for the Blender's Off switch. He paused, his finger neutral on the fulcrum. No, no inquiry. Sunset Strip's run all above board. W. Tullamore on board. Being asked how he'd seen it from the fourth in. Greg pressed down on to the Off side of the Blender's switch and stood up from the toilet seat. He lifted the seat to pour away the surplus. It left trails on the porcelain. Yes, it had been on the softish side, W. Tullamore said, but his mount would have won in any conditions.

Greg flushed the toilet.

He took two steps to fill a fresh polythene with the viscous stuff. Turned again and re-filled the Blender.

On the two-inch they were back in the Studio, some Rugby League action, a clip of it, the man there promised.

If anything it was on the cool side. Cashmere cardigan weather or switch the fan off. The cardigan was elsewhere. He reached across to the toilet roll stanchion with his spare arm. A cold jet ruffled his hair. A wonderful machine though. Of the older type, built to last. He switched it off. Then he sat down on the toilet seat and re-started the Blender. A black man was haring towards the posts on a treacly pitch. Leeds, the commentator said.

He flipped channels. A trolley was hurtling along a hospital corridor. All kinds of drip feeds were sticking out of the horizontal, sheet-covered patient. A man and a woman in white coats rushed after it.

The fingers of his hand gripped the Blender's casing that much tighter.

If we can't save him then just what the hell are we doing, the woman in white screamed.

You're doing your best, Greg said out loud to the screen.

Take it easy Martina, the man in the white coat shouted, breathless as the trolley skidded to a halt at the concertina doors of the elevator.

The Blender whirred gently on Greg's lap.

He flipped channels. Fresh horses were cantering down to the start. Foul weather at Newmarket. Maybe it had been on the extra soft side.

VII

Time-wise Davies had budgeted for a whole day's stop-off in Cambridge, and it had taken less. If a guy knew his onions then however unpalatable his conclusions, you listened. If they stood up to close questioning there came a point when further cross-examination would yield not a drop more information-wise. At that point, like it or not, it was make-your-mind-up-time.

Which is what he'd done, more or less and, as a consequence, booked an overnight flight and arrived early for the meeting, notwithstanding a spell of unhurried motoring. Parked up he could see a Filling Station to the left, an Eatery to the right and rows of cars in between, shining in the early evening sun. Greg's suggestion this one, one out of his Hundred And One Places To Make A Rendezvous. A factotum and a half. Cars drove up to the Pumps, and cars drove away. That was traffic, non-stop. Davies had no illusions, petrol, oil, whatever you wanted to call it, was business in another league, corporate stuff. For the individual, outlet franchises were all you could hope for, with a Breakdown Service if you were lucky and the location was right. It didn't appeal. Or you had a good spot with a sideline in cartoned milk, cigarettes and a 24-hour-a-day Microwave. And then they built a by-pass. No thankyou!

To his right, past a Volvo and a Datsun, him in polyester flannels and nylon shirt, and her in a dress and cardigan sat on canvas-top, fold-up stools next to a Vauxhall. She passed him a Thermos. There was a deep blueness to the sky. Davies stretched and reached back for his jacket on its hangar. It was the kind of blueness which could end up full of stars. At Flight Check-In he had a good mind to demand a window seat.

He walked towards the Eatery. Beyond it he could see fences and green field. Passing by them, her in the cardigan said something to him in the flannels. She was laughing. Then he laughed, and said, No I don't believe it. And laughed some more.

Davies heard him right up to the mini-stairs leading to the Cafeteria section. Inside he went right round the Self-Service for a pot of tea for one. Give the doc his due, his time-keeping had improved. In fact, improvement all-round. At the start he'd been very forthcoming with naff suggestions. A Heathrow hotel for their first working rendezvous! With inter-continental iffy dealings of all sorts for company. No thankyou. Fair play though, he'd become serious. Said he was going to do something and did it. Said he was going to do something by such and such a date, and did it. with a little help from Greg who looked summery in ochre slacks and a short-sleeved shirt in cream. Keeping to just a segment of mousse by the looks of it.

The doc was crossing the tartan carpeting. Hadn't bothered with a tray, just a mineral water and the glass in his hand.

He set them down on the table and dropped a hand on Davies's shoulder.

Davies, how are you. A little peaky. Thought about having a chat with your GP, he said, a twinkle in his eyes. A touch of anemia perhaps. Or just doing yourself short on fresh air. How about some exercise. I mean how are we going to have you enabling when you don't look after yourself.

It was mousse. Chocolate. At an adjacent table Greg was just toying with it.

And that's a professional opinion, the doctor said, poking at his chest. Not like our enabler to be so quiet. Or is it a lets-get-down-to-business occasion. And why not. It'll be 80, maybe 85 percent of normal volume this time. It's the way it is. But just so as there's no misunderstanding it's this month only. A week today shall we say?

Davies pushed away his cup. Bacteria doc, he said, you thought about them. A turn up for the books. Till now they've had a bad name, you've got your viruses and your bacteria, Baddies the both of them.

The doctor smiled. This was the Davies of old. Talking for talking's sake.

And the joker is, it's bacteria engineered may be the saving of us all. The human race as is. Solve the chronic global shortage.

The doctor frowned.

With Haemoglobin, who'd have credited it, Davies said.

The doctor was smiling.

Haemoglobin my dear Enabler D. is a protein, you can quote me on it.

Sure a protein, hangs on tight to oxygen, won't let it go. Splits into dangerously small molecules, dangerously small for the liver. Major disadvantages whichever way you look at it.

Very good Davies. A pithy summary of the biochemical situation.

Greg had pushed away his plate barely touched. Davies saw him smiling across at them like they were a private joke. Oh yes.

Only now, genetic engineering they call it, there's haemoglobin without those disadvantages. Amazing but then that's the contemporary world for you.

Yes? the doctor said, wanting the self-styled Enabler to get down to earth and speak in plain English.

You join a couple of haemoglobin cells, splice the result with your bacteria and Bosh, there you go, unlimited supplies of the Final Product.

Could be factotums were psychic too. Greg's stare on them was suddenly intent. His spoon was round and round the Mousse. Like there was a chocolate pyramid in the making. On the plate.

The cafeteria noised up with a burst of old folk through the entrance.

Doc. Hey. Is Anybody Out There? Our final product I'm talking about. Unlimited production of. In the Lab. Immune from the slightest possibility of contamination by foreign bodies.

A pipedream, the doctor said briskly.

The old folk were scattered along the Self-Service rails. Davies could still hear them.

Theoretically possible perhaps, I am Mr Davies an acknowledged authority in my field. Theoretically possible. I have heard of some research. But light years away from a marketable product.

Not so doc, as of very recently, Davies said.

The doctor laughed. And you know this, he said, whereas we, humble practitioners in this specialized field have not heard of what purports to be an unprecedented leap...

Doc I'm an Enabler. No big deal but it's what I am. And first thing you learn is the world doesn't stand still.

With a degree of melt-factor Greg had come up with the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

What a profound truth my dear Davies, the world indeed does not stand still.

And as I've said before Enabling is only possible in specific situations, specific moments in time with specific circumstances. See what I mean doc, what happens when these circumstances change. Like you're a large company in fossil fuels. OK Fission's been a NoNo but what happens when Nuclear Fusion becomes a workable reality and liquidating the entire research team that's made it so, doesn't look practicable? Diversify. Adapt or die. Enabling too, it's a fluid job, by definition.

You wish to terminate our arrangement?

Pump up the output doc. One, two maybe three more times with everything you've got and then yes, all enablements have their limits.

The doctor was smiling. Whatever you say Davies, whatever you say.

VIII

Since they'd first started the business Greg had got strict with his weight. A spin-off from the work. Not like he'd made a decision but it had happened, no eating for eating’s sake which, in retrospect, had accounted for a fair bit of his intake. Which meant that wanting a snack now meant he seriously needed a snack. Centrifugal or no bloody centrifugal.

All right, all right. He switched on the Blender and sat down on the toilet seat. The job had to be done. Just there was so much of it this time. And the time before that. And before that.

The Blender whirred gently in his lap. And the bloody two-inch was on the blink. A TV bought as new. Golf from Florida. The big guy'd teed off sure enough, the ball had flown off his driver. Into a snow storm.

If he'd known before, if there'd been some warning, all well and good, he'd have got another one or brought the Walkman. Just two-inches of screen to cope with, it wasn't much to ask.

The wall tiles glared at him. That was basic, keeping them clean, a regular swab down. Funny he didn't know them better really, the amount of time he'd spent surrounded by them so to speak it was a wonder he didn't know exactly how many there were.

He didn't know because, despite everything he had not gone round the twist. Was just fucking hungry all right.

The hours he'd put in he was entitled to a snack.

Just when they'd got a nice routine going, Whack! Ever since that time at the motorway caff and suddenly the doc wanted a lot more each time. Because Davies wanted more he guessed. Not he guessed, he'd seen it, the doc looking worried over the formica. He'd kind of asked where the extra was coming from exactly but the doctor had just looked harassed. Looked harassed? Greg was harassed. Some people looked harassed all the time. Didn't mean they were, whereas others who were, they just kept it to themselves.

He stood up with the Blender in the crook of his arm. Half the wall mirror was obscured by the fresh stuff in its opaque container. He pushed up from his feet and saw below the eyebrows down to his mouth. His face was a case in point. No strain was visible. Just a tiredness around the eyes perhaps.

He let his heels down back on the floor. There were just some people didn't go around showing the world they were stressed. Even when they were. When there was hardly room to move.

He raised the toilet seat with a clatter and drained off the surplus. It left trails on the porcelain. He flushed and flip-flopped a step to the quivering mound of self-seals. The wad of empty bags had slipped down between two full ones. He tugged and they fluttered across the rippling bulges. Fuck it, never mind, one was splayed out right under his hand. Greg tightened his elbow grip on the Blender. Handed the empty bag to his mouth. This complete, same hand, middle finger prominent, eased open the self seal-trim till the bag's opening would fit over the top of the Blender.

He took his time refilling it with fresh stuff. And used that time to become calm, rational Greg, a man who could make decisions.

He would do six more bags and then have a break for a snack regardless of how much remained to be processed, which he firmly believed to be very little. Thirty pints by the look of it when he did get round to refilling.

He nudged the toilet seat down with a knee, sat down, and switched on. The Blender whirred gently on his lap. What he would have was a Cheese on Toast. Make it a double Cheese on Toast.

Or something more solid, soothing and strength-giving. A beef casserole with mash. Not to let the side down some greens with it. And not boiled to mush thank you very much! With something light for afters. Or give it a miss. Give afters a miss and insist on the greens.

With two slices. Just in case the mash wouldn't soak up all the gravy.

Three cheese on toast would be sickly. And at the end of the day, what was cheese, choc a bloc with cholesterol was what. Which he hadn't known till the doctor had mentioned it, one time in a tea room after Davies had left. Up Hampstead way.

No he hadn't known. His mum had definitely not known and that was when he hadn't even liked the stuff.

His finger paused on the Blender's On/Off switch. The beef casserole it was, no contest, to be eaten slowly and with relish. Dab the mustard on one cube at a time. Never more than one cube per mouthful. Fork at the greens at regular intervals.

He switched off the Blender, got up, lifted the seat and poured away the surplus. It left trails on the porcelain.

This time with the Blender wedged tight by the crook of his elbow he went two-handed at the self-seal. Once open he kept it that way with one hand, using the other to push the top of the Blender into the polythene opening. Only then did he unclip its lid. Only something was wrong, the plasma sludge sliding down the outside of the plastic. And slithering down the full bags. On to the floor. Greg thought, These Things Are Sent To Try Us. But not, not, not the end of the world. Tissue paper for now, swab down as usual when the job was finished.

He stepped and leant towards the Tissue dispenser. His foot slipped in its Flip-Flop. The Flip-Flop slipped in the sludge on the floor. Greg's weight was out of kilter. He fell across and through the cable attaching the fan to the light above. There was a noisy flash. The lights went, and the silent fan tumbled down on Greg's head.

IX

God how he could talk, the Enabler. The one and only, lonely Davies. That was certain, the doctor could picture him, in a Saloon or Hotel Bar, hideously reproduced as of a bygone age, holding forth. If anything he'd been even more incessantly chatty of late.

Like now as the doctor pulled up at lights behind a throbbing Taxi cab, Davies on the subject of mosquitoes. Mosquitoes in general. Had the doctor, as a starting point, looked at them ecology-wise. That was how he talked.

Look at it this way, whether you're in Africa on business and get caught up in a malaria scare, or it's a bastard of an itchy bite on your fortnight in the Med there's not much good to be said for them.

The doctor did not seek to flatter himself but perhaps Davies for all his talk rarely got the chance to speak with professionals. Perhaps he regarded it as an opportunity to speculate ad nauseam, and without embarrassment.

Put it this way, if, and we're talking a big If here because a massive investment of resources would be involved, mosquitoes were eradicated, wiped out, would this eradication put a spanner in the works of the eco-system of some other organism or organisms?

Why anyway was Davies concerned? A symptom of monomania? Davies with ideas of himself Enabling in the growing field of things malarial? No, and this was the cause of his still greater volubility in recent weeks, he was covering, or rather trying to cover his misfired tactics at the roadside cafeteria. Misfired tactics, misplaced information. This was the one, two, third exchange since then and not a word on his Lab-produced stuff. Instead many, many words on various topics the Middleman obviously assumed he could have an 'intelligent chat' about with a doctor.

Do we know or would we not know until after eradication had actually taken place. When it's a fait accompli.

Unusually, Davies laughed a self-deprecating laugh.

Or maybe that's a religious point of view at heart, Nothing On The Planet Without A Reason.

Yes, the doctor said. The traffic was a bind, he was due for tea at Lady Mary's in an hour or so. The whole ritual of the exchange had become a bind. It seemed to him as if there were some unwritten agreement between Davies and his Greg to keep up the fiction that their elaborate procedures were still necessary; the sample container selected from the full van in St Johns Wood; the full van minus one now awaiting them in Stanmore. And in between another hotel room. He should have known that that was merely an interim which allowed Davies to get into his stride.

Because on the malarial front that is what we're talking about, mosquito eradication. Pills, inoculation whatever, they're a washout. You'll still hear wishful thinking on that score but believe me doc, it's a dead end.

They were passing through what passed for Neasden the doctor assumed. The lights were against him. A couple trudged the crossing silently with a pushchair they appeared to be using as a wheelbarrow. It was toppling over. The man caught it. The pram rebalanced. The man stroked its sides. She laughed, then he laughed. An amber light came on with the red. Then it was green. The doctor pulled away.

Ask anyone in babywear, Davies said, and they'll tell you the same, what counts with Buggies is the wheels. Nine times out of ten, when a pushchair's finished it's because of the wheels, the way they're attached.

Really, the doctor said.

Past the lights he'd put his foot down.

Question is are you talking alloy strength or mechanical design sophistication, Davies said.

The doctor was irritated at a fresh batch of slow drivers; the irrepressibly garrulous Davies; the rush; Stanmore as an error of judgement given his schedule; Greg's whining; Greg's mess. And what a mess that had been, the lights going out all over the building, and Greg a gibbering, slime-encrusted shambles. Fortunate that he'd been trained to deal with emergencies when there'd been maintenance electricians on the loose, and a factotum in need of being pulled together.

You were unable to enable in the push-chair field I take it, he said.

But Davies just ploughed on, the sarcasm bouncing off him

No, he said. Either way, mechanical or metallurgy-wise we're talking an R&D commitment and they don't need me to tell them that. That's an Enablement got to come from within. Of course there's people talk Built-In Obsolescence. They were talking that when I was a kid. Hard to credit it but it's still trendy punditry.

The doctor smiled, surprised. He turned towards Davies. Trendy punditry, he said, yes indeed. There's plenty of that about. Far too much.

X

Trendy punditry, he didn't like it either, the doc. In fact was getting quite steamed up about it as they came out the other end of Queensbury. Which wasn't the doc's style at all.

Listen to it, or should I say them, Punditry, and where would we be? Modernists who never live long enough to see the error of their ways. The 13th century stonemason, Davies, did not build those spires without soul.

Stanmore was a possibility, the way they were headed.

The modern mason Davies, few anyway as they are, would be completely thrown by the particular symmetry, the even tapering we might say, which a spire requires.

Is that right, Davies said.

Greg should go for a second edition of A Thousand and One Places to make a Rendezvous. It was Stanmore, a wire fenced, open-air job with a pensioner in a shed with a cap on. A  Merck Greg had gone for this time. Diesel. In yellow.

Yes Davies, that is right. The very best we can hope for these days is good renovation. At least make it good.

And Greg would be in the cab of the Merck. And then the exchange of ignition keys nice and easy.

It can be done not just with skill but with a feel for the past. A feel.

There were weeds the far side of the fence. Up to knee-high some of them, with fluffy tops. They got bigger as the doctor brought the Toyota to a halt. A bit of inevitable slithering on the shingle and they were stationary, adjacent the Merck. The yellow truck door began to open. The doctor unclipped the safety belt and got out of the car clutching the case like he was Mr Chamberlain. The shingle shifted under the weight of Greg's moccasins.

The doctor gave the thumbs up.

XI

Greg could feel the stones under his soles as he put an arm round the doctor. He took the case and locked it on to the handcuff on his wrist.

Davies came out of the Toyota passenger door, one arm holding the sample bag. Greg stepped forwards the Mercedes van keys in his loose hand. Davies took them and put his palm up, face forwards. I'm not one for speeches, he said. Actions speak louder than words and they have. What can I say but it's been a pleasure working with you. Both of you. I wish you all the very best in the future.

That was it then. Fair enough. Greg couldn't say he was altogether sorry, what with the pace of the thing recently. They'd had their run.

He moved round the bonnet to the saloon's driver door. The doctor stood where he had been, between van and car. He was furious. Greg knew the signs, he was hopping mad.

You mean to say our work is finished, the doctor said as if he were being strangled.

Davies was about to reach up to the cab door when he turned. He looked puzzled. Sure, he said. I did, unless I my memory's on the blink, tell you this some while ago. Motorway Services wasn't it.

Motorway Services, he knew he'd been right, something had happened there, something serious. A Sierra was pulling in 3 spaces away. The doctor rushed across the shingle, head down. He was screaming.

Sure! Sure! Told me what, some tomfoolery about lab splicing.

His rush became a charge. Davies was mumbling something. Greg saw the guy out of the Sierra look across like there was Entertainment on offer. The doc had the other feller pinned up against the van door. He was screaming.

It's not fair. Not fair after all the hard work. Not just me but Greg, the hard work he's done.

That was true, the hard work, but Greg didn't like the look of things. The guy from the Sierra suddenly didn't like it either. Greg rushed round the Toyota bonnet. They were scrapping, the two of them. The polythene container burst out of the other feller's hand. The plastic split on the shingle. Plasma oozed out yellow on Greg's moccasins. The doc had his hands at Davies's throat. The guy from the Sierra was running.

Greg pulled them apart, the doc wriggling like a wild cat.

What is this? Greg said straight to Davies.

Christ's sake Greg, get a grip. He's off his trolley your man. It's over. We've done well but now it's no longer viable.

The doctor was bursting out of his shoulder hold. Greg switched to a bear hug and spoke quietly. It's OK doc, it's the way it goes, things come to an end. We've got our money, all well and good.

Davies nodded. The guy from the Sierra was at the Control Shed, pointing at them. Davies jumped up into the Mercedes cab dragging the gooey polythene with him. He revved up.

The doctor was screaming again. Greg pulled him towards the Toyota.

Doc listen to me, it's Greg, your friend.

Take your hands of me. Take them off. Immediately.

Now then doc, Greg said.

REGENERATION

The event itself was fun, no doubts on that score.. Had been put on just down the bottom of the road in the arches. What it meant? Not the most relevant of questions. Ask a philosopher, Violet said. And even then you’ll find meaning’s only a partial fix.

Fact is, it was fun and it was free: what more did you want. Hologram stuff, a furry steamroller coming right at you, green grass in stalks; intervened by a palpable smell that blossomed over time, the taste of ground-level fireworks on a misty winter’s night. Multi-media didn’t do it justice.

And if you wanted meaning, there it was; Time,  the relativity of it, the different speeds of time as experienced by your different senses, and in changing  circumstances.

Circumstances?! Violet said in that voice she has when there’s too much bland in the air. Being walked over by a field of green? Pretty damn special in my experience. By itself, and of itself.

True enough, the grassy stuff just coming and coming, and no one freaking out. And when you looked at it in retrospect, that Time thing, it did provide some food for thought.

Food? A morsel? As in cheese? Jerome said. Not so much sarky, as how in this day and age, lose your sense of proportion and you’d be roundabout-sick in no time. But he’s no misery-guts, Jerome. It was fun, he said, and all the other people there made you realize you wasn’t alone in the world.

We wasn’t alone in the world.

We?! Violet said. Covers a multitude of sins. In my experience.

All right. All right. See how easy it is to lose how special it was, a pretty amazing event. Put together by a southside crew so they said. Right on top of what they were already doing for their bread-and-butter,  Jerome’s pal said, knew their stuff. Whereas some things, non-events as it turned out whatever the flyers had promised, them or the word-of-mouth. Only by then you’d already crossed town to discover it was some half-arsed thing.

But this, this had been a great night, only just a couple of months later all the arches were rented out on long leases at double money, and further up the street  Frank was  given notice. Just like that, when he’s been there ten years, paid ten years of rent. And this time it wasn’t the bastard using it as a threat to up the rent like he’s done before. No, he wants him out, he’s got plans. And all after Frank’s paid him ten years of good rent.

Well sure, my heart goes out to him, but lets look at it with a clear eye, renting’s a mug’s game.

That was Patrick who’d started turning up at the café a while back.

Violet bit her tongue because he was right and he was wrong, Patrick or whatever his bloody name was.

I’ve not said our friend is stupid by the way, it’s just what the hell do you get out of it. Put down a deposit fuck’s sake.

Our friend he called him, but by then Frank had gone AWOL, even when he still had time on the notice that was his entitlement. Or at least he wasn’t answering his landline or his mobile, and he wasn’t answering his door. No one had seen him out either.

Maybe he had stores laid in.

Not Frank’s style, Jerome said. With him, improvisation, it’s a way of life.

Way of life?! Violet said. Like it’s a style statement?! His way of life’s being grabbed off him more like, and he’s preparing for a siege.

Could be.

Likely as not he’s just gone away for a few days to think things out, Jerome said; or he’s sorting out a new place for himself.

But we’re his friends, Violet said.

Which we were. Got through a few scrapes together, the good times and the bad times. Made our own share of events.

No contact, not a dickey bird. Then a few days later when the contract’s nearly up, there’s two Plods stood outside his place. Just stood there as plain as could be on the opposite pavement, looking up Violet said, like it was a temple and they were bored with it. Second floor and third floor, his place. Not exactly warehouse space, but the same vintage, usage transformation from when the Containers came in and the docks went out to the coast where they looked like multi-size car parks.

What you couldn’t help remembering was how some very good times had been enjoyed up there in Frank’s place over the years, and never mind the docks that weren’t there. And now there were two of them outside. They were brazen. As if someone was running a Plod Recognition course, Jerome said. Nevertheless, leave it for a while was the consensus, who wants to tangle with the Plods if it can be avoided.

If it can be avoided, Violet said, demanding her right to a minority opinion.

It was Cappucino’s all round nonetheless. And Jerome took the edge off by giving half the café some verbal. The one’s with their laptops up and running. Just what kind of piffle were they shunting around their screens. Oh, and did they think it was terribly, terribly important. In which case, they were wrong.

A couple of days later the Plods were still there, and then suddenly they’d gone. And that was just the day before the day the notice thing ran out. Violet didn’t like the look of it. She’d never liked the look of it, not since the law’n order had arrived, and now she liked it less.

Won’t you come into the parlour, know what I mean. Said the spider to the fly, she said. Which didn’t stop her banging the door to Frank’s place and leaning on the ding-dong bell on the day he should have moved out. And, you could say, she hit the jackpot. It’s what she said. Banged the door, rang the bell and bingo. The wires were so fine no one saw them till the action started. Triggered by the bang on the door, or the ding-dong, or both, Jerome said. From the low wall surrounding the flat roof, spheres whizzed down the yellow, London-brick face and unloaded their stuff.

Pure alchemy, Violet called it. A mixture of paint and acid was the consensus, the spheres releasing it in sequence, black scored into the softness of the brick.

Indelible: true meaning of, Jerome’s pal said.

One thing was certain. The Plods had taken their eye off the ball. Frank had kept  his thing under wraps and then done a runner. Go West young man, those were his last words on the manor. As reported by the son of the Turk, the one with the offie who’d seen him the day before in and out for a bottle of Rioja and some large-size Blue Rizla.

Frank at his most cryptic, Jerome’s pal said.

FUCK YOU LANDLORD, the wall said.

Violet was transfixed as the words emerged. Never mind interactive, pure alchemy more like, she said later when it was obvious this was more than a paint job.

Jerome’s pal said the landlord was doing his nut and wasn’t best pleased with the Plods, which could well see them lashing out. The word accessory coming to mind and why didn’t she lie low.

Not till I’ve celebrated, and done it till I drop, she said.

Celebrate? At the end of the day, Jerome said, Frank’s lost his flat, the flat roof, everything!

At the end of the day?! At the end of the day, we’re all dead, Violet said.

FRANK EXCHANGE

The road ahead was flat and chalky, the landscape new to him; rocky hills and stunted trees with powder-pale leaves. Frank looked for little bursts of dust with each tread of his feet. He didn't see them but they had to be there, it was the nature of dust. It was there, like the all-round presence of non-stop buzzing. Crickets. Or more likely cicadas like they had in California, so he'd read.

Ahead a screen of greenery fenced the road at either side. He moved a little quicker to the shade which appeared to be of bamboo with long, drooping leaves coming out of the tops of the cane. Scuffing the chalky stuff he saw concrete underfoot and below, a dried-up river bed of blanched rocks and stones. Bramble, shrubs and fresh bamboo shoots fought it out on its banks. A strange place, which was no bad thing, being necessarily far away from where it had gone wrong: a business of transit documents and anonymity under the spotlight where they did not belong; and a helter-skelter of switched cabs.

He shrugged and walked on.

Out of the bamboo the road curved to the right and the landscape resumed. It was OK, it was in the nature of roads that they lead somewhere. Brambles like he'd seen on the river banks now ran either side of the road. They formed straggly, thigh-high hedges. It looked like blackberry with the correct shaped fruit. Amongst greens and reds he saw a hairy black one and reached carefully for it.

And spat it out. A con, Green in a Black skin. Which happened, things being not as they seemed. Which had happened.

The intricate symphony of insects sounded on. The non-stop. Taken individually, it would be more clack than buzz. He pictured them in each of the stunted trees that seemed to monopolize things tree-wise. In between their gnarled trunks he glimpsed random stretches of dry- stone wall. On the flatter ground token efforts had been made at ploughing the earth.

Along with the non-stop came a new sound, like there might be bee hives. As the curve of the road opened out he saw no bee hives but could make out parts of the front and side of what had to be a large stone building amongst trees of a different type, ones that were tall, slim and straight. Closer to he saw that the building had what looked like a new roof of red-brown tiles. Exactly! There was no point to roads with no in-use buildings. It was what he'd been saying all along.

The upright trees were not firs but evergreens of a dry climate and the hum not a hum, more a choir that was loud enough to make the cicadas background. Frank saw that the building had well-made wooden doors and windows. They were solid and neat in the uneven surrounds of stone.

It was a choir. Hard to credit but that's what it was, people, fellow human beings, singing together. About a hundred of them, clearly visible through an arch-shaped open door.

He stepped inside. Some sat, others lounged on dark red cushions. These ran right round the building on its varnished wooden floor, propped loosely against the unplastered stone walls. There were men and women in well-made labouring clothes of corduroy. None of them was old. A few glanced at him but went on with their singing. Or it was chanting, made up of long notes. Either way, no one screamed the house down, him in his suit. He sat down at the edge of the cushioning nearest the door. No heads turned, not even hers, the blonde woman next to him.

The length of the notes made it hard to work out the words but he picked out Cleanse and Place, English words though he knew for a fact, that this was not an English-speaking place.

No problem, at some point the chanting would stop and things would become clearer. For one thing there were a man and a woman sat separate from the rest in the middle of the floor space. Some kind of priests possibly. While they sang, people wandered in and out by another arch-shaped door at the far end of the building. Nothing too formal obviously which, as Frank saw it, was no bad thing. On the other hand they were also carrying identical green books. From his point of view, possibly not so good.

The singing stopped, not with a definite cut-off point, all at once, but till there were just a few voices and then silence. Out of the quiet the woman at the centre of the floor cried out, Praise Be!

Praise be and leave us space, the man replied.

Leave us space inside.

And out

Outside and in. The space

To appreciate

To contemplate

That the emptiness be empty

And the full, full. The space

For each to know their place.

Frank stared at beams of dust in the window light, tubes and cones of it. He heard the rustle and bustle of people on their feet and filing out the far door, the congregation. He wasn't sure what to do, no one liked to look a prick.

He did nothing, sometimes it was the thing to do, the best option, to do nothing. And as it happened several of them, the green-books, had remained seated and another blonde woman started to speak. Possibly Danish the accent, Scandinavian for sure. It was all right, the way she spoke, as conversational as you could get with an audience. She talked of her up-and-down relationship with Possibilities and how this was now a thing of the past since she had found a Place. Reading from the green book she talked of the richness of the word Settle; that in so many ways they were both settlers and the settled; and how these many ways were also connected.

She closed the green book and spontaneously explored some examples. The important thing was that if you found the space, the geographical one that was Open To All Who Searched, then one must not waste the opportunity. You settled and in the process became adept at thinking clearly and Settling Things, precisely because you kept the space clear of extraneous matter, of mess.

A bit alternative, though Frank couldn't see the exact shape of it, there’d been no godnames, gurunames, or any obvious structure of belief. She had a point though, the speaker,  to think clearly you did need a bit of peace and quiet which was exactly what he had not had this time around. The way the thing had been, not a chance of it.

He clocked one of the men lighting candles bracketed to their immediate section of the wall. It had gone dark quickly, he'd missed it. The candlelight was pleasant, evidently it was why they hadn't bothered with the electric. They did have it, he'd noticed the light bulbs, but they'd elected to go for the candles. But what of the road, had there been telegraph poles, cables? He tended to think not, but then if he was honest he might well not have noticed, the state he'd been in, trekking along that interminable road.

The woman had stopped speaking and finally they were looking at him; friendly enough, smiling, like they were expecting him to say something. He was quite likely to say the wrong thing but there was nothing for it, no choice, had to give it a bash.

The smiles were encouraging.

Me, well I guess I'm what you'd call an unsettled sort of bloke, he said. Still travelling, searching in my own way.

No one screamed. No one laughed. The woman next to him, the men opposite, they nodded.

But not, at least I don't want to be, a rolling stone in the universe. I mean I do want to gather some moss.

The smiles were normal, the laughter genuine, without derision. Frank relaxed. The question of travel was not something he had considered in general terms or as a process, but he'd done enough of it, plenty. They were listening seriously, you could see it, not overdone, but the way they nodded. He became less tentative and worked towards finishing off with Travelling As A Search in which it was not the destination, the objective that mattered, so much as how one moved. It sounded right.

The discovering then is part of the journey itself, not something left to the last moment. That's how it should be at any rate.

Not so difficult, a lover had once said something similar about lovemaking. He could see it was going down well in this place, they made no bones about showing their appreciation. They were not out-and-out spacers either, one of the women said he must be tired and hungry, that he must come and eat.

She was right. She said it and he realised it was true. He thought of shaking her hand but said simply, Thanks. I'm Jim Faraday.

Outside the full moon showed up another world, a silvery yard around which stood another three stone buildings. The woman, sister Gudrun and a man called brother Wim took him to the nearest one and on up to the second of three floors, an open plan eating and sleeping space. The construction, the craftsmanship were impressive, just as in the building they'd left. Racks of bunk beds made of solid, varnished planking were fitted perfectly into the stone walls underpinned by wooden beams. The long table, the chairs around it, solid and simply designed. He was introduced to the others: there was a Chantal; a Werner; a Brian; a Kirsten. Another, Jean-Pierre was dressed differently, in jeans and a white shirt.

The food was some kind of bean stew on brown, glazed plates. He had been hungry true, but he had to say it was delicious, an interesting sauce. He had eaten such things before, this was not another planet, it was just that it had been superbly done. As a pleasant surprise a modest amount of amber wine was provided from a clay pitcher.

They ate in silence. When he'd finished eating Frank said what a pleasure it had been; how grateful he was; and how civilized they were, in the truest sense of the word.

Round the table they smiled at him.

Can I do anything to help, he asked. The washing up, or maybe something else? Perhaps us travellers have missed a lot but we do pick up some skills on the way.

Was he over-doing it, slimy? No one said anything.

Oh sorry, am I making a gaffe, is this a silent period or something? Or a silent area?

Gudrun looked to Jean-Pierre and back to Frank with an anxious sympathy. The man smiled suddenly.

Brother Jim Faraday you're an intelligence like a torchbeam which is very welcome. Yes, it is as you say, a silent area.

Frank liked that, the way the guy said it, not the voice of some stuck-up crank.

We don't aim to be weird, Jean-Pierre said, it's just that we keep our talking for the Language House, the building where you first found us. Here we have silence. Everything to its place. And you must be tired, sister Gudrun will show you to your sleeping place.

And that was it, talk about getting a break. A bit bossy the guy, the white shirt like he was one of the chaps, the people who mattered, but you couldn't fault the hospitality; no explanations asked for. His bed was on an upper bunk reached by a wrought iron spiral staircase. He stripped down to his vest and pants without self-consciousness and hung up his suit on the built-in rack above the space to the side of the bed. The sheets were freshly laundered and pressed. There was a hint of lavender.

From below he heard pots, pans and chairs. Lying in bed, breathing in its cleanness, feeling the laundered fabric on his skin and staring at the wooden ceiling, he had no interest in seeing what was going on. He'd wondered briefly how the sleeping arrangements worked out, the sexual set-up, but in the face of the whorls and grain of the wood and the comfort of the sheets it had not held his interest. He'd been frazzled, ragged; he'd been falling and here, out of the blue and hard to credit, he'd landed on his feet. Just like a cat.

Frank awoke from a frustrating dream in which one fax after another had gone unanswered and he'd missed an African by five minutes at a railway station which might have been Hamburg. The African had an exclusive entrée into a world cut off by someone else's civil war. He felt the warm airiness of the bedclothes and caught a slice of sunlight through the arched window at the end of the room. He could look at that window for a long time. How extraordinary this restful calm when it was just what he needed at a time when his range of possibilities had been severely limited; when there'd been nothing but sweaty desperation and flight.

There was no sound from below. He turned over in the sheets for the pleasure of it, touches of cool clung on the skin, and wriggled downwards. The future would come jogging along at him in time, but in the meanwhile the here and now was too good to be missed. Yesterday he'd used up all his energy to produce his own calmness as he walked. Here, calmness was on tap. Rest up. Regroup. He pushed up again out of the sheets and things were still all right. Each thing in its place like the window, something about its arch shape, the fall of light through it. Looking at it brought in the polyrhythms of the cicadas. He heard their steadiness.

Up and dressed he thought that at some point, if and when it felt right, he would raise the question of more suitable clothing. It would be unrealistic to expect full acceptance straight away, but he would pull his weight and over time they would see that he could graft, was a guy who paid his own way whatever the situation. After all the nervous strain he had experienced it would be good to tire himself with some real physical labour and sleep well. A  lot of nonsense, all the green book stuff, but they weren't fanatics, he could cope with it.

Down at floor level there were no people but on the table was a teapot, a cup and warm slices of bread. Herbal stuff and tepid with it, the tea, but you couldn't knock it. Outside the sun was directly overhead and the sound of chanting came from the Language House, the temple place. Beyond the third house building two of the corduroy people were doing something. They were at the edge of rows of short trees with straight trunks and a dense umbrella of shiny dark green leaves. Close to, he saw they were watering, pulling some concertina'd green hosing into the grove.

They acknowledged him with smiles and allowed him to help. Around each tree were circular dips in the earth. Water from the hose was applied to each in turn. The trees had round green fruits with shiny pitted skins. He was impressed with the even spacing of the trees and how well the earth was turned. He said so. They were evidently pleased to hear it but did not reply.

He shrugged. This discipline in the matter of talking and not talking, maybe it became more natural over time. Maybe. He waved goodbye and followed the hose pipe back to its source which proved to be a well with a stone lip some two metres in diameter. Strands of hose came out of it each with its own pressure gauge. From below he heard a motor.

He followed some thinner diameter hose away from the well. It lead to what he took to be a communal laundry. Rows of sheets were hung out to dry on sturdy washing lines. Water flowed out into a connecting series of troughs at the far end of which was a four- legged mangle that had rollers wide enough for two sheets. Four of the corduroys smiled at him and went on with their work. He lifted his own jacket and bent his head to sniff at an armpit. Layers of sourness came up out of his body.

He must have pulled a face for one of the women was laughing towards him; she mimicked a sniff, she pulled her face. Frank rolled his eyes skywards like he was number one chump. With a flourish, off came his jacket. She liked that, he could see; she nudged one of the men. His shirt was long, cheerfulness made him bold. He took off shoes and trousers to get at his socks and pants, got them off, and put his trousers back on. The laughing woman came to take his bundle.

I'll do them, at least let me help, he said, pointing at the handle of the mangle.

Do a bit of graft, have a laugh. He fancied it.

It wasn't necessary, her face said it. She took the clothes, pointed to the sun, moved it in the sky and then waved towards the rows of clothes line.

OK, if that's how it was. It would be childish to insist. It wasn't him as an individual they didn't need, looked at realistically they just didn't need anyone else on the job.

He walked off in sockless shoes, trousers and jacket. Past laid-out vegetable plots was a group of the tall straight trees. From nearer the ground he heard the steady dumdum of pistons. Frank glanced up and down as he stepped through the trees. Behind them stood a square building of brick and cement on top of which were tilted squares of tinted glass. The penny dropped.

The penny had dropped, only when you'd screwed up, when you'd been screwed up, your confidence wasn't what it had been. Or you were so busy with the screw-up, getting to grips with it, getting out of it, that you might notice things without recording them; or, as likely as not, record without logging them. The Language House had light bulbs: there had been no telegraph poles on the dusty road.

An efficient set-up, you had to hand it to them, cranks but they were well sorted. In a metal frame straddling the eaves of the building sat rows of truck batteries, big bastards. No wastage on the solar stuff, and just in case, like now it seemed, two tough generators taking up the floor space. This place wasn't going to fold tomorrow, they were here for the duration.

He walked back out into the sun. Passing another plot of fruit trees he came finally to a chest-high smooth faced stone wall topped with stiff wire fencing to a height of four metres. In the distance were mountains and hills and, closer to, stunted-looking trees like those he'd seen from the road. In front of these stood a house with a corrugated roof. It had some kind of yard, bits of chicken wire tacked round it on frames made from old bedsteads. Some chickens scurried about. Under one section of the wire held down by three brieze blocks and what might be a rusty scythe, there were two goats. One had horns. A man in blue jacket and brown trousers was shouting at them. Behind him was a shed with uneven strips of polythene stuck on the roof. Next to that, a metal frame that had once had four wheels.

Frank turned away and headed back in the direction of the main complex, going round the other side of the fruit trees. He smelled shavings and sawdust even before he saw the building, one made of stone. Inside was light and airy, there were skylights in the tiled roof. It was quiet, no one at work. Tools were methodically racked, good stuff, Bosch power gear and Stanley hand tools. A nice set-up altogether. Compared to 48 hours ago it was brilliant. Finally, and not before time, he'd been given a squeeze. As to the not talking, he'd looked out for gestures, for sign language but hadn't clocked any. He considered telepathy but it would not do, these people were not that weird, things worked. Perhaps it had just got to the point where in practical matters at least, they just knew what to do.

His shirt was amongst rows of other shirts. His underclothes and socks had a line all to themselves. They were dry and smelled good. What, they had a special day for pants and socks? Maybe they had a special day each.

Back on the second floor they were all there and pleased to see him. His timing had been perfect, they were just sitting down to a meal of salad stuff. Gudrun sat next to him and seemed especially happy. She sniffed at her own corduroys and touched his shirt collar. Whatever their discipline, word got around. Gossip, you couldn't stop it, he'd bet they all talked a bit on the quiet. Anyway, it had to be good for them that sometimes into their lives came someone like himself, from outside. He hadn't been around long but he suspected that for someone like Gudrun things might get a bit dull otherwise. All very worthy no doubt but he'd bet she liked a laugh. Like now, the two of them exchanging a sequence of delicious glances. Her blush was arousingly delicate. Unlikely as it seemed, he might be blushing himself. Either way, no one seemed to mind. He checked for Jean-Pierre but he too was wholly absorbed in eating. And it was good, the salad, a fresh crispness to everything.

When they'd finished he was allowed to help Gudrun with the washing up. A step forward, first signs of a thaw. For a moment their fingers touched under the suds and there were more laughing looks between then till she indicated that they were all going to the temple place.

What was this, blushes, checking Jean-Pierre's reactions like he was a kid? It was himself needed checking, they were all modern Europeans weren't they.

In the Language House there was a crowd and he stayed close to Gudrun, Werner and Kirsten, found cushion space with them. This time there was just the one man in the floor centre, one of those who'd been at the laundry. He had his green book open.

To cleanse the outside is to cleanse the outside, he began. It has its own value, its own joy in the doing. Cleanse us outside and in, Inside and out.

Some chanting followed along similar lines. He kept his eyes on Gudrun. Her face was grave but not pompous, not crazed. He liked it, the expression, her attractive mouth. Looking at it some of the words became clearer, Cleanse us from impatience, Cleanse us from desire.

Patience, he'd foreseen that popping up. No desire? Constant desire might be more tiring than it was worth,  but none at all? The acid test was, did someone like Gudrun really want to be without it on a permanent basis? No, without a shadow of a doubt, that would be weird.

Some people left, others re-opened their books as the man in the middle started a new chant.

Wait and be open

For the richness of the plain

Banish the mess.

Where nothing has its place

If he'd had any sense he'd have asked for a green book. It was obvious, the book would be the basics written down, which would save a lot of grief when the chants were a bit on the cryptic side. Only he hadn't asked. And maybe he'd been right not to ask, like Jack de Brok had said one time, situations could be as delicate as a spiders web when it came to the volume of one's own input. So

He leaned for a peep at Gudrun's book but she held it in a way that only she could see. Maybe it was just the way she held it, the thing was hardly a secret, they were saying the stuff out loud.

Let the emptiness be empty

And the full, full, Chantal responded.

It spurred on the man in the middle. Be open where there's space for innocence, he said.

And wise when there is not

Respect each thing in its place

When he'd finished, several people left. Chantal got up to leave. Frank gave her a smile. A woman he didn't know moved on to the floor space: there were settled stomachs and settled minds, she said. Looking around there were around twentyfive listeners, the congregation. Jean-Pierre was one, stood out in his white shirt. Frank thought of leaving, most people had but looked at it this way, that given it was the only time they talked it was possible he might get a grip of what they were on about without having to hustle for a green book. And if not, he was Showing Willing and in a better position to ask for a copy if that's what it came to.

The word Nomad caught his attention. It seemed nomads were in a category of their own, that was the gist of it, insofar as they kept to the same journey back and forth. Gudrun was up on her feet lighting candles.

Oasis to oasis is a space of in-between that becomes its own place, the speaker said.

And stopped. That was it, cryptic, but interesting. Frank got up to leave and saw a ring of encouraging smiles, all the faces directed at him. He looked for Gudrun. She must have left, lighting the candles her final duty, something of the sort.

They were still smiling, expectant.

OK, if that was what was required.

The nomad, well that's an aspiration I guess, he said. If I'd reached it, and with patience it will happen, this space here, this place would be some oasis. It is an oasis. Seriously. I'm not trying to flatter.

There were still people in and out but he wasn't going to take that as a reflection on what he was saying, it was just the way they carried on. Besides there were happy smiles on the faces of his listeners who'd moved in close to hear him better.

But having said that, what is oasis? An oasis? An oasis of calm people say. A place of shade, rest and water. For the camel for sure, paradise for the camel.

He laughed.

Not that it has to be a camel of course, I can think of quite a few places where they wouldn't be quite the article, I can hear several objections, the matter of dung for example.

His boldness paid off. He heard laughter. The blokes in the audience were all white-shirts like Jean Pierre but so what, laughter was good for people. It was a known fact but then no reason to overdo the jokes. He would not overdo the jokes.

What I mean is, the camel to its place. I'm serious. The camel is transport and the nomad has to choose the appropriate transport for the terrain.

He developed this theme, finding the words coming easier. A couple of the lounging white shirts looked unimpressed but he was holding the attention of Jean-Pierre and the two remaining women.

That isn't all of course, there's the nomad's journey back and forth to the same places as the last speaker said, that's not aimless travel but part of the space as a whole. Place A has salt, too much of it, Place B none at all. In this space between A and B the oasis also has its place, the nomad pleased to see the oasis, the oasis pleased to see the nomad.

Frank liked it, it was pretty good and he got into his stride. A to B was not some kind of void but as much part of the larger space as the oasis itself. In his experience, he said, it was this truth the Traveller could, and had to realise, in order to make the transition to Nomad status.

There were only white shirts left, and they looked solemn but Frank was surprising himself. Things that he knew but never thought, let alone said, were just coming out. Even seriously drunk with Dave de Waal things he Had Not Said.

The transition marked by the point at which the Traveler becomes part of the landscape, part of the space. Not that I'm saying I've got to that point myself but at least I've grasped that the possibility exists.

It sounded right because it was true. Looked at in this light he had in fact nearly made it. Would in fact have made it, only he'd wound up working with arseholes who had introduced themselves as people who weren't arseholes.

I don't know, perhaps I'm not explaining myself very well, I've never tried to put it into words before and besides this, this whole situation is a bit new to me.

There were a couple of nods at that. One of the men was looking studiously at the window, another at his fingernails. Yes? Screw them, what did they expect, he couldn't go on talking for ever. Or maybe they just knew all this. Probably been through it themselves, must have the way they'd got things organised. In this set-up there was money, and there was organization, and it would have been the white shirts who'd seen to that. So at least he was now talking to the people who really mattered. If you were going to talk, might as well be to them. Any set-up and there were the people that mattered.

What I'm saying is, this each to its place/ each to its space thing, I can see how that and the nomad having his or her space in that bigger space of A, B, and the in-between, does fit together. The two concepts, the two realities fit together. I hope that's made sense.

The candlelight softened the area around him and the flickering faces of the men. Somewhere outside a bird called out. One of the men yawned. From his left someone spoke in a German accent.

26th April brother Jim Faraday, Karachi airport.

What?! Oh. All that good spiel he’d given and out the out of the blue, a wiseguy.

And so what. So fucking what, Karachi had been no problem.

That's really good, he said. Amazing, I think I probably was.

You flew to Frankfurt Jim Faraday, Jean-Pierre said.

What was this, the know-all in his fucking white shirt?!

It was obvious what it was. Government gurus, never had to graft themselves for anything had they. Trust funds and subsidies, and if that's how it was he'd say thanks for everything and be on his way. No problem, he'd been on the road before. Yes, and so fucking what! Frankfurt? He'd been bored in the transit lounge was all.

Looks like you know better than me, he said.

They'd got closer. OK, OK, so he'd have to leave, no hard feelings. They weren't that fucking clever, the Faraday ID stood up. Yes and when it came to it the set-up wasn't that brilliant. Where were the children? Where were the kids if this was fucking paradise on earth.

Remember Schipol Frank, the 29th? You will remember that won't you.

The guy spoke with a Yorkshire accent. For a moment Frank felt small.

Which was not on: which could not be tolerated.

You want to make something of it you prick, he said.