CONTENTS
   THE  LAST ILLUSION
             page 1

   THE  LIFE OF DEATH
            page 74

  HOW  SPOILERS BLEED
            page 122

TWILIGHT  AT THE TOWERS
           page 165

     THE      BOOK      OF   BLOOD
           (a postscript)
  ON JERUSALEM STREET
            page 209
 THE LAST ILLUSION
WHAT     HAPPENED  THEN  - when the magician,
      having mesmerised the caged tiger, pulled the
tasselled cord that released a dozen swords upon  its
head - was the subject of heated argument both in the
bar of the theatre and later, when Swann's performance
was over, on the sidewalk of 51st Street. Some claimed to
have glimpsed the bottom of the cage opening in the split
second that all other eyes were on the descending blades,
and seen the tiger swiftly spirited away as the woman in
the red dress took its place behind the lacquered bars.
Others were just as adamant that the animal had never
been in the cage to begin with, its presence merely a
projection which had been extinguished as a mechanism
propelled the woman from beneath the stage; this, of
course, at such a speed that it deceived the eye of all but
those swift and suspicious enough to catch it. And the
swords? The nature of the trick which had transformed
them in the mere seconds of their gleaming descent from
                                1
steel to rose-petals was yet further fuel for debate. The
explanations ranged from the prosaic to the elaborate,
but few of the throng that left the theatre lacked some
theory. Nor did the arguments  finish there, on the
sidewalk. They raged on, no doubt, in the apartments
and restaurants of New York.
  The pleasure to be had from Swann's illusions was,
it seemed, twofold. First: the spectacle of the trick
itself - in the  breathless moment   when  disbelief
was,  if not suspended,  at least taken  on  tip-toe.
And  second, when the moment was over and logic
restored, in the debate as to how the trick had been
achieved.
  'How do you do it, Mr Swann?' Barbara Bernstein
was eager to know.
  'It's magic,' Swann  replied. He had  invited her
backstage to examine the tiger's cage for any sign of
fakery in its construction; she had found none. She had
examined the swords: they were lethal. And the petals,
fragrant. Still she insisted:
  'Yes, but really . . .' she leaned close to him. 'You can
tell me,' she said, 'I promise I won't breathe a word to a
soul.'
  He  returned her a slow smile in place of a reply.
  'Oh, I know. . .'she said,'you're going to tell me that
you've signed some kind of oath.'
  That's right,' Swann said.
  '- And  you're forbidden to give away any  trade
secrets.'
  'The  intention is to give you pleasure,' he told her.
'Have I failed in that?'
  'Oh no,' she replied, without a moment's hesitation.
'Everybody's talking about the show. You're the toast
of New York.'
  'No,' he protested.
  'Truly,' she said, 'I know people who would give their
eye-teeth to get into this theatre. And to have a guided
tour backstage . . . well, I'll be the envy of everybody.'
  'I'm   pleased,' he said, and touched her face. She had
clearly been anticipating such a move on  his part. It
would  be  something else for her to boast of: her
seduction by the man critics had dubbed the Magus
of Manhattan.
  'I'd like to make love to you,' he whispered to her.
  'Here?' she said.
  'No,' he  told her.  'Not within  ear-shot of the
tigers.'
  She laughed. She preferred her lovers twenty years
Swann's junior - he looked, someone had observed,
like a man in mourning  for his profile, but his touch
promised wit no boy could offer. She liked the tang of
dissolution she sensed beneath his gentlemanly fagade.
Swann was a dangerous man. If she turned him down
she might never find another.
  'We could go to a hotel,' she suggested.
  'A hotel,' he said, 'is a good idea.'
  A look of doubt had crossed her face.
  'What about your wife . . .?' she said. 'We might be
seen.'
  He took her hand. 'Shall we be invisible, then?'
   Tm  serious.'
  'So am  I,' he insisted. 'Take it from me; seeing is
not believing. I should know. It's the cornerstone of
my  profession.' She did not look much reassured. 'If
anyone recognises us,' he told her, Til simply tell them
their eyes are playing tricks.'
  She smiled at this, and he kissed her. She returned the
kiss with unquestionable fervour.
  'Miraculous,' he said, when their mouths parted.
'Shall we go before the tigers gossip?'
  He led her across the stage. The cleaners had not yet
got about their business, and there, lying on the boards,
was a litter of rose-buds. Some had been trampled, a few
had not. Swann took his hand from hers, and walked
across to where the flowers lay.
  She watched  him stoop to pluck a rose from the
ground, enchanted by the gesture, but before he could
stand upright again something in the air above him
caught her eye. She looked up and her gaze met a slice
of silver that was even now plunging towards him. She
made to warn him, but the sword was quicker than her
tongue. At the last possible moment he seemed to sense
the danger he was in and looked round, the bud in his
hand, as the point met his back. The sword's momentum
carried it through his body to the hilt. Blood fled from
his chest, and splashed the floor. He made no sound, but
fell forward, forcing two-thirds of the sword's length out
of his body again as he hit the stage.
  She  would have screamed, but  that her attention
was claimed by a sound  from the clutter of magical
apparatus arrayed in the wings behind her, a muttered
growl which was indisputably the voice of the tiger. She
froze. There were probably instructions on how best to
stare down rogue tigers, but as a Manhattanite born
and bred they were techniques she wasn't acquainted
with.
  'Swann?' she said, hoping this yet might be some
baroque illusion staged purely for her benefit. 'Swann.
Please get up.'
  But  the magician only lay where he had fallen, the
pool spreading from beneath him.
  'If this is a joke -' she said testily,'- I'm not amused.'
When  he didn't rise to her remark she tried a sweeter
tactic. 'Swann, my sweet, I'd like to go now, if you don't
mind.'
  The growl came again. She didn't want to turn and
seek out its source, but equally she didn't want to be
sprung upon from behind.
  Cautiously she looked round. The wings were in dark-
ness. The clutter of properties kept her from working
out the precise location of the beast. She could hear it
still, however: its tread, its growl. Step by step, she
retreated towards the apron of the stage. The closed
curtains sealed her off from the auditorium, but she
hoped she might scramble under them before the tiger
reached her.
  As she backed  against the heavy fabric, one of the
shadows in the wings forsook its ambiguity, and the
animal appeared.  It was not beautiful, as she had
thought it when behind bars. It was vast and lethal and
hungry. She went down on her haunches and reached
for the hem  of the curtain. The fabric was heavily
weighted, and  she had more  difficulty lifting it than
she'd expected, but she had managed to slide halfway
under the drape when, head and hands pressed to the
boards, she sensed the thump of the tiger's advance.
An  instant later she felt the splash of its breath on her
bare back, and screamed as it hooked its talons into her
body and hauled her from the sight of safety towards
its steaming jaws.
  Even then, she refused to give up her life. She kicked
at it, and tore out its fur in handfuls, and delivered a hail
of punches to its snout. But her resistance was negligible
in the face of  such authority; her  assault, for all its
ferocity, did not slow the beast a jot. It ripped open her
body  with one casual clout. Mercifully, with that first
wound  her senses gave up all claim to verisimilitude,
and took instead to preposterous invention. It seemed
to her that she heard applause from somewhere, and
the roar of an approving audience, and that in place
of the blood that was surely springing from her body
there came fountains of sparkling light. The agony her
nerve-endings were  suffering didn't touch her at all.
Even when  the animal had divided her into three or
four parts her head lay on its side at the edge of the
stage and watched as her torso was mauled and her limbs
devoured.
  And  all the while, when she wondered how all this
could be possible - that her eyes could live to witness
this last supper - the only reply she could think of was
Swann's:
   'It's magic,' he'd said.
  Indeed, she was thinking that very thing, that this
must be magic, when the tiger ambled across to her head,
and swallowed it down in one bite.

Amongst  a certain set Harry D'Amour liked to believe
he had  some small reputation - a coterie which did
not, alas, include his ex-wife, his creditors or those
anonymous  critics who regularly posted dogs' excrement
through his office letterbox. But the woman who was on
the phone now, her voice so full of grief she might have
been crying for half a year, and was about to begin again,
she knew him for the paragon he was.
  '-1 need your help, Mr D'Amour; very badly.'
  'I'm busy on several cases at the moment,' he told her.
'Maybe you could come to the office?'
  'I can't leave the house,' the woman informed him.
Til explain everything. Please come.'
  He  was sorely tempted. But there were several out-
standing cases, one of which, if not solved soon, might
end in fratricide. He suggested she try elsewhere.
  'I can't go to just anybody,' the woman insisted.
  'Why me?'
  'I read about you. About what happened in Brooklyn.'
  Making  mention of his most conspicuous failure was
not the surest method of securing his services, Harry
thought, but  it certainly got his attention. What had
happened  in Wyckoff  Street had begun innocently
enough, with a husband who'd employed him to spy
on his adulterous wife, and had ended on the top storey
of the Lomax house with the world he thought he'd
known  turning inside out. When the body-count was
done, and the surviving priests dispatched, he was left
with a fear of stairs, and more questions than he'd ever
answer this side of the family plot. He took no pleasure
in being reminded of those terrors.
  'I don't like to talk about Brooklyn,' he said.
  'Forgive me,' the  woman  replied, 'but I need
somebody  who  has experience with . . . with the
occult.' She stopped speaking for a moment. He could
still hear her breath down the line: soft, but erratic.
  'I need you,' she said. He had already decided, in that
pause when only her fear had been audible, what reply
he would make.
  Til come.'
  'I'm grateful to you,' she said. 'The house is on East
61st Street -' He scribbled down the details. Her last
words were, 'Please hurry.' Then she put down the
phone.
  He made some calls, in the vain hope of placating two
of his more excitable clients, then pulled on his jacket,
locked the office, and started downstairs. The landing
and the lobby smelt pungent. As he reached the front
door he caught Chaplin, the janitor, emerging from the
basement.
  'This place stinks,' he told the man.
   'It's disinfectant.'
  'It's cat's piss,' Harry said. 'Get something done about
it, will you? I've got a reputation to protect.'

                                   7
  He left the man laughing.

The  brownstone on  East 61st Street was in pristine
condition. He stood on the scrubbed step, sweaty and
sour-breathed, and felt like a slob. The expression on
the face that met him when the door opened did nothing
to dissuade him of that opinion.
  'Yes?' it wanted to know.
  'I'm Harry D'Amour,'  he said. 'I got a call.'
  The man  nodded. 'You'd better come in,' he said
without enthusiasm.
  It was cooler in than out; and sweeter. The place
reeked of perfume. Harry followed the disapproving
face down the hallway and into a large room, on the
other side of which - across an oriental carpet that had
everything woven  into its pattern but the price - sat a
widow.  She didn't suit black; nor tears. She stood up
and offered her hand.
  'Mr D'Amour?'
  'Yes.'
  'Valentin will get you something to drink if you'd
like.'
   'Please. Milk, if you have it.' His belly had been
jittering for the last hour; since her talk of Wyckoff
Street, in fact.
  Valentin retired from the room, not taking his beady
eyes off Harry until the last possible moment.
  'Somebody  died,' said Harry, once the man had
gone.
  'That's right,' the widow said, sitting down again.
At her invitation he sat opposite her, amongst enough
cushions to furnish a harem. 'My husband.'
   Tm   sorry.'
  'There's no time to be sorry,' she said, her every look
and gesture betraying her words. He was glad of her

                                 8
grief; the tearstains and the fatigue blemished a beauty
which, had he seen it unimpaired, might have rendered
him dumb with admiration.
  'They say that my husband's death was an accident,'
she was saying. 'I know it wasn't.'
  'May I ask . . . your name?'
  'I'm sorry. My name is Swann, Mr  D'Amour.
Dorothea Swann. You may have heard of my husband?'
  The  magician?'
   'Illusionist,' she said.
  'I read about it. Tragic.'
  'Did you ever see his performance?'
  Harry shook his head. 'I can't afford Broadway, Mrs
Swann.'
  'We were only over for three months, while his show
ran. We were going back in September . . .'
  'Back?'
  'To Hamburg,'  she said, 'I don't like this city. It's too
hot. And too cruel.'
  'Don't blame New   York,' he said. 'It can't help
itself.'
  'Maybe,' she replied, nodding. 'Perhaps what hap-
pened to Swann would have happened anyway, wherever
we'd been. People keep telling me: it was an accident.
That's all. Just an accident.'
  'But you don't believe it?'
  Valentin had appeared with a glass of milk. He set it
down on the table in front of Harry. As he made to leave,
she said: 'Valentin. The letter?'
  He  looked at her strangely, almost as though she'd
said something obscene.
  'The letter,' she repeated.
  He exited.
  'You were saying -'
  She frowned. 'What?'
  'About it being an accident.'
  'Oh yes. I lived with Swann seven and a half years,
and I got to understand him as well as anybody ever
could. I learned to sense when he wanted me around,
and when he didn't. When he didn't, I'd take myself off
somewhere and let him have his privacy. Genius needs
privacy. And he was a genius, you know. The greatest
illusionist since Houdini.'
  'Is that so?'
  'I'd think sometimes - it was a kind of miracle that he
let me into his life . . .'
  Harry wanted to say Swann would have been mad not
to have done so, but the comment was inappropriate.
She  didn't want blandishments; didn't need them.
Didn't need anything, perhaps, but her husband alive
again.
  'Now  I think I didn't know him at all,' she went on,
'didn't understand him. I think maybe it was another
trick. Another part of his magic.'
  'I called him a magician a while back,' Harry said.
'You corrected me.'
  'So  I did,' she said, conceding his point with an
apologetic look. 'Forgive me. That was Swann talking.
He hated to be called a magician. He said that was a word
that had to be kept for miracle-workers.'
  'And he was no miracle-worker?'
  'He used to call himself the Great Pretender,' she said.
The thought made her smile.
  Valentin had re-appeared, his lugubrious features rife
with suspicion. He carried an envelope, which he clearly
had  no desire to give up. Dorothea had to cross the
carpet and take it from his hands.
   'Is this wise?' he said.
  'Yes,' she told him.
  He turned on his heel and made a smart withdrawal.

                     10
   'He's grief-stricken,' she said. 'Forgive  him  his
behaviour. He was with Swann from the beginning of his
career. I think he loved my husband as much as I did.'
  She ran her linger down into the envelope and pulled
the letter out. The paper was pale yellow, and gossamer-
thin.
   'A few hours after he died, this letter was delivered
here by hand,' she said. 'It was addressed to him. I
opened  it. I think you ought to read it.'
  She passed it to him. The hand it was written in was
solid and unaffected.
   Dorothea, he had written, if you are reading this, then I
am dead.
   You  know  how   little store I set by dreams and
premonitions and such; but for the last few days strange
thoughts have just crept into my head, and  I have the
suspicion that death  is very close to me. If so, so. There's
no help for it. Don't waste time trying to puzzle out the whys
and wherefores; they're old news now. Just know that I love
you, and that I have always loved you in my way. I'm sorry
for whatever unhappiness I've caused, or am causing now,
but it was out of my hands.
   I have some  instructions regarding the disposal of my
body. Please adhere to them to the letter. Don't let anybody
try to persuade you out of doing as I ask.
  I want you to have my body watched night and day
until I'm cremated. Don't try and take my remains back to
Europe. Have me cremated here, as soon as possible, then
throw the ashes in the East River.
  My  sweet darling, I'm afraid. Not of bad dreams, or of
what might happen to me in this life, but of what my enemies
may  try to do once I'm dead. You know how critics can be:
they wait until you can't fight them back, then they start the
character assassinations. It's too long a business to try and
explain all of this, so I must simply trust you to do as I say.
                     11
  Again, I love you, and I hope you never have to read this
letter.
  Your adoring,
  Swann.'
  'Some farewell note,' Harry commented when he'd
read it through twice. He folded it up and passed it
back to the widow.
  'I'd like you to stay with him,' she said. 'Corpse-sit,
if you will. Just until all the legal formalities are dealt
with and I can make arrangements for his cremation. It
shouldn't take them long. I've got a lawyer working on
it now.'
  'Again: why me?'
  She avoided his gaze. 'As he says in the letter, he was
never superstitious. But I am. I believe in omens. And
there was an odd atmosphere about the place in the days
before he died. As if we were watched.'
  'You think he was murdered?'
  She mused  on this, then said: 'I don't believe it was
an accident.'
  'These enemies he talks about..."
  'He was a great man. Much envied.'
  'Professional jealousy? Is that a motive for murder?'
  'Anything  can  be a  motive, can't it?' she said.
'People get killed for the colour of their eyes, don't
they?'
  Harry was impressed. It had taken him twenty years
to learn how  arbitrary things were. She spoke it as
conventional wisdom.
  'Where is your husband?' he asked her.
  'Upstairs,' she said. 'I had the body brought back
here, where I could look after him. I can't pretend I
understand what's going on, but I'm not going to risk
ignoring his instructions.'
  Harry nodded.

                     12
  'Swann  was my  life,' she added softly, apropos of
nothing; and everything.
  She took him upstairs. The perfume that had met
him at the door intensified. The master bedroom had
been turned into a Chapel of Rest, knee-deep in sprays
and wreaths of every shape and variety; their mingled
scents verged on the hallucinogenic. In the midst of
this abundance, the casket - an elaborate affair in black
and silver - was mounted on trestles. The upper half
of the lid stood open, the plush overlay folded back.
At Dorothea's invitation he waded through the tributes
to view the deceased. He liked Swann's face; it had
humour, and a certain guile; it was even handsome in its
weary way. More: it had inspired the love of Dorothea;
a face could have few better recommendations. Harry
stood waist-high in flowers and, absurd as it was, felt
a twinge of envy for the love this man must have
enjoyed.
  'Will you help me, Mr D'Amour?'
  What  could he say but: 'Yes, of course I'll help.' That,
and: 'Call me Harry.'

He would be missed at Wing's Pavilion tonight. He had
occupied the best table there every Friday night for the
past six and a half years, eating at one sitting enough
to compensate for what his diet lacked in excellence
and  variety the other six days of  the week.  This
feast - the best Chinese cuisine to be had  south of
Canal Street - came gratis, thanks to services he had
once rendered the owner. Tonight the table would go
empty.
  Not  that his stomach suffered. He had only been
sitting with Swann an hour or so when Valentin came
up and said:
  'How do you like your steak?'

                     13
  'Just shy of burned,' Harry replied.
  Valentin was none too pleased by the response. 'I hate
to overcook good steak/ he said.
  'And I hate the sight of blood,' Harry said, 'even if it
isn't my own.'
  The  chef clearly despaired of his guest's palate, and
turned to go.
  'Valentin?'
  The man looked round.
  'Is that your Christian name?' Harry asked.
  'Christian names are for Christians,' came the reply.
  Harry nodded. 'You don't like my being here, am I
right?'
  Valentin made  no reply. His eyes had drifted past
Harry to the open coffin.
  'I'm not going to be here for long,' Harry said, 'but
while I am, can't we be friends?'
  Valentin's gaze found him once more.
  'I don't have any friends,' he said without enmity or
self-pity. 'Not now.'
  'OK.  I'm sorry.'
  'What's to be sorry for?' Valentin wanted to know.
'Swann's dead. It's all over, bar the shouting.'
  The  doleful face stoically refused tears. A stone would
weep sooner, Harry guessed. But there was grief there,
and all the more acute for being dumb.
  'One question.'
  'Only one?'
  'Why  didn't you want me to read his letter?'
  Valentin raised his eyebrows slightly; they were fine
enough to have been pencilled on. 'He wasn't insane,'
he said. 'I didn't want you thinking he was a crazy man,
because of what he wrote. What you read you keep to
yourself. Swann was a legend. I don't want his memory
besmirched.'
                     14
  'You should write a book,' Harry said. 'Tell the whole
story once and for all. You were with him a long time, I
hear.'
  'Oh yes,' said Valentin. 'Long enough to know better
than to tell the truth.'
  So saying he made an exit, leaving the flowers to wilt,
and Harry with more  puzzles on his hands than he'd
begun with.
  Twenty  minutes later, Valentin brought up a tray of
food: a large salad, bread, wine, and the steak. It was
one degree short of charcoal.
  'Just the way   I like it,' Harry said, and  set to
guzzling.
  He didn't see Dorothea Swann, though God knows
he thought about her often enough. Every time he
heard a whisper  on the stairs, or footsteps along the
carpetted landing, he hoped her face would appear at
the door, an invitation on her lips. Not perhaps the
most appropriate of thoughts, given the proximity of
her husband's corpse, but what would the illusionist care
now? He was dead and gone. If he had any generosity of
spirit he wouldn't want to see his widow drown in her
grief.
  Harry  drank  the half-carafe of wine Valentin had
brought, and when - three-quarters of an hour later -
the man re-appeared with coffee and Calvados, he told
him to leave the bottle.
  Nightfall was near. The traffic was noisy on Lexington
and Third. Out of boredom he took to watching the
street from the window. Two  lovers feuded loudly
on the sidewalk, and only stopped when a brunette
with a hare-lip and a pekinese stood watching them
shamelessly. There were  preparations for a party in
the brownstone opposite: he watched a table lovingly
laid, and candles lit. After a time the spying began to

                     15
depress him, so he called Valentin and asked if there
was a portable television he could have access to. No
sooner said than provided, and for the next two hours
he sat with the small black and white monitor on the
floor amongst  the orchids and  the lilies, watching
whatever mindless entertainment it offered, the silver
luminescence flickering on the blooms like excitable
moonlight.
  A  quarter after midnight, with the party across the
street in full swing, Valentin came up. 'You want a
night-cap?' he asked.
  'Sure.'
  'Milk; or something stronger?'
  'Something stronger.'
  He produced  a bottle of fine cognac, and two glasses.
Together they toasted the dead man.
  'Mr Swann.'
  'Mr Swann.'
  'If you need anything more tonight,' Valentin said,
'I'm in the room directly above. Mrs Swann is down-
stairs, so if you hear somebody moving about, don't
worry. She doesn't sleep well these nights.'
  'Who  does?' Harry replied.
  Valentin left him to his vigil. Harry heard the man's
tread on the stairs, and then the creaking of floorboards
on the level above. He  returned his attention to the
television, but he'd  lost the thread  of the  movie
he'd been watching.  It was a long stretch 'til dawn;
meanwhile New   York would be  having itself a fine
Friday night: dancing, fighting, fooling around.
  The  picture on the television set began to flicker. He
stood up, and  started to walk across to the set, but
he never got there. Two steps from the chair where
he'd been sitting the picture folded up and went out
altogether, plunging the room into total darkness. Harry

                     16
briefly had time to register that no light was finding its
way through the windows from  the street. Then the
insanity began.
  Something moved in the blackness: vague forms rose
and fell. It took him a moment to recognise them. The
flowers! Invisible hands were tearing the wreaths and
tributes apart, and tossing the blossoms up into the
air. He followed their descent, but they didn't hit the
ground. It seemed the floorboards had lost all faith in
themselves, and disappeared, so the blossoms just kept
falling - down, down - through the floor of the room
below, and through the basement floor, away to God
alone knew what destination. Fear gripped Harry, like
some old dope-pusher promising a terrible high. Even
those few boards that remained beneath his feet were
becoming insubstantial. In seconds he would go the way
of the blossoms.
  He reeled around to locate the chair he'd got up from
- some fixed point in this vertiginous nightmare. The
chair was still there; he could just discern its form in the
gloom. With torn blossoms raining down upon him he
reached for it, but even as his hand took hold of the arm,
the floor beneath the chair gave up the ghost, and now,
by a ghastly light that was thrown up from the pit that
yawned beneath his feet, Harry saw it tumble away into
Hell, turning over and over 'til it was pin-prick small.
  Then it was gone; and the flowers were gone, and the
walls and the windows and every damn thing was gone
but him.
  Not quite everything. Swann's casket remained, its
lid still standing open, its overlay neatly turned back
like the sheet on a child's bed. The trestle had gone,
as had  the floor beneath the trestle. But the casket
floated in the dark air for all the world like some
morbid  illusion, while from the depths a rumbling

                     17
sound accompanied  the trick like the roll of a snare-
drum.
  Harry  felt the last solidity failing beneath him; felt the
pit call. Even as his feet left the ground, that ground
faded to nothing, and for a terrifying moment he hung
over the Gulfs, his hands seeking the lip of the casket.
His right hand caught hold of one of the handles, and
closed thankfully around it. His arm was almost jerked
from its socket as it took his body-weight, but he flung
his other arm up and found the casket-edge. Using it
as purchase, he hauled himself up like a half-drowned
sailor. It was a strange lifeboat, but then this was a
strange sea. Infinitely deep, infinitely terrible.
  Even as he laboured to secure himself a better hand-
hold, the casket shook, and Harry looked up to discover
that the dead man was  sitting upright. Swann's eyes
opened wide. He  turned them on Harry; they were
far from benign. The next moment the dead illusionist
was scrambling to his feet - the floating casket rocking
ever more violently with each movement. Once vertical,
Swann  proceeded to dislodge his guest by grinding his
heel in Harry's knuckles. Harry looked up at Swann,
begging for him to stop.
  The  Great Pretender was a sight to see. His eyes were
starting from his sockets; his shirt was torn open to
display the exit-wound  in his chest. It was bleeding
afresh. A rain of cold blood fell upon Harry's upturned
face. And  still the heel ground at his hands. Harry
felt his grip slipping. Swann, sensing his approaching
triumph, began to smile.
   'Fall, boy!' he said. 'Fall!'
  Harry  could take no more. In a frenzied effort to save
himself he let go of the handle in his right hand, and
reached up to snatch at Swann's trouser-leg. His fingers
found the hem, and  he pulled. The smile vanished
                    18
from the illusionist's face as he felt his balance go. He
reached behind him  to take hold of the casket lid for
support, but the gesture only tipped the casket further
over. The plush cushion tumbled past Harry's head;
blossoms followed.
  Swann  howled in his fury and delivered a vicious kick
to Harry's hand. It was an error. The casket tipped over
entirely and pitched the man out. Harry had time to
glimpse Swann's appalled face as the illusionist fell past
him. Then he too lost his grip and tumbled after him.
  The dark air whined past his ears. Beneath him, the
Gulfs spread their empty arms. And then, behind the
rushing in his head, another sound: a human voice.
  'Is he dead?' it inquired.
  'No,' another voice replied, 'no, I don't think so.
What's his name, Dorothea?'
  'D'Amour.'
  'Mr D'Amour? Mr D'Amour?'
  Harry's descent slowed somewhat. Beneath him, the
Gulfs roared their rage.
  The voice came again, cultivated but unmelodious.
'Mr D'Amour.'
  'Harry,' said Dorothea.
  At that word, from that voice, he stopped falling; felt
himself borne up. He opened his eyes. He was lying on
a solid floor, his head inches from the blank television
screen. The flowers were all in place around the room,
Swann in his casket, and God - if the rumours were to
be believed - in his Heaven.
  'I'm alive,' he said.
  He  had  quite  an audience  for his  resurrection.
Dorothea  of course, and  two strangers. One, the
owner  of the voice he'd  first heard, stood close to
the door. His features were unremarkable, except for
his brows and lashes, which were pale to the point of

                     19
invisibility. His female companion stood nearby. She
shared with him  this distressing banality, stripped bare
of any feature that offered a clue to their natures.
  'Help him up, angel,' the man said, and the woman
bent to comply. She was stronger than she looked,
readily hauling Harry to his feet. He had vomited in
his strange sleep. He felt dirty and ridiculous.
  'What the hell happened?' he asked, as the woman
escorted him to the chair. He sat down.
  'He tried to poison you,' the man said.
  'Who did?'
  'Valentin, of course.'
  'Valentin?'
  'He's gone,' Dorothea said. 'Just disappeared.' She
was shaking. 'I heard you call out, and came in here
to find you on the floor. I thought you were going to
choke.'
   'It's all right,' said the man, 'everything is in order
now.'
  'Yes,' said Dorothea, clearly reassured by his bland
smile. 'This is the lawyer I was telling you about, Harry.
Mr  Butterfield.'
  Harry  wiped his mouth. 'Please to meet you,' he
said.
  'Why  don't we  all go downstairs?' Butterfield said.
'And I can pay Mr D'Amour what he's due.'
  'It's all right,' Harry said, 'I never take my  fee
until the job's done.'
  'But it is done,' Butterfield said. 'Your services are no
longer required here.'
  Harry threw a glance at Dorothea. She was plucking
a withered anthurium from an otherwise healthy spray.
  'I was contracted to stay with the body -'
  'The arrangements for the disposal of Swann's body
have been made,' Butterfield returned. His courtesy was
                     20
only just intact. 'Isn't that right, Dorothea?'
  'It's the middle of the night,' Harry protested. 'You
won't get a cremation until tomorrow morning at the
earliest.'
  Thank  you for your help,' Dorothea said. 'But I'm
sure everything will be fine now that Mr Butterfield has
arrived. Just fine.'
  Butterfield turned to his companion.
  'Why  don't you go out and find a cab for Mr
D'Amour?' he said. Then, looking at Harry: 'We don't
want you walking the streets, do we?'

All the way downstairs, and in the hallway as Butterfield
paid him off, Harry was willing Dorothea to contradict
the lawyer and tell him she wanted Harry to stay. But
she didn't even offer him a word of farewell as he was
ushered out of the house. The two hundred  dollars
he'd been given were, of course, more than adequate
recompense for the few hours of idleness he'd spent
there, but he would happily have burned all the bills
for one sign that Dorothea gave a damn that they were
parting. Quite clearly she did not. On past experience
it would take his bruised ego a full twenty-four hours to
recover from such indifference.
  He got out of the cab on 3rd around 83rd Street, and
walked through to a bar on Lexington where he knew he
could put half a bottle of bourbon between himself and
the dreams he'd had.
  It was well after one. The street was deserted, except
for him, and for the echo  his footsteps had recently
acquired. He turned the corner into Lexington, and
waited. A few beats later, Valentin rounded the same
corner. Harry took hold of him by his tie.
  'Not a bad noose,' he said, hauling the man off his
heels.
                     21
  Valentin made no attempt to free himself. 'Thank God
you're alive,' he said.
  'No thanks to you,' Harry said. 'What did you put in
the drink?'
  'Nothing,' Valentin insisted. 'Why should I?'
  'So how come I found myself on the floor? How come
the bad dreams?'
  'Butterfield,' Valentin said. 'Whatever you dreamt, he
brought with him, believe me. I panicked as soon as I
heard him in the house, I admit it. I know I should
have warned you, but I knew if I didn't get out quickly
I wouldn't get out at all.'
  'Are you telling me he would have killed you?'
  'Not personally; but yes.' Harry looked incredulous.
'We go way back, him and me.'
  'He's welcome to you,' Harry said, letting go of the
tie. 'I'm too damn tired to take any more of this shit.'
He turned from Valentin and began to walk away.
  'Wait -' said the other man, '- I know I wasn't too
sweet with you back at the house, but you've got to
understand, things are going to get bad. For both of
us.'
  'I thought you said it was all over bar the shouting?'
  'I thought it was. I thought we had it all sewn up. Then
Butterfield arrived and I realised how naive I was being.
They're not going to let Swann rest in peace. Not now,
not ever. We have to save him, D'Amour.'
  Harry stopped walking and studied the man's face.
To pass him in the street, he mused, you wouldn't have
taken him for a lunatic.
  'Did Butterfield go upstairs?' Valentin enquired.
  'Yes he did. Why?'
  'Do you remember if he approached the casket?'
  Harry shook his head.
  'Good,' said Valentin. 'Then the defences are holding,

                     22
which gives us a little time. Swann was a fine tactician,
you know. But he could be careless. That was how they
caught him. Sheer carelessness. He knew they were
coming for him. I told him outright, I said we should
cancel the remaining performances and go home. At least
he had some sanctuary there.'
  'You think he was murdered?'
  'Jesus Christ,' said Valentin, almost despairing of
Harry, 'of course he was murdered.'
  'So he's past saving, right? The man's dead.'
  'Dead; yes. Past saving? no.'
  'Do you talk gibberish to everyone?'
  Valentin put his hand on Harry's shoulder, 'Oh no,'
he said, with unfeigned sincerity. 'I don't trust anyone
the way I trust you.'
  'This is very sudden,' said Harry. 'May I ask why?'
  'Because you're in this up to your neck, the way I am,'
Valentin replied.
  'No I'm  not,' said Harry, ,but Valentin ignored the
denial, and went on with his talk. 'At the moment we
don't know how  many of them there are, of course.
They  might simply have sent Butterfield, but I think
that's unlikely.'
  'Who's Butterfield with? The Mafia?'
  'We should be so lucky,' said Valentin. He reached
in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. 'This
is the woman Swann was with,' he said, 'the night at
the theatre. It's possible she knows something of their
strength.'
  There was a witness?'
  'She didn't come forward, but yes, there was. I was his
procurer you see. I helped arrange his several adulteries,
so that none ever embarrassed him. See if you can get
to her -' He stopped abruptly. Somewhere close by,
music was being played. It sounded like a drunken jazz

                     23
band extemporising on bagpipes; a wheezing, rambling
cacophony. Valentin's face instantly became a portrait of
distress. 'God help us . . .' he said softly, and began to
back away from Harry.
  'What's the problem?'
  'Do you know how to pray?' Valentin asked him as he
retreated down 83rd Street. The volume of the music was
rising with every interval.
  'I haven't prayed in twenty years,' Harry replied.
  'Then learn,' came the response, and Valentin turned
to run.
  As he did so a ripple of darkness moved down the
street from the north, dimming the lustre of bar-signs
and street-lamps as it came. Neon announcements
suddenly  guttered and died; there were protests out
of upstairs windows  as  the lights failed and, as if
encouraged by the curses, the music took on a fresh
and yet more hectic rhythm. Above his head Harry
heard a wailing sound, and looked up to see a ragged
silhouette against the clouds which trailed tendrils like
a man o' war as it descended upon the street, leaving the
stench of rotting fish in its wake. Its target was clearly
Valentin. He shouted above the wail and the music and
the panic from the black-out, but no sooner had he yelled
than he heard Valentin shout out from the darkness; a
pleading cry that was rudely cut short.
  He  stood in the murk, his feet unwilling to carry him
a step nearer the place from which the plea had come.
The  smell still stung his nostrils; nosing it, his nausea
returned. And then, so did the lights; a wave of power
igniting the lamps and the bar-signs as it washed back
down the street. It reached Harry, and moved on to the
spot where he had last seen Valentin. It was deserted;
indeed the sidewalk was empty all the way down to the
next intersection.
                     24
  The drivelling jazz had stopped.
  Eyes peeled for man, beast, or the remnants of either,
Harry wandered down the sidewalk. Twenty yards from
where he had been standing the concrete was wet. Not
with blood, he was pleased to see; the fluid was the colour
of bile, and stank to high heaven. Amongst the splashes
were several slivers of what might have been human
tissue. Evidently Valentin had fought, and succeeded in
opening a wound in his attacker. There were more traces
of the blood further down the sidewalk, as if the injured
thing had crawled some way before taking flight again.
With Valentin, presumably. In the face of such strength
Harry knew his meagre powers would have availed him
not at all, but he felt guilty nevertheless. He'd heard the
cry - seen the assailant swoop - and yet fear had sealed
his soles to the ground.
  He'd  last felt fear the equal of this in Wyckoff Street,
when Mimi Lomax's demon-lover had finally thrown off
any pretence to humanity. The room had filled with the
stink of ether and human dirt, and the demon had stood
there in its appalling nakedness and shown him scenes
that had turned his bowels to water. They were with him
now, those scenes. They would be with him forever.
  He looked down  at die scrap of paper Valentin had
given him: the name  and address had been rapidly
scrawled, but they were just decipherable.
  A wise man, Harry reminded himself, would screw
this note up and throw it down into the gutter. But if
the events in Wyckoff Street had taught him anything,
it was that once touched by such malignancy as he had
seen and dreamt  in the last few hours, there could
be no  casual disposal of it. He had  to follow it to
its source, however repugnant that thought was, and
make with it whatever bargains the strength of his hand
allowed.

                    25
  There was  no good time to do business like this:
the present would have to suffice. He walked back to
Lexington and caught a cab to the address on the paper.
He got no response from the bell marked Bernstein, but
roused the doorman, and engaged in a frustrating debate
with him through the glass door. The man was angry to
have been raised at such an hour; Miss Bernstein was not
in her apartment, he insisted, and remained untouched
even when Harry intimated that there might be some
life-or-death urgency in the matter. It was only when he
produced  his wallet that the fellow displayed the least
flicker of concern. Finally, he let Harry in.
  'She's not up there,' he said, pocketing the bills. 'She's
not been in for days.'
  Harry  took the elevator: his shins were aching, and
his back too. He wanted sleep; bourbon, then sleep.
There was no reply at the apartment as the doorman
had  predicted, but he  kept knocking,  and calling
her.
  'Miss Bernstein? Are you there?'
  There was no sign of life from within; not at least, until
he said:
  'I want to talk about Swann.'
  He  heard an intake of breath, close to the door.
  'Is somebody there?' he asked. 'Please answer. There's
nothing to be afraid of.'
  After several seconds a slurred and melancholy voice
murmured: 'Swann's dead.'
  At least she wasn't, Harry thought. Whatever forces
had snatched Valentin away, they had not yet reached
this corner of Manhattan. 'May I talk to you?' he
requested.
  'No,' she replied. Her voice was a candle flame on the
verge of extinction.
  'Just a few questions, Barbara.'
                     26
  'I'm in the tiger's belly,' the slow reply came, 'and it
doesn't want me to let you in.'
  Perhaps they had got here before him.
  'Can't you reach the door?' he coaxed her. 'It's not so
far.  . .'
  'But it's eaten me,' she said.
  'Try, Barbara. The tiger won't mind. Reach.'
  There was silence from the other side of the door, then
a shuffling sound. Was she doing as he had requested?
It seemed so. He heard her fingers fumbling with the
catch.
  'That's it,' he encouraged her. 'Can you turn it? Try
to turn it.'
  At the last instant he thought: suppose she's telling the
truth, and there is a tiger in there with her? It was too late
for retreat, the door was opening. There was no animal
in the hallway. Just a woman, and the smell of dirt. She
had clearly neither washed nor changed her clothes since
fleeing from the theatre. The evening gown she wore
was soiled and torn, her skin was  grey with grime.
He stepped into the apartment. She moved down the
hallway away from him, desperate to avoid his touch.
  'It's all right,' he said, 'there's no tiger here.'
  Her wide eyes were almost empty; what presence
roved there was lost to sanity.
  'Oh  there is,' she said, Tm  in the tiger. I'm in it
forever.'
  As he had neither the time nor the skill required to
dissuade her from this madness, he decided it was wiser
to go with it.
  'How did you get there?' he asked her. 'Into the tiger?
Was it when you were with Swann?'
  She nodded.
  'You remember that, do you?'
  'Oh yes.'

                     27
  'What do you remember?'
  'There was a sword; it fell. He was picking up -' She
stopped and frowned.
  'Picking up what?'
  She seemed suddenly more distracted than ever. 'How
can you hear me,' she wondered, 'when I'm in the tiger?
Are you in the tiger too?
  'Maybe I am,' he said, not wanting to analyse the
metaphor too closely.
  'We're here forever, you know,' she informed him.
'We'll never be let out.'
  'Who  told you that?'
  She didn't reply, but cocked her head a little.
  'Can you hear?' she said.
  'Hear?'
  She took another step back down the hallway. Harry
listened, but he could hear nothing. The  growing
agitation on Barbara's face was sufficient to send him
back to the front door and open it, however. The elevator
was in operation. He could hear its soft hum across the
landing. Worse: the lights in the hallway and on the
stairs were deteriorating; the bulbs losing power with
every foot the elevator ascended.
  He turned back into the apartment and went to take
hold of Barbara's wrist. She made no protest. Her eyes
were fixed on the doorway through which she seemed to
know her judgement would come.
  'We'll take the stairs,' he told her, and led her out on to
the landing. The lights were within an ace of failing. He
glanced up at the floor numbers being ticked off above
the elevator doors. Was this the top floor they were on,
or one shy of it? He couldn't remember, and there was
no time to think before the lights went out entirely.
  He  stumbled across the unfamiliar territory of the
landing with the girl in tow, hoping to God he'd find

                      28
the stairs before the elevator reached this floor. Barbara
wanted to loiter, but he bullied her to pick up her pace.
As his foot found the top stair the elevator finished its
ascent.
  The doors hissed open, and a cold fluorescence washed
the landing. He couldn't see its source, nor did he wish
to, but its effect was to reveal to the naked eye every stain
and blemish, every sign of decay and creeping rot that the
paintwork sought to camouflage. The show stole Harry's
attention for a moment only, then he took a firmer hold
of the woman's hand and  they began their descent.
Barbara was not interested in escape however, but in
events on the landing. Thus occupied she tripped and fell
heavily against Harry. The two would have toppled but
that he caught hold of the banister. Angered, he turned
to her. They were out of sight of the landing, but the light
crept down the stairs and washed over Barbara's face.
Beneath its uncharitable scrutiny Harry saw decay busy
in her. Saw rot in her teeth, and the death in her skin and
hair and nails. No doubt he would have appeared much
the same to her, were she to have looked, but she was
still staring back over her shoulder and up the stairs. The
light-source was on the move. Voices accompanied it.
  The door's open,' a woman said.
  'What  are you waiting for?' a voice replied. It was
Butterfield.
  Harry  held  both  breath and  wrist as  the light-
source moved again, towards the door presumably,
and then  was partially eclipsed as it disappeared into
the apartment.
  'We have to be quick,' he told Barbara. She went with
him down three or four steps and then, without warning,
her hand leapt for his face, nails opening his cheek. He
let go of her hand to protect himself, and in that instant
she was away - back up the stairs.
                     29
  He cursed and stumbled in pursuit of her, but her
former  sluggishness had  lifted; she was  startlingly
nimble. By  the dregs of light from the landing he
watched  her reach the top of the stairs and disappear
from sight.
  'Here I am,' she called out as she went.
  He stood immobile on the stairway, unable to decide
whether to go or stay, and so unable to move at all. Ever
since Wyckoff Street he'd hated stairs. Momentarily the
light from above flared up, throwing the shadows of the
banisters across him; then it died again. He put his hand
to his face. She had raised weals, but there was little
blood. What could he hope from her if he went to her
aid? Only more of the same. She was a lost cause.
  Even as he despaired of her he heard a sound from
round the corner at the head of the stairs; a soft sound
that might have been either a footstep or a sigh. Had
she escaped their influence after all? Or perhaps not
even reached the apartment door, but thought better
of it and about-turned? Even as he was weighing up the
odds he heard her say:
  'Help me ..." The voice was a ghost of a ghost; but it
was indisputably her, and she was in terror.
  He  reached for his .38, and started up the stairs again.
Even before he had turned the corner he felt the nape of
his neck itch as his hackles rose.
  She was there. But so was the tiger. It stood on the
landing, mere feet from Harry, its body humming
with  latent power. Its eyes were  molten; its open
maw  impossibly large. And there, already in its vast
throat, was Barbara. He met her eyes out of the tiger's
mouth, and saw a flicker of comprehension in them that
was worse than any madness. Then the beast threw its
head back  and forth to settle its prey in its gut. She had
been swallowed whole, apparently. There was no blood

                     30
on the landing, nor about the tiger's muzzle; only the
appalling sight of the girl's face disappearing down the
tunnel of the animal's throat.
  She loosed a final cry from the belly of the thing, and
as it rose it seemed to Harry that the beast attempted a
grin. Its face crinkled up grotesquely, the eyes narrowing
like those of a laughing Buddha, the lips peeling back to
expose a sickle of brilliant teeth. Behind this display the
cry was finally hushed. In that instant the tiger leapt.
  Harry fired into its devouring bulk and as the shot met
its flesh the leer and the maw and the whole striped mass
of it unwove in a single beat. Suddenly it was gone, and
there was only a drizzle of pastel confetti spiralling down
around him. The shot had aroused interest. There were
raised voices in one or two of the apartments, and the
light that had accompanied Butterfield from the elevator
was brightening through the open door of the Bernstein
residence. He was almost tempted to stay and see the
light-bringer, but discretion bettered his curiosity, and
he turned and made his descent, taking the stairs two and
three at a time. The confetti tumbled after him, as if it
had a life of its own. Barbara's life, perhaps; transformed
into paper pieces and tossed away.
  He reached the lobby breathless. The doorman was
standing there, staring up the stairs vacantly.
  'Somebody get shot?' he enquired.
  'No,' said Harry, 'eaten.'
  As he  headed for the door he  heard the elevator
start to hum  as  it descended. Perhaps  merely  a
tenant, coming down for a pre-dawn stroll. Perhaps
not.
  He left the doorman as he had found him, sullen and
confused, and made his escape into the street, putting
two block lengths between him  and the apartment
building before he stopped running. They did not bother
                     31
to come after him. He was beneath their concern, most
likely.
  So what was he to do now? Valentin was dead, Barbara
Bernstein too. He was none the wiser now than he'd been
at the outset, except that he'd learned again the lesson
he'd been taught in Wyckoff Street: that when dealing
with the Gulfs it was wiser never to believe your eyes.
The moment you trusted your senses, the moment you
believed a tiger to be a tiger, you were half theirs.
  Not  a complicated lesson, but it seemed he had
forgotten it, like a fool, and it had taken two deaths
to teach it to him afresh. Maybe it would be simpler
to have the rule tattooed on the back of his hand, so
that he couldn't check the time without being reminded:
Never believe your eyes.
  The  principle was still fresh in his mind as he walked
back towards his apartment and a man stepped out of the
doorway and said:
  'Harry.'
  It looked like Valentin; a wounded Valentin, a Valentin
who'd been dismembered and sewn together again by
a committee of blind surgeons, but the same man in
essence. But then the tiger had looked like a tiger, hadn't
it?
   'It's me,' he said.
  'Oh no,' Harry said. 'Not this time.'
  'What  are you talking about? It's Valentin.'
   'So prove it.'
  The other man looked puzzled. 'This is no time for
games,' he said, 'we're in desperate straits.'
  Harry  took his .38 from his pocket and  pointed
at Valentin's chest. 'Prove  it or I shoot  you,' he
said.
  'Are you out of your mind?'
  'I saw you torn apart.'

                     32
  'Not quite,' said Valentin. His left arm was swathed
in makeshift bandaging from fingertip to mid-bicep. 'It
was touch and go . . .'he said,'. . . but everything has
its Achilles' heel. It's just a question of finding the right
spot.'
  Harry peered at the man. He wanted to believe that
this was indeed Valentin, but it was too incredible to
believe that the frail form in front of him could have
survived the monstrosity he'd seen on 83rd Street. No;
this was another illusion. Like the tiger: paper and
malice.
  The man   broke Harry's train of thought. 'Your
steak . . .'he said.
  'My steak?'
  'You like it almost burned,' Valentin said. 'I pro-
tested, remember?'
  Harry remembered. 'Go on,' he said.
  'And you said you hated the sight of blood. Even, if it
wasn't your own.'
  'Yes,' said Harry. His doubts were lifting. 'That's
right.'
  'You asked me to prove I'm Valentin. That's the best
I can do.' Harry was almost persuaded. 'In God's name,'
Valentin said, 'do we have to debate this standing on the
street?'
  'You'd better come in.'
  The apartment was small, but tonight it felt more
stifling than ever. Valentin sat himself down with a
good view  of the door. He refused spirits or first-aid.
Harry helped himself to bourbon. He was on his third
shot when Valentin finally said:
  'We have to go back to the house, Harry.'
  'What?'
  'We have to claim Swann's body before Butterfield.'
  'I did my best already. It's not my business any more.'

                     33
  'So you leave Swann to the Pit?' Valentin said.
  'She doesn't care, why should I?'
  'You mean Dorothea? She doesn't know what Swann
was involved with. That's why she's so trusting. She has
suspicions maybe,  but, insofar as it is possible to be
guiltless in all of this, she is.' He paused to adjust the
position of his injured arm. 'She was a prostitute, you
know. I don't suppose she told you that. Swann once
said to me he married her because only prostitutes know
the value of love.'
  Harry let this apparent paradox go.
  'Why  did she stay with him?' he asked. 'He wasn't
exactly faithful, was he?'
  'She loved him,' Valentin replied. 'It's not unheard
of.'
  'And you?'
  'Oh  I loved him too, in spite of his stupidities. That's
why we have to help him. If Butterfield and his associates
get their hands on Swann's mortal remains, there'll be all
Hell to pay.'
  'I know. I got a glimpse at the Bernstein place.'
  'What did you see?'
  'Something  and nothing,' said Harry. 'A tiger, I
thought; only it wasn't.'
  'The old paraphernalia,' Valentin commented.
  'And there was something else with Butterfield. Some-
thing that shed light: I didn't see what.'
  'The Castrate,' Valentin muttered to himself, clearly
discomfited. 'We'll have to be careful.'
  He stood up, the movement causing him to wince. 'I
think we should be on our way, Harry.'
  'Are you paying me for this?' Harry inquired, 'or am
I doing it all for love?'
  'You're doing it because of what happened at Wyckoff
Street,' came the softly-spoken reply. 'Because you lost
                     34
poor Mimi Lomax to the Gulfs, and you don't want to
lose Swann. That is, if you've not already done so.'

They caught a cab on Madison Avenue and headed back
uptown to 61st Street, keeping their silence as they rode.
Harry had half a hundred questions to ask of Valentin.
Who  was Butterfield, for one, and what was Swann's
crime was that he be pursued to death and beyond? So
many  puzzles. But Valentin looked sick and unfit for
plying with questions. Besides, Harry sensed that the
more he knew  the less enthusiastic he would be about
the journey they were now taking.
  'We have perhaps one advantage -' Valentin said as
they approached 61st Street. 'They can't be expecting
this frontal attack. Butterfield presumes I'm dead, and
probably thinks you're hiding  your head  in mortal
terror.'
  'I'm working on it.'
  'You're not in danger,' Valentin replied, 'at least not
the way Swann is. If they were to take you apart limb by
limb it would be nothing beside the torments they have
waiting for the magician.'
  'Illusionist,' Harry corrected him, but Valentin shook
his head.
  'Magician he was; magician he will always be.'
  The  driver interrupted before Harry could quote
Dorothea on the subject.
  'What number you people want?' he said.
  'Just drop us here on the right,' Valentin instructed
him. 'And wait for us, understand?'
  'Sure.'
  Valentin turned  to  Harry. 'Give  the man   fifty
dollars.'
  'Fifty?
  'Do you want him to wait or not?'
                     35
  Harry  counted four tens and  ten singles into the
driver's hand.
  'You'd better keep the engine running,' he said.
  'Anything to oblige,' the driver grinned.
  Harry  joined Valentin on the sidewalk and  they
walked the twenty-five yards to the house. The street
was still noisy, despite the hour: the party that Harry
had  seen in preparation half a night ago  was at its
height. There was no sign of life at the Swann residence
however.
  Perhaps they don't expect us, Harry thought. Certainly
this head-on assault was about the most foolhardy tactic
imaginable, and as such might catch the enemy off-
guard. But were such forces ever off-guard? Was there
ever a minute in their maggoty lives when their eyelids
drooped and sleep tamed them for a space? No. In
Harry's experience it was only the good who needed
sleep; iniquity and its practitioners were awake every
eager moment, planning fresh felonies.
  'How  do we get in?' he asked as they stood outside the
house.
  'I have the key,' Valentin replied, and went to the
door.
  There was no retreat now. The key was turned, the
door was  open, and they were stepping out of the
comparative safety of the street. The house was as
dark within as it had appeared from without. There
was no sound of human presence on any of the floors.
Was  it possible that the defences Swann  had laid
around  his corpse had  indeed rebuffed Butterfield,
and  that he and his cohorts had retreated? Valentin
quashed such misplaced optimism almost immediately,
taking  hold of  Harry's arm  and  leaning  close to
whisper:
   'They're here.'

                     36
  This was not the time to ask Valentin how he knew,
but Harry made a mental note to enquire when, or rather
if, they got out of the house with their tongues still in
their heads.
  Valentin was already on the stairs. Harry, his eyes still
accustoming themselves to the vestigial light that crept
in from the street, crossed the hallway after him. The
other man moved confidently in the gloom, and Harry
was glad of it. Without Valentin plucking at his sleeve,
and guiding him around the half-landing he might well
have crippled himself.
  Despite what Valentin had said, there was no more
sound or sight of occupancy up here than there had been
below, but as they advanced towards the master bedroom
where Swann lay, a rotten tooth in Harry's lower jaw that
had lately been quiescent began to throb afresh, and
his bowels ached to break wind. The anticipation was
crucifying. He felt a barely suppressible urge to yell out,
and to oblige the enemy to show its hand, if indeed it
had hands to show.
  Valentin had reached the door. He turned his head in
Harry's direction, and even in the murk it was apparent
that fear was taking its toll on him too. His skin glistened;
he stank of fresh sweat.
  He pointed towards the door. Harry nodded. He was
as ready as he was ever going to be. Valentin reached
for the door handle. The sound of the lock-mechanism
seemed deafeningly loud, but it brought no response
from anywhere in the house. The door swung open,
and the heady scent of flowers met them. They had
begun to decay in the forced heat of the house; there
was a rankness beneath the perfume. More welcome than
the scent was the light. The curtains in the room had
not been entirely drawn, and the street-lamps described
the interior: the flowers massed like clouds around the

                    37
casket; the chair where Harry had sat, the Calvados
bottle beside it; the mirror above the fireplace showing
the room its secret self.
  Valentin was  already moving  across to the casket,
and  Harry  heard him  sigh as  he set eyes on  his
old master. He  wasted  little time, but immediately
set to  lifting the lower  half of the  casket lid. It
defeated his single arm however and Harry went  to
his assistance, eager to get the job done and be away.
Touching  the solid wood of the casket brought his
nightmare  back with  breath-snatching force: the Pit
opening  beneath him,  the illusionist rising from his
bed like a sleeper unwillingly woken. There was no
such spectacle now,  however. Indeed  a little life in
the corpse might have made  the job easier. Swann
was a big man, and his limp body was uncooperative
to a fault. The  simple act of lifting him from  his
casket took all their breath and attention. He came
at last, though reluctantly, his long limbs flopping
about.
  'Now  . . .' said Valentin '. . . downstairs.'
  As they moved  to the door something in the street
ignited, or so it seemed, for the  interior suddenly
brightened. The light was not kind to their burden. It
revealed the crudity of the cosmetics applied to Swann's
face, and the burgeoning putrescence beneath. Harry
had  an instant only to appreciate these felicities, and
then the light brightened again, and he realised that it
wasn't outside, but in.
  He looked up at Valentin, and almost despaired. The
luminescence was even  less charitable to servant than
to master; it seemed to strip the flesh from Valentin's
face. Harry caught only a glimpse of what it revealed
beneath - events stole his attention an instant later - but
he saw enough to know that had Valentin not been his

                      38
accomplice in this venture he might well have run from
him.
  'Get him out of here!' Valentin yelled.
  He let go of Swann's legs, leaving Harry to steer Swann
single-handed. The corpse proved recalcitrant however.
Harry had only made two cursing steps towards the exit
when things took a turn for the cataclysmic.
  He heard Valentin unloose an oath, and looked up
to see that the mirror had  given up  all pretence to
reflection, and that something was moving up from its
liquid depths, bringing the light with it.
  'What is it?' Harry breathed.
  'The Castrate,' came the reply. 'Will you go?'
  There was  no  time to obey  Valentin's panicked
instruction however, before the hidden thing broke the
plane of the mirror and invaded the room. Harry had
been wrong. It did not carry the light with it as it came:
it was the light. Or rather, some holocaust blazed in
its bowels, the glare of which escaped through the
creature's body by whatever  route it could. It had
once been human; a mountain of a man with the belly
and the breasts of a neolithic Venus. But the fire in its
body had twisted it out of true, breaking out through
its palms and its navel, burning its mouth and nostrils
into one ragged hole. It had, as its name implied, been
unsexed; from  that hole too, light spilled. By it, the
decay of the flowers speeded into seconds. The blossoms
withered and died. The room was filled in moments with
the stench of rotting vegetable matter.
  Harry heard Valentin call his name, once, and again.
Only then did he remember the body in his arms. He
dragged his eyes from the hovering Castrato, and carried
Swann another yard. The door was at his back, and
open. He dragged his burden out into the landing as
the Castrato kicked over the casket. He heard the din,
                     39
and then shouts from Valentin. There followed another
terrible commotion, and the high-pitched voice of the
Castrate, talking through that hole in its face.
  'Die and be happy,' it said, and a hail of furniture was
flung against the wall with such force chairs embedded
themselves in the  plaster. Valentin had escaped the
assault however, or so it seemed, for an instant later
Harry  heard the Castrato shriek. It was an appalling
sound: pitiful and revolting. He would have stopped his
ears, but he had his hands full.
  He had almost reached the top of the stairs. Dragging
Swann  a few steps further he laid the body down. The
Castrate's light was not dimmed, despite its complaints;
it still flickered on the bedroom wall like a midsummer
thunderstorm. For the third time tonight - once on 83rd
Street, and again on  the stairs of the Bernstein place
- Harry  hesitated. If he went back to help Valentin
perhaps there would be worse  sights to see than ever
Wyckoff  Street had  offered. But there could be no
retreat this time. Without Valentin he was  lost. He
raced back down the landing and flung open the door.
The air was thick; the lamps rocking. In the middle oi
the room hung  the Castrato, still defying gravity. It had
hold of Valentin by his hair. Its other hand was poised,
first and middle fingers spread like twin horns, about to
stab out its captive's eyes.
  Harry pulled his .38 from his pocket, aimed, and fired.
He had always been a bad shot when given more than
a moment  to take aim, but in extremis, when instinct
governed rational thought, he was not half bad. This
was such an occasion. The bullet found the Castrate's
neck, and opened another wound. More in surprise than
pain perhaps, it let Valentin go. There was a leakage of
light from the hole in its neck, and it put its hand to the
place.

                     40
  Valentin was quickly on his feet.
  'Again,' he called to Harry. 'Fire again!'
  Harry  obeyed  the instruction. His second  bullet
pierced the  creature's chest, his third its belly. This
last wound seemed particularly traumatic; the distended
flesh, ripe for bursting, broke - and the trickle of light
that spilled from the wound rapidly became a flood as
the abdomen split.
  Again the Castrate howled, this time in panic, and
lost all control of its flight. It reeled like a pricked
balloon towards the ceiling, its fat hands desperately
attempting to stem the mutiny in its substance. But it
had reached critical mass; there was no making good the
damage done. Lumps of its flesh began to break from
it. Valentin, either too stunned or too fascinated, stood
staring up at the disintegration while rains of cooked
meat fell around him. Harry took hold of him and hauled
him back towards the door.
  The Castrate was finally earning its name, unloosing
a desolate ear-piercing note. Harry didn't wait to watch
its demise, but slammed the bedroom  door as the
voice reached an awesome pitch, and the windows
smashed.
  Valentin was grinning.
  'Do you know what we did?' he said.
  'Never mind. Let's just get the fuck out of here.'
  The sight of Swann's corpse at the top of the stairs
seemed to chasten Valentin. Harry instructed him to
assist, and he did so as efficiently as his dazed condition
allowed. Together they began  to escort the illusionist
down  the stairs. As they reached the front door there
was a final shriek from above, as the Castrate came apart
at the seams. Then silence.
  The commotion  had not gone unnoticed. Revellers
had appeared from  the house opposite, a crowd of
                     41
late-night pedestrians had assembled on the sidewalk.
'Some party,' one of them said as the trio emerged.
  Harry  had half expected the cab  to have deserted
them,  but he  had  reckoned  without the driver's
curiosity. The man was  out of his vehicle and staring
up at the first floor window.
  'Does he need a hospital?' he asked as they bundled
Swann into the back of the cab.
  'No,' Harry returned. 'He's about as good as he's
going to get.'
  'Will you drive?' said Valentin.
  'Sure. Just tell me where to.'
  'Anywhere,' came the weary reply. 'Just get out of
here.''
  'Hold it a minute,' the driver said, 'I don't want any
trouble.'
  'Then  you'd better move,' said Valentin. The driver
met  his passenger's gaze. Whatever he saw there, his
next words were:
  'I'm driving,' and they took off along East 61st like the
proverbial bat out of hell.
  'We  did  it, Harry,' Valentin said when  they'd
been  travelling for a few minutes.  'We  got him
back.'
  'And that thing? Tell me about it.'
  'The  Castrato? What's to tell? Butterfield must have
left it as a watchdog,   until he could  bring  in a
technician to decode Swann's  defence mechanisms.
We  were lucky. It was in need of milking. That makes
them  unstable.'
  'How do you know so much about all of this?'
  'It's a long story,' said Valentin. 'And not for a cab
ride.'
  'So what now?  We  can't drive round in circles all
night.'
                     42
  Valentin looked across at the body that sat between
them, prey to every whim of the cab's suspension and
road-menders' craft. Gently, he put Swann's hands on
his lap.
  'You're right of course,' he said. 'We  have  to
make  arrangements for the cremation, as swiftly as
possible.'
  The  cab bounced  across a pot-hole. Valentin's face
tightened.
  'Are you in pain?' Harry asked him.
  'I've been in worse.'
  'We  could go back to my  apartment, and rest
there.'
  Valentin shook his head. 'Not very clever,' he said,
'it's the first place they'll look.'
  'My offices, then -'
  'The second place.'
  'Well, Jesus, this cab's going to run out  of gas
eventually.'
  At this point the driver intervened.
  'Say, did you people mention cremation?'
  'Maybe,' Valentin replied.
  'Only my brother-in-law's got a funeral business out
in Queens.'
  'Is that so?' said Harry.
  'Very reasonable rates. I can recommend him. No
shit.'
  'Could you contact him now? Valentin said.
  'It's two in the morning.'
  'We're in a hurry.'
  The driver reached up and adjusted his mirror; he was
looking at Swann.
  'You don't mind me asking, do you?' he said. 'But is
that a body you got back there?'
  'It is,' said Harry. 'And he's getting impatient.'

                     43
  The driver made a whooping sound. 'Shit!' he said.
'I've had a woman  drop twins in that seat; I've had
whores do business; I even had an alligator back there
one time. But this beats them all!' He pondered for a
moment, then said: 'You kill him, did you?'
  'No,' said Harry.
  'Guess we'd be heading for the East River if you had,
eh?'
  'That's right. We just want a decent cremation. And
quickly.'
  That's  understandable.'
  'What's your name?' Harry asked him.
  'Winston Jowitt. But everybody calls me Byron. I'm
a poet, see? Leastways, I am at weekends.'
  'Byron.'
  'See, any other driver would be freaked out, right?
Finding two guys with a body in the back seat. But the
way  I see it, it's all material.'
  'For the poems.'
  'Right,' said Byron. 'The Muse is a fickle mistress.
You  have to take it where you find it, you know?
Speaking of which, you gentlemen got any idea where
you want to go?'
  'Make  it your offices,' Valentin told Harry. 'And he
can call his brother-in-law.'
  'Good,' said Harry. Then, to Byron:
  'Head west along 45th Street to 8th.'
  'You got it,' said Byron, and the cab's speed doubled
in the space of twenty yards. 'Say,' he said, 'you fellows
fancy a poem?'
  'Now?' said Harry.
  'I like to improvise,' Byron replied. 'Pick a subject.
Any  subject.'
  Valentin hugged his wounded arm close. Quietly, he
said: 'How about the end of the world?'

                     44
  'Good subject,' the poet replied, 'just give me a minute
or two.'
  'So soon?' said Valentin.

They took a circuitous route to the offices, while Byron
Jowitt tried a selection of rhymes for Apocalypse. The
sleep-walkers were out on 45th Street, in search of one
high or another; some sat in the doorways, one lay
sprawled across the sidewalk. None of them gave the
cab or its occupants more  than the briefest perusal.
Harry unlocked the front door and he and Byron carried
Swann up to the third floor.
  The office was home from home: cramped and
chaotic. They put Swann in the swivel chair behind the
furred coffee cups and the alimony demands heaped on
the desk. He looked easily the healthiest of the quartet.
Byron was sweating like a bull after the climb; Harry
felt - and surely looked - as though he hadn't slept in
sixty days; Valentin sat slumped in the clients' chair,
so drained of vitality he might have  been  at death's
door.
  'You look terrible,' Harry told him.
  'No matter,' he said. 'It'll all be done soon.'
  Harry turned to Byron.  'How  about calling this
brother-in-law of yours?'
  While  Byron  set to doing so, Harry returned  his
attention to Valentin.
  'I've got a first-aid box somewhere about,' he said.
'Shall I bandage up that arm?'
  'Thank you, but no. Like you, I hate the sight of
blood. Especially my own.'
  Byron was  on the phone, chastising his brother-in-
law for his ingratitude. 'What's your beef? I got you a
client! I know the time, for Christ's sake, but business
is business . . .'

                    45
  'Tell him we'll pay double his normal rate,' Valenun
said.
  'You hear that, Mel? Twice your usual fee. So get over
here, will you?' He gave the address to his brother-in-
law, and put down the receiver. 'He's coming over,' he
announced.
  'Now?' said Harry.
  'Now,' Byron glanced at his watch. 'My belly thinks
my throat's cut. How about we eat? You got an all night
place near here?'
  'There's one a block down from here.'
  'You want food?' Byron asked Valentin.
  'I don't think so,' he said. He was looking worse by
the moment.
  'OK,' Byron said to Harry, 'just you and me then. You
got ten I could borrow?'
  Harry  gave him  a bill, the keys to the street door
and an  order for doughnuts and coffee, and Byron
went on  his way. Only when  he'd gone did Harry
wish he'd convinced  the poet to stave off his hunger
pangs  a  while. The   office was  distressingly quiet
without him:  Swann  in residence behind the desk,
Valentin succumbing to sleep in the other chair. The
hush  brought to mind  another such silence, during
that last, awesome night at the Lomax house when
Mimi's demon-lover, wounded by Father Hesse, had
slipped away into the walls for a while, and left them
waiting and waiting, knowing it would come back but
not certain of when or how.  Six hours they'd sat -
Mimi  occasionally breaking the silence with laughter
or gibberish - and the first Harry had known of its
return was the smell of cooking excrement, and Mimi's
cry of 'Sodomite!' as Hesse surrendered to an act his
faith had too long forbidden him. There had been no
more  silence then, not for a long space: only Hesse's
                     46
cries, and Harry's pleas for forgetfulness. They had all
gone unanswered.
  It seemed he could hear the demon's voice now; its
demands, its invitations. But no; it was only Valentin.
The man  was tossing his head back and forth in sleep,
his face knotted up. Suddenly he started from his chair,
one word on his lips:
  'Swannl'
  His  eyes opened,  and  as they  alighted on the
illusionist's body, which was propped  in the  chair
opposite, tears came uncontrollably, wracking him.
  'He's dead,' he said, as though in his dream he had
forgotten that bitter fact. 'I failed him, D'Amour. That's
why he's dead. Because of my negligence.'
  'You're doing your best for him now,' Harry said,
though he knew the words were poor compensation.
'Nobody could ask for a better friend.'
  'I was never his friend,' Valentin said, staring at the
corpse with brimming eyes. 'I always hoped he'd one day
trust me entirely. But he never did.'
  'Why not?'
  'He couldn't afford to trust anybody. Not in his
situation.' He wiped his cheeks with the back of his
hand.
  'Maybe,' Harry said, 'it's about time you told me what
all this is about.'
  'If you want to hear.'
  'I want to hear.'
  'Very well,' said Valentin. 'Thirty-two years ago,
Swann  made a bargain with the Gulfs. He agreed to
be an ambassador for them if they, in return, gave him
magic.'
  'Magicr
  'The ability to perform miracles. To transform matter.
To bewitch souls. Even to drive out God.'

                     47
  'That's a miracle?'
  'It's more difficult than you think,' Valentin replied.
  'So Swann was a genuine magician?'
  'Indeed he was.'
  'Then why didn't he use his powers?'
  'He did,' Valentin replied. 'He used them every night,
at every performance.'
  Harry was  baffled. 'I don't follow.'
  'Nothing the Prince of Lies offers to humankind
is of the least value,' Valentin said, 'or it wouldn't
be offered. Swann  didn't know that when  he  first
made  his Covenant. But  he soon learned. Miracles
are useless. Magic is a distraction from the real concerns.
It's rhetoric. Melodrama.'
  'So what exactly are the real concerns?'
  'You  should know better than I,' Valentin replied.
'Fellowship, maybe? Curiosity? Certainly it matters not
in the least if water can be made into wine, or Lazarus to
live another year.'
  Harry saw the wisdom of this, but not how it had
brought the magician to Broadway. As it was, he didn't
need to ask. Valentin had taken up  the story afresh.
His tears had cleared with the telling; some trace of
animation had crept back into his features.
  'It didn't take Swann long to realise he'd sold his soul
for a mess of pottage,' he explained. 'And when he did
he was inconsolable. At least he was for a while. Then he
began to contrive a revenge.'
  'How?'
  'By taking Hell's name in vain. By using the magic
which it boasted of as a trivial entertainment, degrading
the power of the Gulfs by passing off their wonder-
working as mere illusion. It was, you see, an act of heroic
perversity. Every time a trick of Swann's was explained
away as sleight-of-hand, the Gulfs squirmed.'

                     48
  'Why didn't they kill him?' Harry said.
  'Oh, they tried. Many times. But he had allies. Agents
in their camp who warned him of their plots against him.
He escaped their retribution for years that way.'
  'Until now?'
  'Until now,' Valentin sighed. 'He was careless, and
so was I. Now he's dead, and the Gulfs are itching for
him.'
   'I see.'
  'But we were not entirely unprepared for this event-
uality. He had made his apologies to Heaven; and I dare
to hope he's been forgiven his trespasses. Pray that he
has. There's more than his salvation at stake tonight.'
  'Yours too?'
  'All of us who loved him are tainted,' Valentin replied,
'but if we can destroy his physical remains before the
Gulfs claim them we may yet avoid the consequences of
his Covenant.'
  'Why  did you wait so long? Why  didn't you just
cremate him die day he died?'
  Their lawyers are not fools. The Covenant specifically
proscribes a period of lying-in-state. If we had attempted
to ignore that clause his soul would have been forfeited
automatically.'
  'So when is this period up?'
  'Three hours  ago, at midnight,' Valentin replied.
'That's why  they're so desperate, you see. And so
dangerous.'

Another poem came to Byron Jowitt as he ambled back
up 8th. Avenue, working his way through a tuna salad
sandwich. His Muse was not to be rushed. Poems could
take as long as five minutes to be finalised; longer if they
involved a double rhyme. He didn't hurry on his journey
back to the offices therefore, but wandered in a dreamy

                      49
sort of mood, turning the lines every which way to make
them fit. That way he hoped to arrive back with another
finished poem. Two in one night was damn good going.
  He  had not perfected the final couplet however, by
the time he reached the door. Operating on automatic
pilot he fumbled in his pocket for the keys D'Amour
had loaned him, and let himself in. He was about to
close the door again when a woman stepped through the
gap, smiling at him. She was a beauty, and Byron, being
a poet, was a fool for beauty.
  'Please,' she said to him, 'I need your help.'
  'What  can I do for you?' said Byron through a
mouthful of food.
  'Do you know a man by the name of D'Amour? Harry
D'Amour?'
  'Indeed I do. I'm going up to his place right now.'
  'Perhaps you could show me the way?' the woman
asked him, as Byron closed the door.
  'Be my  pleasure,' he replied, and led her across the
lobby to the bottom of the stairs.
  'You know,  you're very sweet,' she told him; and
Byron melted.

Valentin stood at the window.
  'Something wrong?' Harry asked.
  'Just a feeling,' Valentin commented.   'I have a
suspicion maybe the Devil's in Manhattan.'
  'So what's new?'
  'That maybe he's coming for us.' As if on cue there
was a knock at the door. Harry jumped. 'It's all right,'
Valentin said, 'he never knocks.'
  Harry  went to the door, feeling like a fool.
  'Is that you, Byron?' he asked before unlocking it.
  'Please,' said a voice he thought he'd never hear again.
'Helpme. . .'

                     50
  He opened the door. It was Dorothea, of course. She
was colourless as water, and as unpredictable. Even
before Harry had invited her across the office threshold
a dozen expressions, or hints of such, had crossed her
face: anguish, suspicion, terror. And now, as her eyes
alighted upon the body of her beloved Swann, relief and
gratitude.
  'You do have him,' she said, stepping into the office.
  Harry closed the door. There was a chill from up the
stairs.
  Thank God. Thank God.' She took Harry's face in her
hands and kissed him lightly on the lips. Only then did
she notice Valentin.
  She dropped her hands.
  'What's he doing here?' she asked.
  'He's with me. With us.'
  She looked doubtful. 'No,' she said.
  'We can trust him.'
  'I said no! Get him out, Harry.' There was a cold fury
in her; she shook with it. 'Get him outl'
  Valentin stared at her, glassy-eyed. 'The lady doth
protest too much,' he murmured.
  Dorothea  put her fingers to her lips as if to stifle any
further outburst. 'I'm sorry,' she said, turning back to
Harry, 'but you must be told what this man is capable
of-'
  'Without him your husband  would still be at the
house, Mrs Swann,' Harry pointed out. 'He's the one
you should be grateful to, not me.'
  At  this, Dorothea's expression softened, through
bafflement to a new gentility.
  'Oh?' she said. Now she looked back at Valentin. 'I'm
sorry. When you ran from the house I assumed some
complicity . . .'
  'With whom?' Valentin inquired.
                     51
  She made a tiny shake of her head; then said, 'Your
arm. Are you hurt?'
  'A minor injury,' he returned.
  'I've already tried to get it rebandaged,' Harry said.
'But the bastard's too stubborn.'
  'Stubborn I am,' Valentin replied, without inflection,
  'But we'll be finished here soon -' said Harry.
  Valentin broke  in. 'Don't  tell her anything,' he
snapped.
  'I'm just going to explain about the brother-in-law -'
Harry said.
  The   brother-in-law?' Dorothea said, sitting down.
The sigh of her legs crossing was the most enchanting
sound Harry had heard in twenty-four hours. 'Oh please
tell me about the brother-in-law . . .'
  Before Harry could open his mouth to speak, Valentin
said: 'It's not her, Harry.'
  The words, spoken without a trace of drama, took a
few seconds to make sense. Even when they did, their
lunacy was  self-evident. Here she was in the flesh,
perfect in every detail.
  'What are you talking about?' Harry said.
  'How  much  more  plainly can I say it?' Valentin
replied. 'It's not her. It's a trick. An illusion. They
know  where we are, and they sent this up to spy out
our defences.'
  Harry would have laughed, but that these accusations
were bringing tears to Dorothea's eyes.
   'Stop it,' he told Valentin.
  'No, Harry. You think for a moment. All the traps
they've laid, all the beasts they've mustered.  You
suppose she  could have escaped that?' He  moved
away from the window  towards Dorothea. 'Where's
Butterfield?' he spat. 'Down the hall, waiting for your
signal?'

                     52
  'Shut up,' said Harry.
  'He's scared to come  up here  himself, isn't he?'
Valentin went on. 'Scared of Swann,  scared of us,
probably, after what we did to his gelding.'
  Dorothea looked at Harry. 'Make him stop,' she said.
  Harry halted Valentin's advance with a hand on his
bony chest.
  'You heard the lady,' he said.
  'That's no lady,' Valentin replied, his eyes blazing. 'I
don't know what it is, but it's no lady.'
  Dorothea stood up. 'I came here because I hoped I'd
be safe,' she said.
  'You are safe,' Harry said.
  'Not with him around, I'm not,' she replied, looking
back at Valentin. 'I think I'd be wiser going.'
  Harry touched her arm.
  'No,' he told her.
  'Mr D'Amour,'  she  said sweetly, 'you've already
earned your fee ten times over. Now I think it's time
/ took responsibility for my husband.'
  Harry scanned that mercurial face. There wasn't a
trace of deception in it.
  'I have a car downstairs,' she said. 'I wonder. . . could
you carry him downstairs for me?'
  Harry heard a noise like a cornered dog behind him
and turned to see Valentin standing beside Swann's
corpse. He had  picked  up the  heavy-duty cigarette
lighter from the desk, and was flicking it. Sparks came,
but no flame.
  'What the hell are you doing?' Harry demanded.
  Valentin didn't look at the speaker, but at Dorothea.
  'She knows,' he said.
  He had got the knack of the lighter; the flame flared
up.
  Dorothea made a small, desperate sound.

                     53
  'Please don't,' she said.
  'We'll  all burn  with him   if necessary,' Valentin
said.
  'He's insane,' Dorothea's tears had suddenly gone.
  'She's right,' Harry told Valentin, 'you're acting like
a madman.'
  'And  you're a fool to fall for a few tears!' came the
reply. 'Can't you see that if she takes him we've lost
everything we've fought for?'
  'Don't listen,' she murmured. 'You know me, Harry.
You trust me.'
  'What's  under that face of yours?' Valentin  said.
'What are you? A Coprolite? Homunculus?'
  The names meant nothing to Harry. All he knew was
the proximity of the woman at her side; her hand laid
upon his arm.
  'And what about you?' she said to Valentin. Then,
more softly, 'why don't you show us your wound?'
  She forsook the shelter of Harry's side, and crossed to
the desk. The lighter flame guttered at her approach.
  'Go on. . .' she said, her voice no louder than a breath.
'. . . I dare you.'
  She glanced round at Harry. 'Ask him, D'Amour,'
she said. 'Ask him to show you what he's got hidden
under the bandages.'
  'What's she talking about?' Harry asked. The glimmer
of trepidation in Valentin's eyes was enough to convince
Harry there was merit in Dorothea's request. 'Explain,'
he said.
  Valentin didn't get the chance however. Distracted
by Harry's demand he was easy prey when Dorothea
reached across the desk and knocked the lighter from his
hand. He bent to retrieve it, but she seized on the ad hoc
bundle of bandaging and pulled. It tore, and fell away.
  She stepped back. 'See?' she said.

                    54
  Valentin stood revealed. The creature on 83rd Street
had torn the sham of humanity from his arm; the limb
beneath was a mass of blue-black scales. Each digit of the
blistered hand ended in a nail that opened and closed like
a parrot's beak. He made no attempt to conceal the truth.
Shame eclipsed every other response.
  'I warned you,' she said, 'I warned you he wasn't to be
trusted.'
  Valentin stared at Harry. 'I have no excuses,' he said.
'I only ask you to believe that I want what's best for
Swann.'
  'How can you?' Dorothea said. 'You're a demon.'
  'More  than that,' Valentin replied, 'I'm Swann's
Tempter.  His familiar; his creature. But I belong to
him more  than I ever belonged to the Gulfs. And I
will defy them -' he looked at Dorothea, '- and their
agents.'
  She turned to Harry. 'You have a gun,' she said.
'Shoot the filth. You mustn't suffer a thing like that to
live.'
  Harry looked at the pustulent arm; at the clacking
fingernails: what further repugnance was there in wait
behind the flesh facade?
  'Shoot it,' the woman said.
  He took his gun from his pocket. Valentin seemed to
have shrunk in the moments since the revelation of his
true nature. Now he  leaned against the wall, his face
slimy with despair.
  'Kill me then,' he said to Harry, 'kill me if I revolt
you so much. But Harry, I beg you, don't give Swann to
her. Promise me that. Wait for the driver to come back,
and dispose of the body by whatever means you can. Just
don't give it to her!'
  'Don't listen,' Dorothea said. 'He doesn't care about
Swann the way I do.'

                     55
  Harry  raised the gun. Even looking straight at death,
Valentin did not flinch.
  'You've  failed, Judas,' she said to Valentin. 'The
magician's mine.'
  'What magician?' said Harry.
  'Why  Swann,  of course!' she replied lightly. 'How
many  magicians have you got up here?'
  Harry dropped his bead on Valentin.
   'He's an illusionist,' he said, 'you told me that at the
very beginning. Never call him a magician, you said.'
  'Don't be pedantic,' she replied, trying to laugh off her
faux pas.
  He  levelled the gun at her. She threw back her head
suddenly, her face contracting, and unloosed a sound of
which, had Harry not heard it from a human throat, he
would not have believed the larynx capable. It rang down
the corridor and the stairs, in search of some waiting
ear.
   'Butterfield is here,' said Valentin flatly.
  Harry nodded. In the same moment she came towards
him, her features grotesquely contorted. She was strong
and  quick; a blur of venom that took him off-guard.
He   heard Valentin  tell him to kill her, before  she
transformed. It took him  a moment  to grasp the
significance of this, by which time she had her teeth
at his throat. One of her hands was a cold vice around his
wrist; he sensed strength in her sufficient to powder his
bones. His fingers were already numbed by her grip; he
had no time to do more than depress the trigger. The gun
went off. Her breath on his throat seemed to gush from
her. Then she loosed her hold on him, and staggered
back. The shot had blown open her abdomen.
  He  shook to see what he had done. The creature, for
all its shriek, still resembled a woman he might have
loved.
                     56
  'Good,' said Valentin, as the blood hit the office floor
in gouts. 'Now it must show itself.'
  Hearing him, she shook her head. 'This is all there is
to show,' she said.
  Harry threw the gun down. 'My God,' he said softly,
'it's her .
  Dorothea grimaced. The blood continued to come.
'Some part of her,' she replied.
  'Have you always been with them  then?' Valentin
asked.
  'Of course not.'
  'Why then?'
  'Nowhere to go . . .' she said, her voice fading by the
syllable. 'Nothing to believe in. All lies. Everything:
lies.'
  'So you sided with Butterfield?'
  'Better Hell,' she said, 'than a false Heaven.'
  'Who taught you that?' Harry murmured.
  'Who do you think?' she replied, turning her gaze on
him. Though her strength was going out of her with the
blood, her eyes still blazed. 'You're finished, D'Amour,'
she said. 'You, and the demon, and Swann. There's
nobody left to help you now.'
  Despite the contempt in her words he couldn't stand
and watch  her  bleed to  death. Ignoring Valentin's
imperative that he keep clear, he went across to her.
As he stepped within range she lashed out at him with
astonishing force. The blow blinded him a moment;
he fell against the tall filing cabinet, which toppled
sideways. He and it hit the ground together. It spilled
papers; he, curses. He was vaguely aware that the woman
was moving past him to escape, but he was too busy
keeping his head from spinning to prevent her. When
equilibrium returned she had gone, leaving her bloody
handprints on wall and door.

                    57
Chaplin, the janitor, was protective of his territory. The
basement of the building was a private domain in which
he sorted  through office trash, and fed his beloved
furnace, and  read aloud his favourite passages from
the Good  Book; all without fear of interruption. His
bowels - which were far from healthy - allowed him little
slumber. A couple of hours a night, no more, which he
supplemented with dozing through the day. It was not
so bad. He had the seclusion of the basement to retire
to whenever life upstairs became too demanding; and
the forced heat would sometimes bring strange waking
dreams.
  Was  this such a dream; this insipid fellow in his fine
suit? If not, how had he gained access to the basement,
when  the door was locked and bolted? He asked no
questions of the intruder. Something about the way
the man stared at him baffled his tongue. 'Chaplin,' the
fellow said, his thin lips barely moving, 'I'd like you to
open the furnace.'
  In other circumstances he might well have picked up
his shovel and clouted the stranger across the head. The
furnace was his baby. He knew, as no-one else knew,
its quirks and occasional petulance; he loved, as no-one
else loved, the roar it gave when it was content; he did
not take kindly to the proprietorial tone the man used.
But he'd lost the will to resist. He picked up a rag and
opened  the peeling door, offering its hot heart to this
man  as Lot had offered his daughters to the stranger in
Sodom.
  Butterfield smiled at the smell of heat from  the
furnace. From three floors above he heard the woman
crying out for help; and then, a few moments later,
a shot. She had failed. He had thought she would.
But her life was forfeit anyway. There was no loss in

                      58
sending her into the breach, in the slim chance that
she might  have coaxed the body  from  its keepers.
It would have saved  the inconvenience of a full-scale
attack, but no matter. To have Swann's soul was worth
any effort. He had defiled the good name of the Prince
of Lies. For that he would suffer as no other miscreant
magician ever had. Beside Swann's punishment, Faust's
would be an inconvenience, and Napoleon's a pleasure-
cruise.
  As the echoes of the shot died above, he took the
black lacquer box from his jacket pocket. The janitor's
eyes were turned heavenward. He too had heard the
shot.
  'It was nothing,' Butterfield told him. 'Stoke the fire.'
  Chaplin obeyed. The heat in the cramped basement
rapidly grew. The janitor began to sweat; his visitor did
not. He stood mere feet from the open furnace door and
gazed into the brightness with impassive features. At
last, he seemed satisfied.
  'Enough,' he said, and opened  the lacquer box.
Chaplin thought he glimpsed movement in the box, as
though it were full to the lid with maggots, but before
he had a chance to look more closely both the box and
contents were pitched into the flames.
  'Close the door,' Butterfield said. Chaplin obeyed.
'You may  watch over them awhile, if it pleases you.
They need the heat. It makes them mighty.'
  He  left the janitor to keep his vigil beside the furnace,
and went  back up to the hallway. He had  left the
street door open, and a pusher had come in out of
the cold to do business with  a client. They bartered
in the shadows, until the pusher caught sight of the
lawyer.
  'Don't mind me,' Butterfield said, and started up the
stairs. He found the widow Swann on the first landing.

                     59
She was not quite dead, but he quickly finished the job
D'Amour  had started.

'We're in trouble,' said Valentin. 'I hear noises down-
stairs. Is there any other way out of here?'
  Harry  sat on the floor, leaning against the toppled
cabinet, and tried not to think of Dorothea's face as the
bullet found her, or of the creature he was now reduced
to needing.
  'There's a fire escape,' he said, 'it runs down to the
back of the building.'
  'Show me,' said Valentin, attempting to haul him to
his feet.
  'Keep your hands off me!'
  Valentin  withdrew, bruised  by the  rebuffal. 'I'm
sorry,' he said. 'Maybe I shouldn't hope  for your
acceptance. But I do.'
  Harry  said nothing, just got to his feet amongst the
litter of reports and photographs. He'd had a dirty life:
spying on  adulteries for vengeful spouses; dredging
gutters for lost children; keeping company with scum
because it rose to the top, and the rest just drowned.
Could Valentin's soul be much grimier?
  'The fire escape's down the hall,' he said.
  'We  can still get Swann out,' Valentin said. 'Still give
him a decent cremation -' The demon's obsession with
his master's dignity was chastening, in its way. 'But you
have to help me, Harry.'
  Til help you,' he said, avoiding sight of the creature.
'Just don't expect love and affection.'
  If it were possible to hear a smile, that's what he
heard.
  They  want this over and done with before dawn,' the
demon said.
  'It can't be far from that now.'
                     60
  'An hour, maybe,' Valentin replied. 'But it's enough.
 Either way, it's enough.'

The sound of the furnace soothed Chaplin; its rumbles
and rattlings were as familiar as the complaint of his
own intestines. But there was another sound growing
behind the door, the like of which he'd never heard
 before. His mind made  foolish pictures to go with it.
Of pigs laughing; of glass and barbed wire being ground
between the teeth; of hoofed feet dancing on the door.
As the noises grew so did his trepidation, but when he
went to the basement door to summon help it was locked;
the key had gone. And now, as if matters weren't bad
enough, the light went out.
  He began to fumble for a prayer -
  'Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now
and at the hour -'
  But he stopped when a voice addressed him, quite
clearly.
  'Michelmas,' it said.
  It was unmistakably his mother. And there could
be no doubt of its source, either. It came from the
furnace.
  'Michelmas,' she demanded, 'are you going to let me
cook in here?'
  It wasn't possible, of course, that she was there in the
flesh: she'd been dead thirteen long years. But some
phantom, perhaps? He believed in phantoms. Indeed
he'd seen them on occasion, coming and going from the
cinemas on 42nd Street, arm in arm.
  'Open up, Michelmas,' his mother told him, in that
special voice she used when she had some treat for him.
Like a good child, he approached the door. He had never
felt such heat off the furnace as he felt now; he could
smell the hairs on his arms wither.

                    61
  'Open the door,' Mother said again. There was no
denying  her. Despite the searing air, he reached to
comply.

'That fucking janitor,' said Harry, giving the sealed fire
escape door a vengeful kick. 'This door's supposed to be
left unlocked at all times.' He pulled at the chains that
were wrapped  around the handles. 'We'll have to take
the stairs.'
  There was a noise from back down the corridor; a
roar in the heating system which made the antiquated
radiators rattle. At that moment, down in the basement,
Michelmas  Chaplin  was obeying  his mother, and
opening the furnace door. A  scream  climbed from
below as his face was blasted off. Then, the sound of
the basement door being smashed open.
  Harry looked at Valentin, his repugnance moment-
arily forgotten.
  'We  shan't be taking the stairs,' the demon said.
  Bellowings  and chatterings and  screechings were
already on the rise. Whatever had  found birth in the
basement, it was precocious.
  'We have to find something to break down the door,
Valentin said, 'anything.'
  Harry  tried to think his way through the adjacent
offices, his mind's eye peeled for some tool that would
make  an  impression on either the fire door or the
substantial chains which kept it closed. But there was
nothing useful: only typewriters and filing cabinets.
  'Think, man,' said Valentin.
  He ransacked his memory. Some heavy-duty instru-
ment was  required. A crowbar; a hammer. An axe!
There was an agent called Shapiro on the floor below,
who  exclusively represented porno performers, one of
whom  had attempted to blow his balls off the month

                     62
before. She'd failed, but he'd boasted one day on the
stairs that he had now purchased the biggest axe he could
find, and would happily take the head off any client who
attempted an attack upon his person.
  The commotion from below was simmering down.
The hush was, in its way, more distressing than the din
that had preceded it.
  'We haven't got much time,' the demon said.
  Harry left him at the chained door. 'Can you get
Swann?' he said as he ran.
  Til do my best.'
  By the time Harry reached the top of the stairs the
last chatterings were dying away; as he began down
the flight they ceased altogether. There was no way
now to judge how close the enemy were. On the next
floor? Round the next corner? He tried not to think of
them, but his feverish imagination populated every dirty
shadow.
  He reached the bottom of the flight without incident,
however, and slunk along the darkened second-floor
corridor to Shapiro's office. Halfway to his destination,
he heard a low hiss behind him. He looked over his
shoulder, his body itching to run. One of the radiators,
heated beyond its limits, had sprung a leak. Steam was
escaping from its pipes, and hissing as it went. He let
his heart climb down out of his mouth, and then hurried
on to the door of Shapiro's office, praying that the man
hadn't simply been shooting the breeze with his talk of
axes. If so, they were done for. The office was locked,
of course, but he elbowed the frosted glass out, and
reached through to let himself in, fumbling for the light
switch. The walls were plastered with photographs of
sex-goddesses. They scarcely claimed Harry's attention;
his panic fed upon itself with every heartbeat he spent
here. Clumsily he scoured the office, turning furniture

                     63
over in his impatience. But there was no sign of Shapiro's
axe.
  Now,  another noise from below. It crept up the
staircase and along the corridor in search of him - an
unearthly cacophony like the one he'd heard on 83rd
Street. It set his teeth on edge; the nerve of his rotting
molar began to throb afresh. What did the music signal?
Their advance?
  In desperation he crossed to Shapiro's desk to see if
the man had any other item that might be pressed into
service, and there tucked out of sight between desk and
wall, he found the axe. He pulled it from hiding. As
Shapiro had  boasted, it was hefty, its weight the first
reassurance Harry had felt in too long. He returned to
the corridor. The steam from  the fractured pipe had
thickened. Through  its veils it was apparent that the
concert had taken on new fervour. The doleful wailing
rose and fell, punctuated by some flaccid percussion.
  He  braved the cloud of steam and hurried to the stairs.
As he put his foot on the bottom step the music seemed to
catch him by the back of the neck, and whisper: 'Listen'
in his ear. He had no desire to listen; the music was vile.
But somehow  - while he was distracted by finding the
axe - it had wormed its way into his skull. It drained his
limbs of strength. In moments the axe began to seem an
impossible burden.
  'Come on down,' the music coaxed him, 'come on down
and join the band.'
  Though  he tried to form the simple word 'No', the
music was gaining influence upon him with every note
played. He began to hear melodies in the caterwauling;
long circuitous themes that made his blood sluggish and
his thoughts idiot. He knew there was no pleasure to
be had  at the music's source - that it tempted him
only to pain and desolation - yet he could not shake
                      64
its delirium off. His feet began to move to the call of
the pipers. He forgot Valentin, Swann and all ambition
for escape, and instead began  to descend  the stairs.
The melody  became  more intricate. He could hear
voices now, singing some charmless accompaniment
in a language he didn't comprehend. From somewhere
above, he heard his name called, but he ignored the
summons. The  music clutched him close, and now -
as he descended the next flight of stairs - the musicians
came into view.
  They  were brighter than he had  anticipated, and
more  various. More baroque  in their configurations
(the manes, the multiple heads); more particular in their
decoration (the suit of flayed faces; the rouged anus);
and, his drugged eyes now stung to see, more atrocious
in their choice of instruments. Such instruments! Byron
was there, his bones  sucked clean  and drilled with
stops, his bladder and lungs teased through  slashes
in his body  as reservoirs for the piper's breath. He
was draped, inverted, across the musician's lap, and
even now was  played upon - the sacs ballooning, the
tongueless head giving out a wheezing note. Dorothea
was slumped beside him, no less transformed, the strings
of her gut made taut between her splinted legs like an
obscene lyre; her breasts drummed upon. There were
other instruments too, men who had come off the street
and fallen prey to the band. Even Chaplin was there,
much of his flesh burned away, his rib-cage played upon
indifferently well.
  'I didn't take you for a music lover,' Butterfield said,
drawing upon a cigarette, and smiling in welcome. 'Put
down your axe and join us.'
  The word axe reminded Harry of the weight in his
hands, though he couldn't find his way through the bars
of music to remember what it signified.

                     65
  'Don't be afraid,' Butterfield said, 'you're an innocent
in this. We hold no grudge against you.'
  'Dorothea . . .' he said.
  'She was an innocent too,' said the lawyer, 'until we
showed her some sights.'
  Harry looked at the woman's body; at the terrible
changes that they had wrought upon her. Seeing them,
a tremor began in him, and something came between
him and  the music; the imminence of tears blotted it
out.
  'Put down the axe,' Butterfield told him.
  But the sound of the concert could not compete with
the grief that was mounting in him. Butterfield seemed
to see the change in his eyes; the disgust and anger
growing there. He dropped  his half-smoked cigarette
and signalled for the music-making to stop.
  'Must  it be death, then?' Butterfield said, but the
enquiry was scarcely voiced before Harry started down
the last few stairs towards him. He raised the axe and
swung it at the lawyer but the blow was misplaced. The
blade ploughed the plaster of the wall, missing its target
by a foot.
  At this eruption of violence the musicians threw down
their instruments and began across the lobby, trailing
their coats and tails in blood and grease. Harry caught
their advance from the corner of his eye. Behind the
horde, still rooted in the shadows, was another form,
larger than the largest of the mustered demons, from
which there now came a thump that might have been
that of a vast jack-hammer. He tried to make sense
of sound or sight, but could do neither. There was
no time for curiosity; the demons were almost upon
him.
  Butterfield glanced round to encourage their advance,
and Harry - catching the moment - swung the axe a

                     66
second time. The blow caught Butterfield's shoulder;
the arm was instantly severed. The lawyer shrieked;
blood sprayed the wall. There was no time for a third
blow, however. The demons were reaching for him,
smiles lethal.
  He turned on the stairs, and began up them, taking
the steps two, three and four at a time. Butterfield
was still shrieking below; from the flight above he
heard Valentin calling his name. He had neither time
nor breath to answer.
  They were on his heels, their ascent a din of grunts and
shouts and beating wings. And behind it all, the jack-
hammer thumped  its way to the bottom of the flight,
its noise more intimidating by far than the chatterings
of the berserkers at his back. It was in his belly, that
thump; in his bowels. Like death's heartbeat, steady and
irrevocable.
  On the second landing he heard a whirring sound
behind him, and half turned to see a human-headed
moth  the size of a vulture climbing the air towards
him. He  met it with the axe blade, and hacked it
down. There was a cry of excitement from below as
the body flapped down the stairs, its wings working
like paddles. Harry sped up the remaining flight to
where Valentin was  standing, listening. It wasn't the
chatter he was attending to, nor the cries of the lawyer;
it was the jack-hammer.
  'They brought the Raparee,' he said.
  'I wounded Butterfield -'
  'I heard. But that won't stop them.'
  'We can still try the door.'
  'I think we're too late, my friend.'
  Wo!' said Harry, pushing past Valentin. The demon
had given up trying to drag Swann's body to the door,
and had  laid the magician out in the middle of the
                     67
corridor, his hands crossed on his chest. In some last
mysterious act of reverence he had set folded paper bowls
at Swann's head and feet, and laid a tiny origami flower at
his lips. Harry lingered only long enough to re-acquaint
himself with the sweetness of Swann's expression, and
then ran to the door and proceeded to hack at the chains.
It would be a long job. The assault did more damage to
the axe than to the steel links. He didn't dare give up,
however. This was their only escape route now, other
than flinging themselves to their deaths from one of the
windows. That he would do, he decided, if the worst
came to the worst. Jump and die, rather than be their
plaything.
  His arms soon became numb with the repeated blows.
It was a lost cause; the chain was unimpaired. His despair
was  further fuelled by a cry from Valentin - a high,
weeping call that he could not leave unanswered. He
left the fire door and returned past the body of Swann
to the head of the stairs.
  The demons had Valentin. They swarmed on him
like wasps on  a sugar stick, tearing him apart. For
the briefest of moments  he  struggled free of their
rage, and Harry saw the mask of humanity  in rags
and  the truth glistening bloodily beneath. He was as
vile as those besetting him, but Harry went to his aid
anyway, as much to wound the demons as to save their
prey.
  The  wielded axe did damage  this way and  that,
sending Valentin's tormentors reeling back down the
stairs, limbs lopped, faces opened. They did not all
bleed. One  sliced belly spilled eggs in thousands, one
wounded  head  gave birth to tiny eels, which fled to
the ceiling and hung there by their lips. In the mel£e
he lost sight of Valentin. Forgot about him, indeed,
until he heard the jack-hammer again, and remembered

                      68
the broken look on Valentin's face when he'd named
the thing. He'd called it the Raparee, or something
like.
  And now, as his memory shaped the word, it came into
sight. It shared no trait with its fellows; it had neither
wings nor mane nor vanity. It seemed scarcely even to
be flesh, but forged, an engine that needed only malice
to keep its wheels turning.
  At its appearance, the rest retreated, leaving Harry at
the top of the stairs in a litter of spawn. Its progress was
slow, its half dozen limbs moving in oiled and elaborate
configurations to pierce the walls of the staircase and so
haul itself up. It brought to mind a man on crutches,
throwing the sticks ahead of him and levering his weight
after, but there was nothing invalid in the thunder of
its body; no pain in the white eye that burned in his
sickle-head.
  Harry thought he had known despair, but he had not.
Only now  did he taste its ash in his throat. There was
only the window left for him. That, and the welcoming
ground. He backed  away from the top of the stairs,
forsaking the axe.
  Valentin was in the corridor. He was not dead, as
Harry had presumed, but kneeling beside the corpse
of Swann, his own body  drooling from a hundred
wounds. Now  he bent close to the magician. Offering
his apologies to his dead master, no doubt. But no.
There was more  to it than that. He had the cigarette
lighter in his hand, and was lighting a taper. Then,
murmuring  some prayer to himself as he went, he
lowered the taper to the mouth of the magician. The
origami flower caught and flared up. Its flame was
oddly bright, and spread with supernatural efficiency
across Swann's face and down his body. Valentin hauled
himself to his feet, the firelight burnishing his scales. He

                     69
found enough strength to incline his head to the body as
its cremation began, and then his wounds overcame him.
He  fell backwards, and lay still. Harry watched as the
flames mounted. Clearly the body had been sprinkled
with gasoline or something similar, for the fire raged up
in moments, gold and green.
  Suddenly, something took hold of his leg. He looked
down  to  see that a demon,  with  flesh like ripe
raspberries, still had an appetite for him. Its tongue
was coiled around Harry's shin; its claws reached for
his groin. The assault made him forget the cremation
or the Raparee. He bent to tear at the tongue with his
bare hands, but its slickness confounded his attempts.
He staggered back as the demon climbed his body, its
limbs embracing him.
  The struggle took them to the ground, and they rolled
away from the stairs, along the other arm of the corridor.
The struggle was far from uneven; Harry's repugnance
was at least the match of the demon's ardour. His torso
pressed to the ground, he suddenly remembered the
Raparee. Its advance reverberated in every board and
wall.
  Now  it came into sight at the top of the stairs, and
turned its slow head towards Swann's funeral pyre. Even
from  this distance Harry could see that Valentin's last-
ditch attempts to destroy his master's body had failed.
The  fire had scarcely begun to devour the magician.
They would  have him still.
  Eyes  on the  Raparee, Harry  neglected his more
intimate enemy, and  it thrust a piece of flesh into
his mouth. His throat filled up with pungent fluid; he
felt himself choking. Opening his mouth he bit down
hard upon the organ, severing it. The demon did not
cry out, but released sprays of scalding excrement from
pores along its back, and disengaged itself. Harry spat its

                      70
muscle out as the demon crawled away. Then he looked
back towards the fire.
  All other concerns were forgotten in the face of what
he saw.
  Swann had stood up.
  He  was burning  from head  to foot. His hair, his
clothes, his skin. There was no part of him that was not
alight. But he was standing, nevertheless, and raising his
hands to his audience in welcome.
  The Raparee had ceased its advance. It stood a yard or
two from Swann,  its limbs absolutely still, as if it were
mesmerised by this astonishing trick.
  Harry saw another figure emerge from the head of the
stairs. It was Butterfield. His stump was roughly tied off;
a demon supported his lop-sided body.
  Tut out the fire,' demanded the lawyer of the Raparee.
'It's not so difficult.'
  The creature did not move.
  'Go on," said Butterfield. 'It's just a trick of his. He's
dead, damn you. It's just conjuring.'
  'No,' said Harry.
  Butterfield looked his way. The lawyer had always
been insipid. Now  he was  so pale his existence was
surely in question.
  'What do you know?' he said.
  'It's not conjuring,' said Harry. 'It's magic.'
  Swann seemed to hear the word. His eyelids fluttered
open, and he slowly reached into his jacket and with a
flourish produced a handkerchief. It too was on fire. It
too was unconsumed. As he shook it out tiny bright birds
leapt from its folds on humming wings. The Raparee was
entranced by this sleight-of-hand. Its gaze followed the
illusory birds as they rose and were dispersed, and in that
moment the magician stepped forward and embraced the
engine.
                     71
  It caught Swann's  fire immediately, the flames
spreading over its flailing limbs. Though it fought
to work itself free of the magician's hold, Swann was
not to be denied. He clasped it closer than a long-lost
brother, and would  not leave it be until the creature
began to wither in the heat. Once the decay began it
seemed the Raparee was devoured in seconds, but it
was difficult to be certain. The moment - as in the
best performances - was held suspended. Did it last a
minute? Two minutes? Five? Harry would never know.
Nor  did he care to analyse. Disbelief was for cowards;
and doubt  a fashion that crippled the spine. He was
content to watch - not knowing if Swann lived or died,
if birds, fire, corridor or if he himself- Harry D'Amour
- were real or illusory.
  Finally, the Raparee was gone. Harry got to his feet.
Swann  was also standing, but his farewell performance
was clearly over.
  The  defeat of the Raparee had bested the courage of
the horde. They had fled, leaving Butterfield alone at
the top of the stairs.
  'This won't  be forgotten, or forgiven,' he said to
Harry. 'There's no  rest for you. Ever. I am your
enemy.'
  'I hope so,' said Harry.
  He looked back towards Swann, leaving Butterfield to
his retreat. The magician had laid himself down again.
His eyes were closed, his hands replaced on his chest.
It was as if he had never moved. But now the fire was
showing its true teeth. Swann's flesh began to bubble,
his clothes to peel off in smuts and smoke. It took a long
while to do the job, but eventually the fire reduced the
man to ash.
  By that time it was after dawn, but today was Sunday,
and Harry knew  there would be no visitors to interrupt
                     72
his labours. He would have time  to gather up the
remains; to pound the boneshards and put them with
the ashes in a carrier bag. Then he would go out and
find himself a bridge or a dock, and put Swann into the
river.
  There  was precious little of the magician left once
the fire had done its work; and nothing that vaguely
resembled a man.
  Things came and went away; that was a kind of magic.
And  in between?  Pursuits and conjurings; horrors,
guises. The occasional joy.
  That there was room for joy; ah! that was magic too.
                     73
 THE LIFE OF DEATH
THE    NEWSPAPER  WAS  the first edition of the day,
    and Elaine devoured it from cover to cover as she
sat in the hospital waiting room. An animal thought to
be a panther - which had terrorised the neighbourhood
of Epping Forest for two months - had been shot and
found to be a wild dog. Archaeologists in the Sudan
had discovered bone fragments which they opined might
lead to a complete reappraisal of Man's origins. A young
woman  who had once danced with minor royalty had
been found murdered near Clapham; a solo round-the-
world yachtsman was missing; recently excited hopes of
a cure for the common cold had been dashed. She read
the global bulletins and the trivia with equal fervour -
anything to keep her mind off the examination ahead -
but today's news seemed very like yesterday's; only the
names had been changed.
  Doctor Sennett informed her that she was healing
well, both  inside and  out, and  was  quite fit to
                     74
return to her  full responsibilities whenever she felt
psychologically resilient enough. She should  make
another appointment for the first week of the new
year, he told her, and come back for a final examination
then. She left him washing his hands of her.
  The  thought of getting straight onto the bus and
heading back to her rooms  was repugnant after so
much time sitting and waiting. She would walk a stop
or two along the route, she decided. The exercise would
be good for her, and the December day, though far from
warm, was bright.
  Her plans proved over-ambitious however. After only
a few minutes of walking her lower abdomen began to
ache, and she started to feel nauseous, so she turned
off the main road to seek out a place where she could
rest and drink some tea. She should eat too, she knew,
though she had never had much appetite, and had less
still since the operation. Her wanderings were rewarded.
She found a small restaurant which, though it was twelve
fifty-five, was not enjoying a roaring lunch-time trade. A
small woman with unashamedly artificial red hair served
her tea and a mushroom omelette. She did her best to
eat, but didn't get very far. The waitress was plainly
concerned.
  'Something wrong with the food?' she said, somewhat
testily.
  'Oh no,' Elaine reassured her. 'It's just me.'
  The waitress looked offended nevertheless.
  Td  like some more tea though, if I may?' Elaine
said.
  She pushed  the plate away from her, hoping the
waitress would claim it soon. The sight of the meal
congealing on the patternless plate was doing nothing
for her mood. She hated this unwelcome sensitivity
in herself: it was absurd that a plate of uneaten eggs

                     75
should bring these doldrums on, but she couldn't help
herself. She found everywhere little echoes of her own
loss. In the death, by a benign November and then the
sudden frosts, of the bulbs in her window-sill box; in the
thought of the wild dog she'd read of that morning, shot
in Epping Forest.
  The  waitress returned with fresh tea, but failed to take
the plate. Elaine called her back, requesting that she do
so. Grudgingly, she obliged.
  There  were no  customers left in the place now,
other  than Elaine, and  the  waitress busied  herself
with removing the lunchtime menus from the tables
and replacing them with those for the evening. Elaine
sat staring out of the window. Veils of blue-grey smoke
had crept down the street in recent minutes, solidifying
the sunlight.
  'They're burning again,' the waitress said. 'Damn
smell gets everywhere.'
  'What are they burning?'
  'Used to be the community centre. They're knocking
it down, and building a new one. It's a waste of tax-
payers' money.'
  The  smoke was indeed creeping into the restaurant.
Elaine did not find it offensive; it was sweetly redolent
of autumn, her favourite season. Intrigued, she finished
her tea, paid for her meal, and then elected to wander
along and find the source of the smoke. She didn't have
far to walk. At the end of the street was a small square;
the demolition site dominated it. There was one surprise
however. The building that the waitress had described as
a community centre was in fact a church; or had been.
The  lead and slates had already been stripped off the
roof, leaving the joists bare to the sky; the windows had
been denuded of glass; the turf had gone from the lawn
at the side of the building, and two trees had been felled

                     76
there. It was their pyre which provided the tantalising
scent.
  She doubted if the building had ever been beautiful,
but there was enough of its structure remaining for her
to suppose it might have had charm. Its weathered stone
was now  completely at variance with the brick and
concrete that surrounded it, but its besieged situation
(the workmen labouring to undo it; the bulldozer on
hand, hungry for rubble) gave it a certain glamour.
  One or two of the workmen noticed her standing
watching them, but none made any move to stop her
as she walked across the square to the front porch of
the church and peered  inside. The interior, stripped
of its decorative stonework, of pulpit, pews, font and
the rest, was simply a stone room, completely lacking
in atmosphere or authority. Somebody, however, had
found a source of interest here. At the far end of the
church a man  stood with  his back to Elaine, staring
intently at the ground. Hearing footsteps behind him
he looked round guiltily.
  'Oh,' he said. 'I won't be a moment.'
  'It's all right -' Elaine said. 'I think we're probably
both trespassing.'
  The man  nodded. He was dressed soberly - even
drearily - but for his green bow-tie. His features, despite
the garb and the grey hairs of a man in middle-age, were
curiously unlined, as though neither smile nor frown
much  ruffled their perfect indifference.
  'Sad, isn't it?' he said. 'Seeing a place like this.'
  'Did you know the church as it used to be?'
  'I came in on occasion,' he said, 'but it was never very
popular.'
  'What's it called?'
  'All Saints. It was  built in  the late seventeenth
century, I believe. Are you fond of churches?'

                    77
  'Not particularly. It was just that I saw the smoke,
and . . .'
  'Everybody likes a demolition scene,' he said.
  'Yes,' she replied, 'I suppose that's true.'
  'It's like watching a funeral. Better them than us,
eh?'
  She murmured  something in agreement, her mind
flitting elsewhere. Back to the hospital. To her pain and
her present healing. To her life saved only by losing the
capacity for further life. Better them than us.
  'My name's Kavanagh,' he said, covering the short
distance between them, his hand extended.
  'How  do you do?' she said. Tm Elaine Rider.'
  'Elaine,' he said. 'Charming.'
  'Are you just taking a final look at the place before it
comes down?'
  'That's right. I've been looking at the inscriptions on
the floor stones. Some of them are most eloquent.' He
brushed a fragment of timber off one of the tablets
with his foot. 'It seems such  a loss. I'm sure they'll
just smash the stones to smithereens when they start
to pull the floor up -'
  She looked down at the patchwork of tablets beneath
her feet. Not all were marked, and of those that were
many  simply carried names and dates. There were
some  inscriptions however. One, to the left of where
Kavanagh  was standing, carried an all but eroded relief
of crossed shin-bones, like drum-sticks, and the abrupt
motto: Redeem the time.
  'I think there must have been a crypt under here at
some time,' Kavanagh said.
  'Oh. I see. And these are the people who were buried
there.'
  'Well, I can't think of any  other reason for the
inscriptions, can you? I was thinking of asking the work-

                     78
men  . . .' he paused in  mid-sentence,  '. . . you'll
probably think this positively morbid of me ..."
  'What?'
  'Well, just to preserve one or two of the finer stones
from being destroyed.'
  'I don't think that's morbid,' she said. They're very
beautiful.'
  He was evidently encouraged by her response. 'Maybe
I should speak with them now,' he said. 'Would you
excuse me for a moment?'
  He left her standing in the nave like a forsaken bride,
while he went out to quiz one of the workmen. She
wandered down  to where the altar had been, reading
the names as she went. Who knew or cared about these
people's resting places now? Dead two hundred years
and more, and  gone away  not into loving posterity
but into oblivion. And  suddenly  the unarticulated
hopes for an  after-life she had nursed through  her
thirty-four years slipped away; she was  no  longer
weighed down by some  vague ambition for heaven.
Ont  day, perhaps this day, she would  die, just as
these people had  died, and  it wouldn't  matter  a
jot. There was nothing to come,  nothing to aspire
to, nothing to dream  of. She  stood in a  patch of
smoke-thickened sun, thinking of this, and was almost
happy.
  Kavanagh  returned from  his exchanges with the
foreman.
  'There is indeed a crypt,' he said, 'but it hasn't been
emptied yet.'
  'Oh.'
  They were still underfoot, she thought. Dust and
bones.
  'Apparently they're having some  difficulty getting
into it. All the entrances have been sealed up. That's

                     79
why  they're digging around the foundations. To find
another way in.'
  'Are crypts normally sealed up?'
  'Not as thoroughly as this one.'
  'Maybe there was no more room,' she said.
  Kavanagh took the comment quite seriously. 'Maybe,'
he said.
  'Will they give you one of the stones?'
  He  shook his head. 'It's not up to them to say. These
are just council lackeys. Apparently they have a firm of
professional excavators to come in and shift the bodies
to new  burial sites. It all has to be done  with due
decorum.'
  'Much  they care,' Elaine said, looking down at the
stones again.
  'I must  agree,' Kavanagh replied. 'It all seems in
excess of the facts. But then perhaps we're not God-
fearing enough.'
  'Probably.'
  'Anyhow, they told me to come back in a day or two's
time, and ask the removal men.'
  She laughed at the thought of the dead moving house;
packing up  their goods and chattels. Kavanagh was
pleased to have  made  a joke, even  if it had been
unintentional. Riding on  the crest of this success, he
said: 'I wonder, may I take you for a drink?'
  'I wouldn't be very good company, I'm afraid,' she
said. 'I'm really very tired.'
  'We  could perhaps meet later,' he said.
  She looked away from his eager face. He was pleasant
enough,  in his uneventful way. She liked his green
bow-tie -  surely a joke at the expense of his own
drabness.  She  liked his  seriousness too. But  she
couldn't face the idea of drinking with him; at least
not tonight. She made  her apologies, and explained

                      80
that she'd been ill recently and hadn't recovered her
stamina.
  'Another night perhaps?' he enquired gently. The
lack of aggression in his courtship was persuasive, and
she said:
  That would be nice. Thank you.'
  Before they parted they exchanged telephone num-
bers. He seemed charmingly excited by the thought of
their meeting again; it made her feel, despite all that had
been taken from her, that she still had her sex.
  She returned to the flat to find both a parcel from
Mitch and a hungry cat on the doorstep. She fed the
demanding animal, then made herself some coffee and
opened the  parcel. In it, cocooned in several layers
of tissue paper, she found a silk scarf, chosen with
Mitch's uncanny  eye for her taste. The note  along
with it simply said: It's your colour. I love you. Mitch.
She wanted to pick up the telephone on the spot and
talk to him, but somehow  the thought of hearing
his voice seemed dangerous. Too  close to the hurt,
perhaps. He would  ask her  how  she felt, and she
would reply that she was well, and he  would insist:
yes, but really? And she would say: I'm empty; they
took out half my innards, damn you, and I'll never
have your  children or anybody  else's, so that's the
end of that, isn't it? Even thinking about their talking
she felt tears threaten, and in a fit of inexplicable rage
she wrapped the scarf up in the desiccated paper and
buried it at the back of her deepest drawer. Damn
him for trying to make things better now, when at
the time she'd most needed  him  all he'd talked of
was fatherhood, and how her tumours would deny it
him.
  It was a clear evening - the sky's cold skin stretched
to breaking point. She did not want to draw the curtains

                    81
in the front room, even though passers-by would stare
in, because the deepening blue was too fine to miss. So
she sat at the window and watched the dark come. Only
when the last change had been wrought did she close off
the chill.
  She had no appetite, but she made herself some food
nevertheless, and sat down to watch television as she ate.
The food unfinished, she laid down her tray, and dozed,
the programmes  filtering through to her intermittently.
Some  witless comedian whose merest cough sent his
audience into paroxysms; a natural history programme
on life in the Serengeti; the news. She had read all that
she needed to know that morning: the headlines hadn't
changed.
  One  item, however,  did pique her  curiosity: an
interview with the solo yachtsman, Michael May bury,
who  had been  picked up that day after two weeks
adrift in the Pacific. The interview was being beamed
from Australia, and the contact was bad; the image
of Maybury's  bearded  and  sun-scorched face was
constantly threatened with being  snowed  out. The
picture mattered little: the account he gave of his failed
voyage was  riveting in sound alone, and in particular
an event  that seemed to distress him afresh even as
he told it. He had been  becalmed, and as his vessel
lacked a motor had been  obliged to wait for wind. It
had not come. A  week had  gone by with his hardly
moving  a kilometre from  the same  spot of listless
ocean; no bird or passing ship broke the monotony.
With  every hour that passed, his claustrophobia grew,
and  on the eighth day it reached panic proportions,
so  he let himself over  the side of the  yacht and
swam   away  from  the vessel, a life-line tied about
his middle, in order to escape the same few yards of
deck. But once away from the yacht, and treading the

                     82
still, warm water, he had no desire to go back. Why
not untie the knot, he'd thought to himself, and float
away.
  'What made you change your mind?' the interviewer
asked.
  Here May bury frowned. He had clearly reached the
crux of his story, but didn't want  to finish it. The
interviewer repeated the question.
  At last, hesitantly, the sailor responded. 'I looked
back at the yacht,' he said, 'and I saw somebody on
the deck.'
  The interviewer, not certain that he'd heard correctly,
said: 'Somebody on the deck?'
  'That's right,' Maybury replied. 'Somebody was
there. I saw a figure quite clearly; moving around.'
  'Did you . . . did you recognise this stowaway?' the
question came.
  Maybury's face closed down, sensing that his story
was being treated with mild sarcasm.
  'Who was it?' the interviewer pressed.
  'I don't know,' Maybury said. 'Death, I suppose.'
  The questioner was momentarily lost for words.
  'But of course you returned to the" boat, eventually.'
  'Of course.'
  'And there was no sign of anybody?'
  Maybury glanced up at the interviewer, and a look of
contempt crossed his face.
  'I've survived, haven't I?' he said.
  The interviewer mumbled something about  not
understanding his point.
  'I didn't drown,' Maybury said. 'I could have died
then, if I'd wanted  to. Slipped off the  rope and
drowned.'
  'But you didn't. And the next day -'
  The next day the wind picked up.'

                    83
  'It's an extraordinary story,' the interviewer said, con-
tent that the stickiest part of the exchange was now safely
by-passed. 'You must be looking forward to seeing your
family again for Christmas . . .'
  Elaine didn't hear the final exchange of pleasantries.
Her imagination was tied by a fine rope to the room
she was sitting in; her fingers toyed with the knot. If
Death  could find a boat in the wastes of the Pacific,
how much  easier it must be to find her. To sit with her,
perhaps, as she slept. To watch her as she went about her
mourning.  She stood up and turned the television off.
The flat was suddenly silent. She questioned the hush
impatiently, but it held no sign of guests, welcome or
unwelcome.
  As she listened, she could taste salt-water. Ocean, no
doubt.

She  had  been  offered several refuges in which  to
convalesce when she came out of hospital. Her father
had invited her up to Aberdeen; her sister Rachel had
made  several appeals for her to spend a few weeks
in Buckinghamshire;  there had  even been  a pitiful
telephone call from Mitch, in which he had talked of
their holidaying together. She had rejected them  all,
telling them that she wanted to re-establish the rhythm
of her previous life as soon as possible: to return to her
job, to her working colleagues and friends. In fact, her
reasons had gone deeper than that. She had feared their
sympathies, feared that she would be held too close in
their affections and quickly come to rely upon them.
Her  streak of independence, which had first brought
her to this unfriendly city, was in studied defiance of
her smothering appetite for security. If she gave in to
those loving appeals she knew she would take root in
domestic soil and not look up and out again for another

                      84
year. In which time, what adventures might have passed
her by?
  Instead she had returned to work as soon as she felt
able, hoping that although she had not taken on all her
former responsibilities the familiar routines would help
her to re-establish a normal life. But the sleight-of-hand
was not entirely successful. Every few days something
would happen - she would overhear some remark,
or catch a look that she was not intended to see -
that made  her realise she was being  treated with a
rehearsed caution; that her colleagues viewed her as
being fundamentally changed  by her illness. It had
made her angry. She'd wanted  to spit her suspicions
in their faces; tell them that she and her uterus were
not synonymous, and that the removal of one did not
imply the eclipse of the other.
  But today, returning  to the office, she was  not
so certain they weren't correct. She  felt as though
she hadn't slept in weeks, though  in fact she was
sleeping long and deeply every night. Her eyesight was
blurred, and there was a curious remoteness about her
experiences that day that she associated with extreme
fatigue, as if she were drifting further and further from
the work on her desk; from her sensations, from her
very thoughts. Twice that morning she caught herself
speaking and then wondered who  it was who was
conceiving of these words. It certainly wasn't her; she
was too busy listening.
  And then, an hour after lunch, things had suddenly
taken a turn for the worse. She had been called into her
supervisor's office and asked to sit down.
  'Are you all right, Elaine?' Mr Chimes had asked.
  'Yes,' she'd told him. 'I'm fine.'
  There's been some concern -'
  'About what?'
                     85
  Chimes  looked slightly embarrassed. 'Your beha-
viour,' he finally said. 'Please don't think I'm prying,
Elaine. It's just that if you need some further time to
recuperate -'
  'There's nothing wrong with me.'
  'But your weeping -'
  'What?'
  'The way you've been crying today. It concerns us.'
  'Cry?' she'd said. 'I don't cry.'
  The  supervisor seemed baffled. 'But you've been
crying all day. You're crying now.'
  Elaine put a tentative hand to her cheek. And yes;
yes, she was crying. Her cheek was wet. She'd stood
up, shocked at her own conduct.
  'I didn't ... I didn't know,' she said. Though the
words sounded preposterous, they were true. She hadn't
known.  Only now, with the fact pointed out, did she
taste tears in her throat and sinuses; and with that taste
came a memory of when this eccentricity had begun: in
front of the television the night before.
  'Why  don't you take the rest of the day off?'
  'Yes.'
  'Take the rest of the week if you'd like,' Chimes said.
'You're a valued member of staff, Elaine; I don't have to
tell you that. We don't want you coming to any harm.'
  This last remark struck home  with stinging force.
Did  they think she was verging on suicide; was that
why  she was treated with kid gloves? They were only
tears she was shedding, for God's sake, and she was so
indifferent to them she had not even known they were
falling.
  'I'll go home,' she said. 'Thank you for your . . .
concern.'
  The  supervisor looked at her with some dismay. 'It
must have been  a very traumatic experience,' he said.

                     86
'We all understand; we really do. If you feel you want
to talk about it at any time -'
  She declined, but thanked him  again and left the
office.
  Face to face with herself in the mirror of the women's
toilets she realised just how bad she looked. Her skin
was flushed, her eyes swollen. She did what she could
to conceal the signs of this painless grief, then picked
up her coat and started home. As  she reached the
underground  station she knew that returning to the
empty flat would  not be a  wise idea. She would
brood, she would  sleep (so much sleep of late, and
so perfectly dreamless) but she would not improve her
mental condition by either route. It was the bell of Holy
Innocents, tolling in the clear afternoon, that reminded
her of the smoke and the square and Mr Kavanagh.
There, she decided, was a fit place for her to walk. She
could enjoy the sunlight, and think. Maybe she would
meet her admirer again.
  She found her way back to All Saints easily enough,
but there was disappointment awaiting her. The demo-
lition site had been cordoned off, the boundary marked
by a row of posts - a red fluorescent ribbon looped
between them. The site was guarded by no less than
four policemen, who were ushering pedestrians towards
a detour around the square. The workers and their
hammers  had been exiled from the shadows of All
Saints and now  a very different selection of people -
suited and academic - occupied the zone beyond the
ribbon, some in furrowed conversation, others standing
on the muddy ground and staring up quizzically at the
derelict church. The south transept and much of the area
around it had been curtained off from public view by
an arrangement of tarpaulins and black plastic sheeting.
Occasionally somebody would emerge from behind this

                     87
veil and consult with others on the site. All who did so,
she noted, were wearing gloves; one or two were also
masked. It was as though they were performing some
ad hoc surgery in the shelter of the screen. A tumour,
perhaps, in the bowels of All Saints.
  She  approached one  of the officers. 'What's going
on?'
  'The foundations are unstable,' he told her. 'Appar-
ently the place could fall down at any moment.'
  'Why  are they wearing masks?'
   'It's just a precaution against the dust.'
  She didn't argue, though this explanation struck her
as unlikely.
  'If you want to get through to Temple Street you'll
have to go round the back,' the officer said.
  What  she really wanted to do was to stand and watch
proceedings, but the proximity of the uniformed quartet
intimidated her, and she decided to give up and go
home. As she began to make her way back to the main
road she caught sight of a familiar figure crossing the end
of an adjacent street. It was unmistakably Kavanagh.
She called after him, though he had already disappeared,
and  was pleased to see him step back into view and
return a nod to her.
  'Well, well -' he said as he came down to meet her.
'I didn't expect to see you again so soon.'
  'I came to watch the rest of the demolition,' she said.
  His face was ruddy with the cold, and his eyes were
shining.
  Tm   so pleased,' he said. 'Do you want to have some
afternoon tea? There's a place just around the corner.'
   Td  like that.'
  As they walked she asked him if he knew what was
going on at All Saints.
   'It's the crypt,' he said, confirming her suspicions.

                     88
  They opened it?'
  'They certainly found a  way in. I was  here this
morning -'
  'About your stones?'
  That's right. They  were already putting up  the
tarpaulins then.'
  'Some of them were wearing masks.'
  'It won't smell very fresh down there. Not after so
long.'
  Thinking of the curtain of tarpaulin drawn between
her and the mystery within she said: 'I wonder what it's
like.'
  'A wonderland,' Kavanagh replied.
  It was an odd response, and she didn't query it, at least
not on the spot. But later, when they'd sat and talked
together for an hour, and she felt easier with him, she
returned to the comment.
  'What you said about the crypt. . .'
  'Yes?'
  'About it being a wonderland.'
  'Did I say that?' he replied, somewhat sheepishly.
'What must you think of me?'
  'I was just puzzled. Wondered what you meant.'
  'I like places where the dead are,' he said. 'I always
have. Cemeteries can be very beautiful, don't you think?
Mausoleums and tombs; all the fine craftsmanship that
goes into those places. Even the dead may sometimes
reward closer scrutiny.' He looked at her to see if he
had strayed beyond her taste threshold, but seeing that
she only looked at him with quiet fascination, continued.
They  can be very beautiful on occasion. It's a sort of a
glamour they have. It's a shame it's wasted on morticians
and funeral directors.' He made a small mischievous
grin. 'I'm sure there's much to be seen in that crypt.
Strange sights. Wonderful sights.'

                     89
  'I only ever saw one dead person. My grandmother,
I was very young at the time . . .'
  'I trust it was a pivotal experience.'
  'I don't think so. In fact I scarcely remember it at all,
I only remember how everybody cried.'
  'Ah.'
  He nodded sagely.
  'So selfish,' he said. 'Don't you think? Spoiling a
farewell with snot and sobs.' Again, he looked at her
to gauge the response; again he was satisfied that she
would  not take offence. 'We cry for ourselves, don't
we? Not for the dead. The dead are past caring.'
  She made a small, soft: 'Yes,' and then, more loudly:
'My God, yes. That's right. Always for ourselves . . .'
  'You see how much the dead can teach, just by lying
there, twiddling their thumb-bones?'
  She laughed: he joined her in laughter. She had mis-
judged  him on  that initial meeting, thinking his face
unused  to smiles; it was not. But his features, when
the laughter died, swiftly regained that eerie quiescence
she had first noticed.
  When,  after a further half hour of his laconic remarks,
he told her he had appointments to keep and had to be on
his way, she thanked him for his company, and said:
  'Nobody's made me laugh so much in weeks. I'm
grateful.'
   'You should laugh,' he told her. 'It suits you.' Then
added: 'You have beautiful teeth.'
  She thought of this odd remark when he'd gone,
as she did of a dozen  others he had made  through
the afternoon. He was undoubtedly one of the most
off-beat individuals she'd ever encountered, but he had
come  into her life - with his eagerness to talk of crypts
and the dead and  the beauty of her teeth - at just the
right moment. He was the perfect distraction from her
                      90
buried sorrows, making her present aberrations seem
minor stuff beside his own. When she started home she
was in high spirits. If she had not known herself better
she might have thought herself half in love with him.
  On  the journey back, and later that evening, she
thought particularly of the joke he had made about
the dead twiddling their thumb-bones, and that thought
led inevitably to the mysteries that lay out of sight in
the crypt. Her curiosity, once aroused, was not easily
silenced; it grew on her steadily that she badly wanted
to slip through that cordon of ribbon and see the burial
chamber with her own eyes. It was a desire she would
never previously have admitted to herself. (How many
times had she walked from the site of an accident, telling
herself to control the shameful inquisitiveness she felt?)
But Kavanagh   had legitimised her appetite with his
flagrant enthusiasm for things funereal. Now, with the
taboo shed, she wanted to go back to All Saints and look
Death in its face, then next time she saw Kavanagh she
would have some stories to tell of her own. The idea, no
sooner budded, came to full flower, and in the middle of
the evening she dressed for the street again and headed
back towards the square.
  She  didn't reach All Saints until well after eleven-
thirty, but there were  still signs of activity at the site.
Lights, mounted  on stands and on the wall of the
church itself, poured illumination on the scene. A trio
of technicians, Kavanagh's so-called removal men, stood
outside the tarpaulin shelter, their faces drawn with
fatigue, their breath clouding the frosty air. She stayed
out of sight and watched the scene. She was growing
steadily colder, and her scars had begun to ache, but
it was apparent that the night's work on the crypt was
more or less over. After some brief exchange with the
police, the technicians departed. They had extinguished
                     91
all but one of the floodlights, leaving the site - church,
tarpaulin and rimy mud - in grim chiaroscuro.
  The  two officers who had been left on guard were
not over-conscientious in their duties. What idiot, they
apparently reasoned, would come grave-robbing at this
hour, and in such temperatures? After a few minutes
keeping  a foot-stamping vigil they withdrew to the
relative comfort of the workmen's hut. When they did
not re-emerge, Elaine crept out of hiding and moved
as cautiously as possible to the ribbon that divided one
zone from the other. A radio had been turned on in
the hut; its noise (music for lovers from dusk to dawn,
the distant voice purred) covered her crackling advance
across the frozen earth.
  Once  beyond the cordon, and  into the forbidden
territory beyond, she was not so hesitant. She swiftly
crossed the hard ground, its wheel-ploughed furrows
like concrete, into the lee of the church. The floodlight
was  dazzling; by it her breath appeared  as solid as
yesterday's smoke had seemed. Behind her, the music
for lovers murmured on. No one emerged from the hut
to summon  her from her trespassing. No alarm-bells
rang. She  reached the edge of the tarpaulin curtain
without incident, and peered at the scene concealed
behind it.
  The demolition men, under very specific instructions
to judge by the care they had taken in their labours, had
dug fully eight feet down the side of All Saints, exposing
the foundations. In so doing they had uncovered an
entrance to the burial-chamber which previous hands
had been at pains to conceal. Not only had earth been
piled up against the flank of the church to hide the
entrance, but the crypt door had also been removed,
and stone masons sealed the entire aperture up. This had
clearly been done at some speed; their handiwork was

                      92
far from ordered. They had simply filled the entrance
up with any stone or brick that had come to hand,
and plastered coarse mortar over their endeavours. Into
this mortar - though the design had been spoiled by
the excavations - some artisan had scrawled a six-foot
 cross.
  All their efforts in securing the crypt, and marking
the mortar to keep the godless out, had gone for nothing
however. The seal had been broken - the mortar hacked
at, the stones torn away. There was now a small hole in
the middle of the doorway, large enough for one person
to gain access to the interior. Elaine had no hesitation in
climbing down the slope to the breached wall, and then
squirming through.
  She had predicted the darkness she met on the other
side, and had brought with her a cigarette lighter Mitch
had given her three years ago. She flicked it on. The
flame was small; she turned up the wick, and by the
swelling light investigated the space ahead of her. It
was not the crypt itself she had stepped into but a
narrow vestibule of some kind: a yard or so in front
of her was another wall, and another door. This one
had not been  replaced with bricks, though into its
solid timbers a second cross had been gouged. She
approached the door. The lock had been removed -
by the investigators presumably - and the door then
held shut again with a rope binding. This had been
done quickly, by  tired fingers. She did not find the
rope difficult to untie, though it required both hands,
and so had to be effected in the dark.
  As she worked the knot free, she heard voices. The
policemen - damn  them - had  left the seclusion of
their hut and come  out into the bitter night to do
their rounds. She let the rope be, and pressed herself
against the inside wall of the vestibule. The officers'

                    93
voices were becoming louder: talking of their children,
and the escalating cost of Christmas joy. Now they were
within yards of the crypt entrance, standing, or so she
guessed, in the shelter of the tarpaulin. They made no
attempt to descend the slope however, but finished their
cursory inspection on the lip of the earthworks, then
turned back. Their voices faded.
  Satisfied that they were out of sight and hearing of
her, she reignited the flame and returned to the door. It
was large and brutally heavy; her first attempt at hauling
it open met with little success. She tried again, and this
time it moved, grating across the grit on the vestibule
floor. Once it was open the vital inches required for her
to squeeze through she eased her straining. The lighter
guttered as though a breath had blown from within; the
flame briefly burned not yellow but electric blue. She
didn't pause to admire it, but slid into the promised
wonderland.
  Now  the flame fed - became livid - and for an instant
its sudden brightness took her sight away. She pressed
the corners of her eyes to clear them, and looked again.
  So this was Death. There was none of the art or the
glamour Kavanagh  had talked of; no calm laying out of
shrouded  beauties on cool marble sheets; no elaborate
reliquaries, nor aphorisms on the nature of human
frailty: not even names and dates. In most cases, the
corpses lacked even coffins.
  The  crypt was a  charnel-house. Bodies had been
thrown  in heaps on every side; entire families pressed
into niches that were designed to hold a single casket,
dozens more  left where hasty and careless hands had
tossed them. The scene - though absolutely still - was
rife with panic. It was  there in the faces that stared
from  the piles of dead: mouths wide in silent protest,
sockets in which eyes had withered gaping in shock at

                      94
such treatment. It was there too in the way the system
of burial had degenerated from the ordered arrangement
of caskets at the far end of the crypt to the haphazard
piling of crudely made coffins, their wood unplaned,
their lids unmarked but for a scrawled cross, and thence
- finally - to this hurried heaping of unhoused carcasses,
all concern for dignity, perhaps even for the rites of
passage, forgotten in the rising hysteria.
  There had  been a disaster, of that she could have
no doubt; a sudden influx of bodies - men, women,
children (there was a baby at her feet who could not have
lived a day) - who had died in such escalating numbers
that there was not  even time  to close their eyelids
before they were shunted away into this pit. Perhaps
the coffin-makers had also died, and were thrown here
amongst their clients; the shroud-sewers too, and the
priests. All gone in one apocalyptic month (or week),
their surviving relatives too shocked or too frightened
to consider the niceties, but only eager to have the dead
thrust out of sight where they would never have to look
on their flesh again.
  There was much  of that flesh still in evidence. The
sealing of the crypt, closing it off from the decaying
air, had kept the occupants intact. Now,  with the
violation of this secret chamber, the heat of decay
had been rekindled, and the tissues were deteriorating
afresh. Everywhere she saw rot at work, making sores
and suppurations, blisters and pustules. She raised the
flame to see better, though the stench of spoilage was
beginning to crowd upon her  and make  her dizzy.
Everywhere  her eyes travelled she seemed to alight
upon some  pitiful sight. Two children laid together as
if sleeping in each other's arms; a woman whose last act,
it appeared, had been to paint her sickened face so as to
die more fit for the marriage-bed than the grave.
                     95
  She could not help but stare, though her fascination
cheated them of privacy. There was so much to see
and remember. She could never be the same, could
she, having viewed these scenes? One corpse - lying
half-hidden beneath  another  - drew   her particular
attention: a woman whose long chestnut-coloured hair
flowed from her scalp so copiously Elaine envied it. She
moved  closer to get a better look, and then, putting the
last of her squeamishness to flight, took hold of the
body thrown across the woman, and hauled it away.
The  flesh of the corpse was greasy to the touch, and
left her lingers stained, but she was  not distressed.
The  uncovered  corpse lay with her legs wide, but
the constant weight of her companion had bent them
into an impossible configuration. The wound that had
killed her had bloodied her thighs, and glued her skirt
to her abdomen and groin. Had she miscarried, Elaine
wondered, or had some disease devoured her there?
  She  stared and stared, bending close to study the
faraway look on the woman's rotted face. Such a place
to lie, she thought, with your blood still shaming you.
She would tell Kavanagh when next she saw him, how
wrong  he had been with his sentimental tales of calm
beneath the sod.
  She had seen enough; more than enough. She wiped
her hands upon her coat and made her way back to the
door, closing it behind her and knotting up the rope
again as she had found it. Then she climbed the slope
into the clean air. The policemen were nowhere in sight,
and she slipped away unseen, like a shadow's shadow.

There was nothing for her to feel, once she had mastered
her" initial disgust, and that twinge of pity she'd felt
seeing the children and the woman with the chestnut
hair; and even those responses - even the pity and the

                     96
repugnance - were quite manageable. She had felt both
more acutely seeing a dog run down by a car than she
had standing in the crypt of All Saints, despite the horrid
displays on every side. When she laid her head down
to sleep that night, and realised that she was neither
trembling nor nauseous, she felt strong. What was there
to fear in all the world if the spectacle of mortality she
had just witnessed could be borne so readily? She slept
deeply, and woke refreshed.
  She went back to work that morning, apologising to
Chimes  for her behaviour of the previous day, and
reassuring him that she was now feeling happier than
she'd felt in months. In order to prove her rehabilitation
she was  as gregarious as she could  be, striking up
conversations with neglected acquaintances, and giving
her smile a ready airing. This met with some initial
resistance; she could sense her colleagues doubting that
this bout of sunshine actually meant a summer. But
when the mood was sustained throughout the day and
through the day following, they began to respond more
readily. By Thursday it was as though the tears of earlier
in the week had never been shed. People told her how
well she was looking. It was true; her mirror confirmed
the rumours. Her eyes shone, her skin shone. She was
a picture of vitality.
  On Thursday  afternoon she was sitting at her desk,
working through a backlog of inquiries, when one of
the secretaries appeared from the corridor and began
to babble. Somebody went to the woman's aid; through
the sobs it was apparent she was talking about Bernice,
a woman Elaine knew well enough to exchange smiles
with on the stairs, but no better. There had been an
accident, it seemed; the woman was  talking about
blood on the  floor. Elaine got up and joined those
who were making  their way out to see what the fuss

                     97
was about. The supervisor was already standing outside
the women's lavatories, vainly instructing the curious to
keep clear. Somebody else - another witness, it seemed
- was offering her account of events:
  'She was just standing there, and suddenly she started
to shake. I thought she was having a fit. Blood started
to come from her nose. Then from her mouth. Pouring
out.'
  'There's nothing to see,' Chimes insisted. 'Please keep
back.' But he was substantially ignored. Blankets were
being brought to wrap around the woman, and as soon as
the toilet door was opened again the sight-seers pressed
forward. Elaine caught sight of a form moving about on
the toilet floor as if convulsed by cramps; she had no
wish to see any more. Leaving the others to throng the
corridor, talking loudly of Bernice as if she were already
dead, Elaine returned to her desk. She had so much to
do; so many wasted, grieving days to catch up on. An
apt phrase flitted into her head. Redeem the time. She
wrote the three words on her notebook as a reminder.
Where  did they come from? She couldn't recall. It didn't
matter. Sometimes there was wisdom in forgetting.

Kavanagh  rang her that evening, and invited her out to
dinner the following night. She had to decline, however,
eager as she was to discuss her recent exploits, because a
small party was being thrown by several of her friends,
to celebrate her return to health. Would he care to join
them?  she asked. He thanked her for the invitation,
but replied that large numbers of people had always
intimidated him. She told him not to be foolish: that
her circle would be pleased to meet him, and she to
show  him  off, but he replied he would only put in
an appearance  if his ego felt the equal of it, and that
if he didn't show up he hoped she wouldn't offended.
                      98
She soothed such fears. Before the conversation came
to an end she slyly mentioned that next time they met
she had a tale to tell.
  The following day brought unhappy news. Bernice
had died in the early hours of Friday morning, without
ever regaining consciousness. The cause of death was
as yet unverified, but the office gossips concurred that
she had never been a strong woman - always the first
amongst  the secretaries to catch a cold and the last
to shake it off. There was also some  talk, though
traded less loudly, about her personal behaviour. She
had been generous with her favours it appeared, and
injudicious in her choice of partners. With  venereal
diseases reaching epidemic proportions, was that not the
likeliest explanation for the death?
  The news, though it kept the rumourmongers in
business, was not  good  for general morale. Two
girls went sick that morning, and  at lunchtime it
seemed that Elaine was the  only member  of staff
with an appetite. She compensated for the lack in her
colleagues, however. She had a fierce hunger in her;
her body almost seemed to ache for sustenance. It was
a good feeling, after so many months of lassitude. When
she looked around at the worn faces at the table she felt
utterly apart from them: from their tittle-tattle and their
trivial opinions, from the way their talk circled on the
suddenness of Bernice's death as though they had not
given the subject a moment's thought in years, and were
amazed that their neglect had not rendered it extinct.
  Elaine knew better. She had come close to death so
often in the recent past: during the months leading up
to her hysterectomy, when the tumours had suddenly
doubled in size as though sensing that they were plotted
against; on the operating table, when twice the surgeons
thought they'd lost her; and most recently, in the crypt,
                     99
face to face with those gawping carcasses. Death was
everywhere. That  they should be  so startled by its
entrance into their charmless circle struck her as almost
comical. She ate lustily, and let them talk in whispers.

They gathered for her party at Reuben's house - Elaine,
Hermione, Sam and Nellwyn, Josh and Sonja. It was a
good night; a chance to pick up on how mutual friends
were faring; how statuses and ambitions were on the
change. Everyone  got drunk  very quickly; tongues
already loosened by  familiarity became progressively
looser. Nellwyn led a tearful toast to Elaine; Josh and
Sonja had a short but acrimonious exchange on the
subject of evangelism; Reuben did his impersonations
of fellow barristers. It was like old times, except that
memory  had yet to improve it. Kavanagh did not put
in an appearance, and Elaine was glad of it. Despite her
protestations when speaking to him she knew he would
have felt out of place in such close-knit company.
  About half past midnight, when the room had settled
into a number of quiet exchanges, Hermione mentioned
the yachtsman. Though  she was almost across the
room, Elaine heard the sailor's name mentioned quite
distinctly. She broke off her conversation with Nellwyn
and picked her way through the sprawling limbs to join
Hermione and Sam.
  'I heard you talking about Maybury,' she said.
  'Yes,' said Hermione, 'Sam and I were just saying how
strange it all was -'
  'I saw him on the news,' Elaine said.
  'Sad story, isn't it?' Sam commented. 'The way it
happened.'
  'Why sad?'
  'Him saying that: about Death being on the boat with
him-'

                     100
  '- And then dying,' Hermione said.
  'Dying?' said Elaine. 'When was this?'
  'It was in all the papers.'
  'I haven't been concentrating that much,'  Elaine
replied. 'What happened?'
  'He was killed,' Sam said. 'They were taking him to
the airport to fly him home, and there was an accident.
He was  killed just like that.' He snapped his middle
finger and thumb. 'Out like a light.'
  'So sad,' said Hermione.
  She glanced at Elaine, and a frown crept across her
face. The look baffled Elaine until - with that same
shock  of recognition she'd  felt in Chimes'   office,
discovering her  tears -  she realized that  she was
smiling.

So the sailor was dead.
  When   the party broke up  in the early hours  of
Saturday morning - when the embraces and the kisses
were over and she was home again - she thought over
the Maybury interview she'd heard, summoning a face
scorched by the sun and  eyes peeled by the wastes
he'd almost been lost to, thinking of his mixture of
detachment and faint embarrassment as he'd told the
tale of his stowaway. And, of course, those final words
of his, when pressed to identify the stranger:
  'Death, I suppose,' he'd said.
  He'd been right.

She woke up  late on Saturday morning, without the
anticipated hangover. There was a letter from Mi ten.
She didn't open it, but left it on the mantelpiece for an
idle moment later in the day. The first snow of winter
was in the wind, though it was too wet to make any
serious impression on the streets. The chill was biting
                     101
enough however, to judge by the scowls on the faces
of passers-by. She felt oddly immune from it, however.
Though  she had no heating on in the flat she walked
around in her bathrobe, and barefoot, as though she
had a fire stoked in her belly.
  After coffee she went through to wash. There was a
spider clot of hair in the plug hole; she fished it out and
dropped it down the lavatory, then returned to the sink.
Since the removal of the dressings she had studiously
avoided any close scrutiny of her body, but today her
qualms and her vanity seemed to have disappeared. She
stripped off her robe, and looked herself over critically.
  She was pleased with what she saw. Her breasts were
full and dark, her skin had a pleasing sheen to it, her
pubic hair had regrown more lushly than ever. The scars
themselves still looked and felt tender, but her eyes read
their lividness as a sign of her cunt's ambition, as though
any day now her sex would grow from anus to navel (and
beyond perhaps) opening her up; making her terrible.
  It was paradoxical, surely, that it was only now, when
the surgeons had emptied her out, that she should feel
so ripe, so resplendent. She stood for fully half an hour
in front of the mirror admiring herself, her thoughts
drifting off. Eventually she returned to the chore of
washing. That done, she went back into the front room,
still naked. She had no desire to conceal herself; quite
the other way about. It was all she could do to prevent
herself from stepping out into the snow and giving the
whole street something to remember her by.
  She  crossed to the window, thinking a dozen such
foolish thoughts. The snow had thickened. Through
the flurries she caught a movement in the alley between
the houses opposite. Somebody was  there, watching
her, though she couldn't see who. She didn't mind.
She  stood peeping at the peeper, wondering  if he

                     102
would have the courage to show himself, but he did
not.
  She watched  for several minutes before she realised
that her brazenness had frightened him away. Disap-
pointed, she wandered back to the bedroom and got
dressed. It was time she found herself something to
eat; she had that familiar fierce hunger upon her. The
fridge was practically empty. She would have to go out
and stock up for the weekend.
  Supermarkets were circuses, especially on a Saturday,
but her mood was far too buoyant to be depressed by
having to make her way through the crowds. Today she
even found some pleasure in these scenes of conspicuous
consumption; in the trolleys and the baskets heaped high
with foodstuffs, and the children greedy-eyed as they
approached the confectionery, and tearful if denied it,
and the wives weighing up the merits of a leg of mutton
while their husbands watched the girls on the staff with
eyes no less calculating.
  She purchased twice as much food for the weekend
as she would normally have done in a full week, her
appetite driven to distraction by the smells from the
delicatessen and fresh meat counters. By the time she
reached the house she was almost shaking with the
anticipation of sustenance. As she put the bags down
on the front step and fumbled for her keys she heard a
car door slam behind her.
  'Elaine?'
  It was Hermione. The red wine she'd consumed the
previous night had left her looking blotchy and stale.
  'Are you feeling all right?' Elaine asked.
  'The point is, are you?' Hermione wanted to know.
  'Yes, I'm fine. Why shouldn't I be?'
  Hermione  returned a harried look. 'Sonja's gone
down  with some  kind of food poisoning, and so's

                    103
Reuben. I just came round to see that you were all
right.'
  'As I say, fine.'
  'I don't understand it.'
  'What about Nellwyn and Dick?'
  'I couldn't get an answer at their place. But Reuben's
in a bad  way. They've  taken him  into hospital for
tests.'
  'Do you want to come in and have a cup of coffee?'
  'No  thanks, I've got to get back to see Sonja. I just
didn't like to think of your being on your own if you'd
gone down with it too.'
  Elaine smiled. 'You're an angel,' she said, and kissed
Hermione  on the cheek. The gesture seemed to startle
the other woman. For some reason she stepped back,
the kiss exchanged, staring at Elaine with a  vague
puzzlement in her eyes.
  'I must ... I must go,' she said, fixing her face as
though it would betray her.
  Til  call you later in the day,' Elaine said, 'and find
out how they're doing.'
  'Fine.'
  Hermione  turned away and crossed the pavement
to her car. Though she made  a cursory attempt to
conceal the gesture, Elaine caught sight of her putting
her fingers to the spot on her cheek where she had
been  kissed and scratching at it, as if to eradicate the
contact.

It was  not the season for flies, but those that had
survived the recent cold buzzed around in the kitchen
as Elaine selected some bread, smoked ham, and garlic
sausage from her purchases, and sat down to eat. She
was ravenous. In five minutes or less she had devoured
the meats, and made  substantial inroads into the loaf,

                     104
and her hunger was scarcely tamed. Settling to a dessert
of figs and cheese, she thought of the paltry omelette
she'd been unable  to finish that day after the visit to
the hospital. One thought led to another; from omelette
to smoke to the square to Kavanagh to her most recent
visit to the church, and thinking of the place she was
suddenly seized by an enthusiasm  to see it one final
time before it was entirely levelled. She was probably
too late already. The bodies would have been parcelled
up and removed, the crypt decontaminated and scoured;
the walls would be rubble. But she knew she would not
be satisfied until she had seen it for herself.
  Even after a meal which would have sickened her with
its excess a few days before, she felt light-headed as she
set out for All Saints; almost as though she were drunk.
Not the maudlin drunkenness she had been prone to
when with Mitch, but a euphoria which made her feel
well-nigh invulnerable, as if she had at last located some
bright and incorruptible part of herself, and no harm
would ever befall her again.
  She had  prepared herself for finding All Saints in
ruins, but she did not. The building still stood, its walls
untouched, its beams still dividing the sky. Perhaps it
too could not be toppled, she mused; perhaps she and
it were twin immortals. The suspicion was reinforced
by the gaggle of fresh worshippers the church  had
attracted. The police guard had trebled since the day
she'd been here, and the tarpaulin that had shielded
the crypt entrance from sight was now  a vast tent,
supported by scaffolding, which entirely encompassed
the flank of the building. The altar-servers, standing
in close proximity to the tent, wore masks and gloves;
the high priests - the chosen few who were  actually
allowed into the Holy of Holies - were entirely garbed
in protective suits.

                    105
  She watched from  the cordon: the signs and genu-
flections between the devotees; the sluicing down of the
suited men as they emerged from behind the veil; the
fine spray of fumigants which  filled the air like bitter
incense.
  Another onlooker was quizzing one of the officers.
  'Why  the suits?'
  'In case it's contagious,' the reply came.
  'After all these years?'
  'They don't know what they've got in there.'
  'Diseases don't last, do they?'
   'It's a plague-pit,' the officer said. 'They're just being
cautious.'
  Elaine listened to the exchange, and her tongue itched
to speak. She could save them their investigations with a
few words. After all, she was living proof that whatever
pestilence had destroyed the families in the crypt it was
no longer virulent. She had breathed that air, she had
touched that mouldy  flesh, and she felt healthier now
than she had in years. But they would not thank her for
her revelations, would they? They were too engrossed
in their rituals; perhaps even excited by the discovery
of such horrors, their turmoil fuelled and fired by the
possibility that this death was still living. She would
not be so unsporting as to sour their enthusiasm with
a confession of her own rare good health.
  Instead she turned her back on the priests and their
rites, on the drizzle of incense in the air, and began to
walk away from the square. As she looked up from her
thoughts she glimpsed a familiar figure watching her
from the corner of the adjacent street. He turned away
as she glanced up, but it was undoubtedly Kavanagh.
She called to him, and went to the corner, but he was
walking smartly away from her, head bowed. Again she
called after him, and now he turned - a patently false

                     106
look of surprise pasted onto his face - and retrod his
escape-route to greet her.
  'Have you heard what  they've found?' she asked
him.
  'Oh yes,' he replied. Despite the familiarity they'd last
enjoyed she was reminded now of her first impression
of him: that he was not a man much conversant with
feeling.
  'Now you'll never get your stones,' she said.
  'I suppose not,' he replied, not overtly concerned at
the loss.
  She wanted to tell him that she'd seen the plague-pit
with her own eyes, hoping the news would bring a gleam
to his face, but the corner of this sunlit street was an
inappropriate spot for such talk. Besides, it was almost
as if he knew. He looked at her so oddly, the warmth of
their previous meeting entirely gone.
  'Why did you come back?' he asked her.
  'Just to see,' she replied.
  'I'm flattered.'
  'Flattered?'
  That my enthusiasm for mausoleums is infectious.'
  Still he watched her, and she, returning his look, was
conscious of how cold his eyes were, and how perfectly
shiny. They might have been glass, she thought; and his
skin suede-glued like a hood over the subtle architecture
of his skull.
  'I should go,' she said.
  'Business or pleasure?'
  'Neither,' she told him. 'One or two of my friends are
ill.'
  'Ah.'
  She had the impression that he wanted to be away;
that it was only fear of foolishness that kept him from
running from her.

                    107
  'Perhaps I'll see you again,' she said. 'Sometime.'
  'I'm sure,' he replied, gratefully taking his cue and
retreating along the street. 'And to your friends - my
best regards.'

Even  if she wanted to pass Kavanagh's good wishes
along to Reuben and Sonja, she could not have done
so. Hermione did not answer the telephone, nor did
any of the others. The closest she came was to leave a
message with Reuben's answering service.
  The  light-headedness she'd  felt earlier in the day
developed into a strange dreaminess as the afternoon
inched towards evening. She ate again, but the feast did
nothing to keep the fugue-state from deepening. She felt
quite well; that sense of inviolability that had came upon
her was still intact. But time and again as the day wore on
she found herself standing on the threshold of a room not
knowing why she had come there; or watching the light
dwindle in the street outside without being quite certain
if she was the viewer or the thing viewed. She was happy
with her company though, as the flies were happy. They
kept buzzing attendance even though the dark fell.
  About seven in the evening she heard a car draw up
outside, and the bell rang. She went to the door of her
flat, but couldn't muster the inquisitiveness to open it,
step out into the hallway and admit callers. It would be
Hermione  again, most probably, and she didn't have
any appetite for gloomy talk. Didn't want anybody's
company  in fact, but that of the flies.
  The  callers insisted on the bell; the more they insisted
the more determined she became not to reply. She slid
down  the wall beside the flat door and listened to the
muted  debate that now began on the step. It wasn't
Hermione; it was nobody she recognized. Now they
systematically rang the bells of the flats above, until

                     108
Mr Prudhoe came down  from the top flat, talking to
himself as he went, and opened the door to them. Of the
conversation that followed she caught sufficient only to
grasp the urgency of their mission, but her dishevelled
mind  hadn't the persistence to attend to the  details.
They persuaded Prudhoe to allow them into the hallway.
They approached the door of her flat and rapped upon
it, calling her name. She didn't reply. They rapped
again, exchanging words of frustration. She wondered
if they could hear her smiling in the darkness. At last
- after a further exchange with Prudhoe - they left her
to herself.
  She didn't know how long she sat on her haunches
beside the door, but when she stood up again her lower
limbs were entirely numb, and she was hungry. She ate
voraciously, more or less finishing off all the purchases
of that morning. The flies seemed to have procreated
in the intervening hours; they crawled on the table and
picked at her slops. She let them eat. They too had their
lives to live.
  Finally she decided to take some air. No sooner had
she stepped out of her flat, however, than the vigilant
Prudhoe was at the top of the stairs, and calling down
to her.
  'Miss Rider. Wait a moment. I have a message for
you.'
  She contemplated closing the door on him, but she
knew  he would  not rest until he had  delivered his
communique. He hurried down the stairs - a Cassandra
in shabby slippers.
  'There were policemen here,' he announced before he
had even reached the bottom step, 'they were looking for
you.'
  'Oh,' she said. 'Did they say what they wanted?'
  To talk to you. Urgently. Two of your friends -'

                    109
  'What about them?'
  'They died,' he said. 'This afternoon. They have some
kind of disease.'
  He had a sheet of notepaper in his hand. This he now
passed over  to her, relinquishing his hold an instant
before she took it.
  They   left that number for you  to call,' he said.
'You've  to contact them  as soon  as possible.' His
message  delivered, he was already retiring up the stairs
again.
  Elaine looked down  at the sheet of paper, with its
scrawled figures. By the time she'd read the seven digits,
Prudhoe had disappeared.
  She went  back into the flat. For some reason she
wasn't thinking of Reuben or Sonja - who, it seemed,
she would not see again - but of the sailor, Maybury,
who'd  seen Death and escaped it only to have it follow
him  like a loyal dog, waiting its moment to leap and
lick his face. She sat beside the phone and stared at
the numbers on the sheet, and then at the fingers that
held the sheet and at the hands that held the fingers.
Was  the touch that hung so innocently at the end of
her arms now lethal? Was that what the detectives had
come to tell her? That her friends were dead by her good
offices? If so, how many others had she brushed against
and  breathed upon  in the days  since her pestilential
education at the crypt? In the street, in the bus, in the
supermarket: at work, at play. She thought of Bernice,
lying on the toilet floor, and of Hermione, rubbing the
spot where she had been kissed as if knowing some
scourge had been passed along to her. And suddenly
she knew, knew in her marrow, that her pursuers were
right in their suspicions, and that all these dreamy
days  she had  been  nurturing a  fatal child. Hence
her hunger; hence the glow of fulfilment she felt.

                     110
  She put down the note and sat in the semi-darkness,
trying to work out precisely the plague's location. Was it
her fingertips; in her belly; in her eyes? None, and yet all
of these. Her first assumption had been wrong. It wasn't
a child at all: she didn't carry it in some particular cell.
It was everywhere. She and it were synonymous. That
being so, there could be no slicing out of the offending
part, as they had sliced out her tumours and all that had
been devoured by them. Not that she would escape their
attentions for that fact. They had come looking for her,
hadn't they, to take her back into the custody of sterile
rooms, to deprive her of her opinions and dignity, to
make her fit only for their loveless investigations. The
thought revolted her;  she would  rather die as the
chestnut-haired woman in the crypt had died, sprawled
in agonies, than submit to them again. She tore up the
sheet of paper and let the litter drop.
  It was too late for solutions anyway. The removal men
had opened the door and found Death waiting on the
other side, eager for daylight. She was its agent, and it
- in its wisdom - had granted her immunity; had given
her strength and a dreamy rapture; had taken her fear
away. She, in return, had spread its word, and there
was no undoing those labours: not now. All the dozens,
maybe hundreds, of people whom she'd contaminated in
the last few days would have gone back to their families
and friends, to their work places and their places of
recreation, and spread the word yet further. They would
have passed its fatal promise to their children as they
tucked them into bed, and to their mates in the act of
love. Priests had no doubt given it with Communion;
shopkeepers with change of a five-pound note.
  While  she  was  thinking of  this - of the disease
spreading like fire in tinder - the doorbell rang again.
They had  come back for her. And, as before, they
                    111
were ringing the other bells in the house. She could hear
Prudhoe coming downstairs. This time he would know
she was in. He would tell them so. They would hammer
at the door, and when she refused to answer -
  As Prudhoe opened the front door she unlocked the
back. As she slipped into the yard she heard voices at the
flat door, and then their rapping and their demands. She
unbolted the yard gate and fled into the darkness of the
alley-way. She already out of hearing range by the time
they had beaten down the door.

She wanted most of all to go back to All Saints, but she
knew  that such a tactic would only invite arrest. They
would  expect her to follow that route, counting upon
her adherence to the first cause. But she wanted to see
Death's face again, now more than ever. To speak with
it. To debate its strategies. Their strategies. To ask why
it had chosen her.
  She emerged  from the alley-way and watched the
goings-on at the front of the house from the corner
of the street. This time there were more than  two
men;  she counted four at least, moving in and out of
the house. What  were they doing? Peeking  through
her underwear  and  her love-letters, most probably,
examining  the sheets on her bed for stray hairs, and
the mirror  for traces of her reflection. But even  if
they turned the flat upside-down, if they examined
every print and pronoun, they wouldn't find the clues
they sought. Let them search. The lover had escaped.
Only her tear stains remained, and flies at the light bulb
to sing her praises.

The  night was starry, but as she walked down to the
centre of  the city the brightness of the Christmas
illuminations festooning trees and buildings cancelled

                     112
 out their light. Most of the stores were well closed by
 this hour, but a good number of window-shoppers still
 idled along the pavements. She soon tired of the displays
 however, of the baubles and the dummies, and made
 her way off the main road and  into the side streets.
 It was darker here, which suited her abstracted state
 of mind. The sound of music and laughter escaped
 through open bar doors; an argument erupted in an
 upstairs gaming-room: blows were exchanged; in one
 doorway two lovers defied discretion; in another, a man
 pissed with the gusto of a horse.
  It was  only now,  in the  relative hush of these
 backwaters, that she  realised she was   not alone.
Footsteps followed her, keeping a cautious distance, but
never straying far. Had the trackers followed her? Were
they hemming her in even now, preparing to snatch her
into their closed order? If so, flight would only delay
the inevitable. Better to confront them now, and dare
them to come  within range of her pollution. She slid
into hiding, and listened as the footsteps approached,
then stepped into view.
  It was  not the law, but  Kavanagh.  Her  initial
shock was almost immediately superseded by a sudden
comprehension of why he had pursued her. She studied
him. His skin was  pulled so tight over his skull she
could see the bone gleam in the dismal light. How, her
whirling thoughts demanded, had she not recognised
him sooner? Not realised at that first meeting, when
he'd talked of the dead and their glamour, that he spoke
as their Maker?
  'I followed you,' he said.
  'All the way from the house?'
  He nodded.
  'What  did they  tell you?' he asked  her. 'The
policemen. What did they say?'

                    113
  'Nothing I hadn't already guessed,' she replied.
  'You knew?'
  'In a manner of speaking. I must have done, in my
heart of hearts. Remember our first conversation?'
  He murmured that he did.
  'All you said about Death. Such egotism.'
  He grinned suddenly, showing more bone.
  'Yes,' he said. 'What must you think of me?'
  'It made a kind of sense to me, even then. I didn't
know  why at the time. Didn't know what the future
would bring -'
  'What  does it bring?' he inquired of her softly.
  She shrugged. 'Death's been waiting for me all this
time, am I right?'
  'Oh yes,' he said, pleased by her understanding of the
situation between them. He took a step towards her, and
reached to touch her face.
  'You are remarkable,' he said.
  'Not really.'
  'But to be so unmoved by it all. So cold.'
  'What's  to be afraid of?' she said. He stroked her
cheek. She almost expected his hood of skin to come
unbuttoned  then, and the marbles that played in his
sockets to tumble out and smash. But he kept his
disguise intact, for appearance's sake.
  'I want you,' he told her.
   'Yes,' she said. Of course he did. It had been in his
every word from the beginning, but she hadn't had the
wit to comprehend it. Every love story was - at the last
- a story of death; this was what the poets insisted. Why
should it be any less true the other way about?
  They  could  not go back to his house; the officers
would  be there too, he told her, for they must know
of the romance between them. Nor, of course, could
they return to her flat. So they found a small hotel in

                     114
the vicinity and took a room there. Even in the dingy
lift he took the liberty of stroking her hair, and then,
finding her compliant, put his hand upon her breast.
  The room was sparsely furnished, but was lent some
measure of charm by a splash of coloured lights from a
Christmas tree in the street below. Her lover didn't take
his eyes off her for a single moment, as if even now he
expected her to turn tail and run at the merest flaw in
his behaviour. He needn't have concerned himself; his
treatment of her left little cause for complaint. His kisses
were insistent but not overpowering; his undressing of
her - except for the fumbling (a nice human touch, she
thought) - was a model of finesse and sweet solemnity.
  She was surprised that he had not known about her
scar, only because she had  become  to  believe this
intimacy had begun on the operating table, when twice
she had gone into his arms, and twice been denied
them  by the surgeon's bullying. But perhaps, being
no sentimentalist, he had forgotten that first meeting.
Whatever the reason, he looked to be upset when he
slipped off her dress, and there was a trembling interval
when she thought he would reject her. But the moment
passed, and now he reached down to her abdomen and
ran his fingers along the scar.
  'It's beautiful,' he said.
  She was happy.
  'I almost died under the anaesthetic,' she told him.
  That would have been a waste,' he said, reaching up
her body and working at her breast. It seemed to arouse
him, for his voice was more guttural when next he spoke.
'What did they tell you?' he asked her, moving his hands
up the soft channel behind her clavicle, and stroking her
there. She had not been touched in months, except by
disinfected hands; his delicacy woke shivers in her. She
was so engrossed in pleasure that she failed to reply to
                    115
his question. He asked again as he moved between her
legs.
  'What did they tell you?'
  Through  a haze of anticipation she said: 'They left a
number for me to ring. So that I could be helped . . .'
  'But you didn't want help?'
  'No,' she breathed. 'Why should I?'
  She half-saw his smile, though her eyes wanted to
flicker closed entirely. His  appearance  failed to stir
any passion in her; indeed  there was much  about
his disguise (that absurd bow-tie, for one) which she
thought ridiculous. With her eyes closed, however, she
could forget such petty details; she could strip the hood
off and imagine him pure. When she thought of him that
way her mind pirouetted.
  He  took his hands from her; she opened her eyes.
He was fumbling with his belt. As he did so somebody
shouted in the street outside. His head jerked in the
direction of the window; his body tensed. She was
surprised at his sudden concern.
   'It's all right,' she said.
  He leaned forward and put his hand to her throat.
  'Be quiet,' he instructed.
  She looked up into his face. He had begun to sweat.
The exchanges in the street went on for a few minutes
longer; it was simply two late-night gamblers parting.
He realized his error now.
  'I thought I heard -'
  'What?'
  '- I thought I heard them calling my name.'
  'Who  would do that?' she inquired fondly. 'Nobody
knows we're here.'
  He looked away from the window. All purposefulness
had abruptly drained from him; after the instant of fear
his features had slackened. He looked almost stupid.

                    116
  They  came close,' he said. 'But they never found
me.'
  'Close?'
  'Coming to you.' He laid his head on her breasts. 'So
very close,' he murmured. She could hear her pulse in
her head. 'But I'm swift,' he said, 'and invisible.'
  His hand strayed back down to her scar, and further.
  'And always neat,' he added.
  She sighed as he stroked her.
  They admire me for that, I'm sure. Don't you think
they must admire me? For being so neat?'
  She remembered the chaos of the crypt; its indignities,
its disorders.
  'Not always ..." she said.
  He stopped stroking her.
  'Oh yes,' he said. 'Oh yes. I never spill blood. That's
a rule of mine. Never spill blood.'
  She smiled at his boasts. She would tell him now -
though surely he already knew - about her visit to All
Saints, and the handiwork of his that she'd seen there.
  'Sometimes you can't help blood being spilt,' she said,
'I don't hold it against you.'
  At these words, he began to tremble.
  'What did they tell you about me? What lies'?'
  'Nothing,' she said, mystified by his response. 'What
could they know?'
  'I'm a professional,' he said to her, his hand moving
back up to her face. She felt intentionality in him again.
A seriousness in his weight as he pressed closer upon
her.
  'I won't have them lie about me,' he said. 'I won't
have it.'
  He lifted his head from her chest and looked at her.
  'All I do is stop the drummer,' he said.
  The drummer?'
                    117
  'I have to stop him cleanly. In his tracks.'
  The wash of colours from the lights below painted his
face one moment red, the next green, the next yellow;
unadulterated hues, as in a child's paint-box.
  'I won't have them tell lies about me,' he said again.
'To say I spill blood.'
  'They told me nothing,' she assured him. He had
given up his pillow entirely, and now moved to straddle
her. His hands were done with tender touches.
  'Shall I show you how clean I am?' he said: 'How
easily I stop the drummer?'
  Before she could reply, his hands closed around her
neck. She had no time even to gasp, let alone shout.
His thumbs were expert; they found her windpipe and
pressed. She heard the drummer quicken its rhythm
in her ears. 'It's quick; and clean,' he was telling her,
the colours still coming in predictable sequence. Red,
yellow, green; red, yellow, green.
  There  was  an  error here, she  knew;  a  terrible
misunderstanding  which she  couldn't quite fathom.
She struggled to make some sense of it.
   'I don't understand,' she tried to tell him, but her
bruised larynx could produce no more than a gargling
sound.
   Too  late for excuses,' he said, shaking his head.
'You came to me, remember? You want the drummer
stopped. Why  else did you come?' His grip tightened
yet further. She had the sensation of her face swelling;
of the blood throbbing to jump from her eyes.
  'Don't you see that they came to warn you about me?'
frowning as he laboured. 'They came to seduce you away
from me  by telling you I spilt blood.'
   'No,' she squeezed  the  syllable out on her  last
breath,  but he  only pressed  harder  to cancel her
denial.

                     118
  The drummer  was deafeningly loud now; though
Kavanagh's mouth  still opened and closed she could
no longer hear what he  was telling her. It mattered
little. She realised now that he was not Death; not the
clean-boned guardian she'd waited for. In her eagerness,
she had given herself into the hands of a common killer,
a street-corner Cain. She wanted to spit contempt at
him, but her consciousness was slipping, the room, the
lights, the face all throbbing to the drummer's beat. And
then it all stopped.
  She looked down on the bed. Her body lay sprawled
across it. One desperate hand had clutched at the sheet,
and clutched still, though there was no life left in it. Her
tongue protruded, there was spittle on her blue lips. But
(as he had promised) there was no blood.
  She hovered,  her presence failing even to bring a
breeze to the cobwebs  in this corner of the ceiling,
and watched while Kavanagh  observed the rituals of
hi« crime. He was bending over the body, whispering
in its ear as he rearranged it on the tangled sheets. Then
he unbuttoned himself and unveiled that bone whose
inflammation was the sincerest form of flattery. What
followed was comical in its gracelessness; as her body
was comical, with its scars and its places where age
puckered and plucked at it. She watched his ungainly
attempts at congress quite remotely. His buttocks were
pale, and imprinted with the marks his underwear had
left; their motion put her in mind of a  mechanical
toy.
  He  kissed her as he worked, and swallowed the
pestilence with her spittle; his hands came off her body
gritty with her contagious cells. He knew none of this, of
course. He was perfectly innocent of what corruption he
embraced, and took into himself with every uninspired
thrust.

                    119
  At last, he finished. There was no gasp, no cry. He
simply stopped his clockwork motion and climbed off
her, wiping himself with the edge of the sheet, and
buttoning himself up again.
  Guides were calling her. She had journeys to make,
reunions to look forward to. But she did not want to
go; at least not yet. She  steered the vehicle of her
spirit to a fresh vantage-point, where she could better
see Kavanagh's face. Her sight, or whatever sense this
condition granted her, saw clearly how his features were
painted over a groundwork of muscle, and how, beneath
that intricate scheme, the bones sheened. Ah, the bone.
He was not Death of course; and yet he was. He had the
face, hadn't he? And one day, given decay's blessing,
he'd show it. Such a pity that a scraping of flesh came
between it and the naked eye.
  Come  away, the voices insisted. She knew they could
not be fobbed off very much longer. Indeed there were
some amongst them she thought she knew. A moment,
she pleaded, only a moment more.
  Kavanagh  had finished his business at the murder-
scene. He  checked his appearance in the wardrobe
mirror, then went to the door. She went with him,
intrigued by the utter banality of his expression. He
slipped out onto the silent landing and then down the
stairs, waiting for a moment when the night-porter was
otherwise engaged before stepping out into the street,
and liberty.
  Was it dawn that washed the sky, or the illuminations?
Perhaps she had watched him from  the corner of the
room  longer than she'd thought - hours passing as
moments  in the state she had so recently achieved.
  Only  at the last was she rewarded for her vigil, as a
look she recognised crossed Kavanagh's face. Hunger!
The man  was hungry. He would not die of the plague,

                     120
any more than she had. Its presence shone in him -
gave a fresh lustre to his skin, and a new insistence to
his belly.
  He had come to her a minor murderer, and was going
from her as Death writ large. She laughed, seeing the
self-fulfilling prophecy she had unwittingly engineered.
For an instant his pace slowed, as if he might have heard
her. But no; it was the drummer he was listening for,
beating louder than ever in his ear and demanding, as
he went, a new and deadly vigour in his every step.
                     121
   HOW  SPOILERS
      BLEED
LOCKE RAISED HIS eyes to the trees. The wind was
    moving in them, and the commotion of their laden
branches sounded like the river in full spate. One imper-
sonation of many. When he had first come to the jungle
he had been awed by the sheer multiplicity of beast and
blossom, the relentless parade of life here. But he had
learned better. This burgeoning diversity was a sham;
the jungle pretending itself an artless garden. It was not.
Where  the untutored trespasser saw only a brilliant show
of natural splendours, Locke now recognised a subtle
conspiracy at work, in which each thing mirrored some
other thing. The  trees, the river; a blossom, a bird.
In a moth's wing, a monkey's eye; on a lizard's back,
sunlight on stones. Round and round in a dizzying circle
of impersonations, a hall of mirrors which confounded
the senses and would, given time, rot reason altogether.
See us now, he thought drunkenly as they stood around
Cherrick's grave, look at how we play the game too.
We're living; but we impersonate the dead better than
the dead themselves.

                     122
  The corpse had been one scab by the time they'd
hoisted it into a sack  and  carried it outside to this
miserable plot behind Tetelman's house to bury. There
were half a dozen other graves here. All Europeans, to
judge by the names crudely burned into the wooden
crosses; killed by snakes, or heat, or longing.
  Tetelman attempted to say a brief prayer in Spanish,
but the roar of the trees, and the din of birds making
their way home to their roosts before night came down,
all but drowned him out. He gave up eventually, and
they made   their way back  into the  cooler interior
of the house, where  Stumpf  was sitting, drinking
brandy and  staring inanely at the darkening stain on
the floorboards.
  Outside, two of Tetelman's tamed  Indians were
shovelling the rank jungle earth on top of Cherrick's
sack, eager to be done  with the  work and  away
before nightfall. Locke watched from  the window.
Tiie grave-diggers didn't talk as they laboured, but
filled the shallow grave up, then flattened the earth
as best they  could  with the  leather-tough soles of
their feet. As they did so the stamping of the ground
took on a  rhythm. It occurred to Locke  that the
men  were probably the worse  for bad whisky; he
knew few Indians who didn't drink like fishes. Now,
staggering a little, they began to dance on Cherrick's
grave.

'Locke?'
  Locke  woke. In the darkness, a cigarette glowed.
As the smoker drew on it, and the tip burned more
intensely, Stumpf s wasted features swam up out of the
night.
  'Locke? Are you awake?'
  'What do you want?'

                    123
  'I can't sleep,' the mask replied, 'I've been thinking.
The supply plane comes in from Santarem the day after
tomorrow. We could be back there in a few hours. Out
of all this.'
  'Sure.'
  'I mean permanently,' Stumpf said. 'Away.'
  'Permanently?'
  Stumpf lit another cigarette from the embers of his last
before saying, 'I don't believe in curses. Don't think I
do.'
  'Who  said anything about curses?'
  'You  saw  Cherrick's body. What  happened  to
him  . . .'
  'There's a disease,' said Locke, 'what's it called? -
when  the blood doesn't set properly?'
  'Haemophilia,' Stumpf replied. 'He didn't have
haemophilia and  we both  know  it. I've seen him
scratched and cut dozens of times. He mended like
you or I.'
  Locke snatched at a mosquito that had alighted on his
chest and ground it out between thumb and forefinger.
  'All right. Then what killed him?'
  'You saw the wounds better than I did, but it seemed
to me  his skin just broke open as soon  as he was
touched.'
  Locke nodded. 'That's the way it looked.'
  'Maybe it's something he caught off the Indians.'
  Locke took the point.'/ didn't touch any of them,' he
said.
  'Neither did I. But he did, remember?'
  Locke remembered;  scenes like that weren't easy to
forget, try as he  might.  'Christ,' he said, his voice
hushed. 'What a fucking situation.'
  'I'm going back to Santarem. I don't want them
coming looking for me.'

                     124
  'They're not going to.'
  'How do you know? We screwed up back there. We
could have bribed them. Got them off the land some
other way.'
  'I doubt it. You heard what Tetelman said. Ancestral
territories.'
  'You can have my share of the land,' Stumpf said, 'I
want no part of it.'
  'You mean it then? You're getting out?'
  'I feel dirty. We're spoilers, Locke.'
  'It's your funeral.'
  'I mean it. I'm not like you. Never really had the
stomach for this kind of thing. Will you buy my third
off me?'
  'Depends on your price.'
  'Whatever you want to give. It's yours.'

Confessional over, Stumpf returned to his bed, and lay
down in the darkness to finish off his cigarette. It would
soon be light. Another jungle dawn: a precious interval,
all too short, before the world began to sweat. How
he hated the place. At least he hadn't touched  any
of the Indians; hadn't  even been  within breathing
distance of them.  Whatever  infection they'd passed
on to Cherrick he could surely not be tainted. In less
than forty-eight hours he would be away to Santarem,
and then on  to some city, any city, where the tribe
could never follow. He'd already done  his penance,
hadn't he? Paid for his greed and his arrogance with
the rot in his abdomen  and  the terrors he knew
he would  never quite shake off again. Let that be
punishment enough, he prayed, and slipped, before
the monkeys  began to call up the day, into a spoiler's
sleep.
  A  gem-backed beetle, trapped beneath Stumpfs

                     125
mosquito net, hummed  around in diminishing circles,
looking for some way out. It could find none. Eventually,
exhausted by the search, it hovered over the sleeping
man, then landed on his forehead. There it wandered,
drinking at the pores. Beneath its imperceptible tread,
Stumpf s skin opened and broke into a trail of tiny
wounds.

They had come into the Indian hamlet at noon; the sun
a basilisk's eye. At first they had thought the place
deserted. Locke and Cherrick had advanced  into the
compound, leaving the dysentery-ridden Stumpf in the
jeep, out of the worst of the heat. It was Cherrick who
first noticed the child. A pot-bellied boy of perhaps four
or five, his face painted with thick bands of the scarlet
vegetable dye urucu, had slipped out from his hiding
place and come to peer at the trespassers, fearless in his
curiosity. Cherrick stood still; Locke did the same. One
by one, from the huts and from the shelter of the trees
around the compound, the tribe appeared and stared,
like the boy, at the newcomers. If there was a flicker
of feeling on their broad, flat-nosed faces, Locke could
not read it. These people - he thought of every Indian as
part of one wretched tribe - were impossible to decipher;
deceit was their only skill.
  'What  are you doing here?' he said. The sun was
baking the back of his neck. 'This is our land.'
  The  boy still looked up at him. His almond eyes
refused to fear.
  'They don't understand you,' Cherrick said.
  'Get the  Kraut out  here. Let him  explain it to
them.'
  'He can't move.'
  'Get him out here,' Locke said. 'I don't care if he's shat
his pants.'

                     126
  Cherrick backed away down the track, leaving Locke
standing in the ring of huts. He looked from doorway
to doorway, from tree to tree, trying to estimate the
numbers. There were at most three dozen Indians, two-
thirds of them women and children; descendants of the
great peoples that had once roamed the Amazon Basin
in their tens of thousands. Now those tribes were all but
decimated. The forest in which they had prospered for
generations was being levelled and burned; eight-lane
highways were speeding through their hunting grounds.
All they held sacred - the wilderness and their place in
its system - was being trampled and trespassed: they
were exiles in their own land. But still they declined to
pay homage to their new masters, despite the rifles they
brought. Only death would convince them  of defeat,
Locke mused.
  Cherrick found Stumpf slumped in the front seat of
the jeep, his pasty features more wretched than ever.
  'Locke wants you,' he said, shaking the German out
of his doze. 'The village is still occupied. You'll have
to speak to them.'
  Stumpf groaned. 'I can't move,' he said, Tm dying-'
  'Locke wants you dead or alive,' Cherrick said. Their
fear of Locke, which went unspoken, was perhaps one
of the two things they had in common; that and greed.
  'I feel awful,' Stumpf said.
  'If I don't bring you, he'll only come  himself,'
Cherrick pointed out. This was indisputable. Stumpf
threw the other man a despairing glance, then nodded
his jowly head. 'All right,' he said, 'help me.'
  Cherrick had no wish to lay a hand on  Stumpf.
The  man  stank of his sickness; he seemed to be
oozing the  contents of his gut  through  his pores;
his skin had the lustre of rank meat. He  took the
outstretched hand nevertheless. Without aid, Stumpf
                    127
would never make  the hundred yards from jeep to
compound.
  Ahead, Locke was shouting.
  'Get moving,' said Cherrick, hauling Stumpf down
from the front seat and towards the bawling voice. 'Let's
get it over and done with.'
  When   the two men returned into the circle of huts
the scene had scarcely changed. Locke glanced around
at Stumpf.
  'We got trespassers,' he said.
  'So I see,' Stumpf returned wearily.
  'Tell them to get the fuck off our land,' Locke said.
'Tell them this is our territory: we bought it. Without
sitting tenants.'
  Stumpf  nodded, not meeting Locke's rabid eyes.
Sometimes he hated the man almost as much as he
hated himself.
  'Go on  . . .' Locke said, and gestured for Cherrick
to relinquish his support of Stumpf. This  he did.
The  German  stumbled forward, head bowed. He
took  several seconds to work   out his patter, then
raised his head and  spoke  a few  wilting words in
bad Portuguese. The pronouncement  was met with
the same blank looks as Locke's performance. Stumpf
tried again, re-arranging his inadequate vocabulary to
try and awake a flicker of understanding amongst these
savages.
  The  boy who  had been so entertained by Locke's
cavortings now stood staring up at this third demon,
his face wiped of smiles. This one was nowhere near as
comical as the first. He was sick and haggard; he smelt
of death. The boy held his nose to keep from inhaling
the badness off the man.
  Stumpf  peered through greasy eyes at his audience.
If they did understand, and were  faking their blank

                     128
incomprehension, it was a flawless performance. His
limited skills defeated, he turned giddily to Locke.
  They  don't understand me,' he said.
  Tell them again.'
  'I don't think they speak Portuguese.'
  Tell them anyway.'
  Cherrick cocked his rifle. 'We don't have to talk with
them,' he said under his breath. They're on our land.
We're within our rights -'
  'No,' said Locke. There's no need for shooting. Not
if we can persuade them to go peacefully.'
  They don't understand plain common sense,' Cher-
rick said. 'Look at them. They're animals. Living in
filth.'
  Stumpf had begun to try and communicate again,
this time accompanying his hesitant words with a pitiful
mime.
  Tell them  we've got  work to  do here,' Locke
prompted him.
  'I'm trying my best,' Stumpf replied testily.
  'We've got papers.'
  'I don't think they'd be much impressed,' Stumpf
returned, with a cautious sarcasm that was lost on the
other man.
  'Just tell them to move on. Find some other piece of
land to squat on.'
  Watching Stumpf put these sentiments into word and
sign-language, Locke was already running through the
alternative options available. Either the Indians - the
Txukahamei or the Achual or whatever damn family it
was - accepted their demands and moved on, or else they
would have to enforce the edict. As Cherrick had said,
they were within their rights. They had papers from
the development authorities; they had maps marking
the division between one territory and the next; they

                     129
had every sanction from signature to bullet. He had no
active desire to shed blood. The world was still too full
of bleeding heart liberals and doe-eyed sentimentalists
to make  genocide the most convenient solution. But
the gun  had been used  before, and would be used
again, until every unwashed Indian had put on a pair
of trousers and given up eating monkeys.
  Indeed, the din of liberals notwithstanding, the gun
had its appeal. It was swift, and absolute. Once it had
had its short, sharp say there was no danger of further
debate; no chance that in ten years' time some mercenary
Indian who'd found a copy of Marx in the gutter could
come  back claiming his tribal lands - oil, minerals and
all. Once gone, they were gone forever.
  At the thought of these scarlet-faced savages laid low,
Locke  felt his trigger-finger itch; physically itch. Stumpf
had finished his encore; it had met with no response.
Now  he groaned, and turned to Locke.
   Tm  going  to be sick,' he said. His face was bright
white; the glamour of his skin made his small teeth look
dingy.
  'Be my guest,' Locke replied.
  'Please. I have to lie down. I don't want  them
watching me.'
  Locke  shook his head. 'You don't move  'til they
listen. If we don't get any joy from them, you're going
to see something to be sick about.' Locke toyed with
the stock of his rifle as he spoke, running a broken
thumb-nail along the nicks in it. There were perhaps a
dozen; each one a human grave. The jungle concealed
murder  so easily; it almost seemed, in its cryptic fashion,
to condone the crime.
  Stumpf turned away from Locke and scanned the
mute assembly. There were so many Indians here, he
thought, and though he carried a pistol he was an inept
                     130
marksman. Suppose they rushed Locke, Cherrick and
himself? He would not survive. And yet, looking at the
Indians, he could see no sign of aggression amongst
them. Once they had been warriors; now? Like beaten
children, sullen and wilfully stupid. There was some
trace of beauty in one or two of the younger women;
their skins, though grimy, were fine, their eyes black.
Had he felt more healthy he might have been aroused by
their nakedness, tempted to press his hands upon their
shiny bodies. As it was their feigned incomprehension
merely irritated him. They seemed,  in their silence,
like another species, as mysterious and unfathomable
as mules or birds. Hadn't somebody in Uxituba told
him that many  of these people didn't even give their
children proper names? That each was like a limb of
the tribe, anonymous and therefore unfixable? He could
believe that now, meeting the same dark stare in each
pair of eyes; could believe that what they faced here was
not three dozen individuals but a fluid system of hatred
made flesh. It made him shudder to think of it.
  Now,  for the first time since their appearance, one
of the assembly moved.  He  was an  ancient; fully
thirty years older than most  of the tribe. He,  like
the rest, was all but naked.  The  sagging flesh of
his limbs and  breasts resembled tanned  hide; his
step, though the pale eyes suggested blindness, was
perfectly confident. Once  standing in front of  the
interlopers he opened his mouth  -  there were  no
teeth set in his rotted gums  -  and  spoke. What
emerged from  his scraggy throat was not a language
made  of words, but only of sound; a pot-pourri of
jungle noises. There  was  no  discernible pattern to
the outpouring, it was simply a display - awesome in
its way - of impersonations. The man could murmur
like a jaguar, screech like a parrot; he could find in

                    131
his throat the splash of rain on orchids; the howl of
monkeys.
  The sounds made Stumpf s gorge rise. The jungle
had diseased him, dehydrated him and left him wrung
out. Now  this rheumy-eyed stick-man was vomiting
the whole  odious place up at him. The  raw  heat
in the circle of huts made Stumpf s head beat, and
he  was  sure, as  he  stood  listening to the  sage's
din, that the old man  was  measuring the rhythm
of his nonsense  to the  thud  at his temples and
wrists.
  'What's he saying?' Locke demanded.
  'What does it sound like?' Stumpf replied, irritated by
Locke's  idiot questions. 'It's all noises.'
  'The fucker's cursing us,' Cherrick said.
  Stumpf looked round at the third man. Cherrick's
eyes were starting from his head.
  'It's a curse,' he said to Stumpf.
  Locke laughed, unmoved  by Cherrick's apprehen-
sion. He pushed Stumpf out of the way so as to face
the old man, whose song-speech had now lowered in
pitch; it was almost lilting. He was singing twilight,
Stumpf  thought: that brief ambiguity between the
fierce day and  the suffocating night. Yes, that was
it. He  could hear in  the song  the purr and  the
coo of a drowsy  kingdom. It was so persuasive he
wanted to lie down on the spot where he stood, and
sleep.
  Locke  broke the spell. 'What are you saying?' he spat
in the tribesman's rnazy face. 'Talk sense!'
  But the night-noises only whispered on, an unbroken
stream.
  'This is our village,' another voice now broke in; the
man  spoke as if translating the elder's words. Locke
snapped round  to locate the speaker. He was a thin

                     132
youth, whose skin might once have been golden. 'Our
village. Our land.'
  'You speak English,' Locke said.
  'Some,' the youth replied.
  'Why   didn't you  answer  me   earlier?' Locke
demanded,  his fury exacerbated by the disinterest on the
Indian's face.
  'Not my place to speak,' the man replied. 'He is the
elder.'
  'The Chief, you mean?'
  'The Chief is dead. All his family is dead. This is the
wisest of us -'
  'Then you tell him -'
  'No need to tell,' the young man broke in. 'He under-
stands you.'
  'He speaks English too?'
  'No,' the other replied, 'but he understands you. You
are ... transparent.'
  Locke half-grasped that the youth was implying an
insult here, but wasn't quite certain. He gave Stumpf
a puzzled look. The German shook his head. Locke
returned his attention to the youth. 'Tell him anyway,'
he said, 'tell all of them. This is our land. We bought
it.'
  'The tribe has always lived here,' the reply came.
  'Not any longer,' Cherrick said.
  'We've got papers -' Stumpf said mildly, still hoping
that the confrontation might end peacefully,'- from the
government.'
  'We were here before the government,' the tribesman
replied.
  The old man had stopped talking the forest. Perhaps,
Stumpf  thought, he's coming to the beginning of
another day, and stopped. He was turning away now,
indifferent to the presence of these unwelcome guests.

                     133
  'Call him back,' Locke demanded, stabbing his rifle
towards the young tribesman. The gesture was unam-
biguous. 'Make him tell the rest of them they've got to
go-'
  The young man seemed unimpressed by the threat
of Locke's rifle, however, and clearly unwilling to give
orders to his elder, whatever the imperative. He simply
watched the old man walk back towards the hut from
which he had emerged. Around the compound, others
were also turning away. The  old man's withdrawal
apparently signalled that the show was over.
  'No\' said Cherrick, 'you're not listening.' The colour
in his cheeks had risen a tone; his voice, an octave. He
pushed forward, rifle raised. 'You fucking scum!'
  Despite  his  hysteria, he  was  rapidly  losing his
audience. The old man had reached the doorway of
his hut, and now bent his back and disappeared into
its recesses; the few members of the tribe who were still
showing some interest in proceedings were viewing the
Europeans  with a hint of pity for their lunacy. It only
enraged Cherrick further.
  'Listen to me!' he shrieked, sweat flicking off his brow
as he jerked his head at one retreating figure and then at
another. 'Listen, you bastards.'
  'Easy . . .' said Stumpf.
  The  appeal triggered Cherrick. Without warning he
raised his rifle to his shoulder, aimed at the open door of
the hut into which the old man had vanished and fired.
Birds rose from the crowns of adjacent trees; dogs took
to their heels. From within the hut came a tiny shriek,
not like the old man's voice at all. As it sounded, Stumpf
fell to his knees, hugging his belly, his gut in spasm.
Face to the ground, he did not see the diminutive figure
emerge from the hut and totter into the sunlight. Even
when  he did look up, and saw how the child with the

                     134
scarlet face clutched his belly, he hoped his eyes lied.
But they did not. It was blood that came from between
the child's tiny fingers, and death that had stricken his
face. He fell forward on to the impacted earth of the
hut's threshold, twitched, and died.
  Somewhere amongst the huts a woman began to sob
quietly. For a moment the world spun on a pin-head,
balanced exquisitely between silence and the cry that
must break it, between a truce held and the coming
atrocity.
  'You stupid bastard,' Locke murmured to Cherrick.
Under his condemnation, his voice trembled. 'Back off,'
he said. 'Get up, Stumpf. We're not waiting. Get up and
come now, or don't come at all.'
  Stumpf  was still looking at the body of the child.
Suppressing his moans, he got to his feet.
  'Help me,' he said. Locke lent him an arm. 'Cover us,'
he said to Cherrick.
  The man  nodded, deathly-pale. Some of the tribe
had turned their gaze on the Europeans' retreat, their
expressions, despite this tragedy, as inscrutable as ever.
Only the sobbing woman, presumably the dead child's
mother, wove  between the silent figures, keening her
grief.
  Cherrick's rifle shook as he kept the bridgehead.
He'd done the mathematics; if it came to a head-on
collision they had little chance of survival. But even
now, with the enemy making  a getaway, there was
no sign of movement amongst the Indians. Just the
accusing facts: the dead boy; the warm rifle. Cherrick
chanced a look over his shoulder. Locke and Stumpf
were already within twenty yards of the jeep, and there
was still no move from the savages.
  Then, as he looked back towards the compound,
it seemed as though the tribe breathed together one

                     135
solid breath, and  hearing that sound  Cherrick  felt
death wedge  itself like a fish-bone in his throat, too
deep to be plucked  out by his fingers, too big to be
shat. It was just waiting there, lodged in his anatomy,
beyond argument  or appeal. He was distracted from
its presence by a movement at the door of the hut.
Quite ready to make the same mistake again, he took
firmer hold of his rifle. The old man had re-appeared
at the door. He stepped over the corpse of the boy,
which was lying where it had toppled. Again, Cherrick
glanced behind  him. Surely they were  at the jeep?
But Stumpf  had stumbled; Locke was even now
dragging  him  to his feet. Cherrick, seeing  the old
man  advancing towards him, took one cautious step
backwards, followed by another. But the old man was
fearless. He walked swiftly across the compound coming
to stand so close to Cherrick, his body as vulnerable as
ever, that the barrel of the rifle prodded his shrunken
belly.
  There  was blood on both his hands, fresh enough
to run down the man's arms when he displayed the
palms for Cherrick's benefit. Had he touched the boy,
Cherrick wondered, as he stepped out of the hut? If so,
it had been an astonishing sleight-of-hand, for Cherrick
had seen nothing. Trick or no trick, the significance of
the display was perfectly apparent: he was being accused
of murder. Cherrick wasn't about to be cowed, however.
He stared back at the old man, matching defiance with
defiance.
  But  the old bastard did nothing, except show his
bloody palms, his eyes full of tears. Cherrick could feel
his anger growing again. He poked the man's flesh with
his finger.
  'You don't frighten me,' he said, 'you understand?
I'm not a fool.'

                     136
  As he spoke he seemed  to see a shifting in the old
man's features. It was a trick of the sun, of course, or
of bird-shadow, but there was, beneath the corruption
of age, a hint of the child now dead at the hut door: the
tiny mouth even seemed to smile. Then, as subtly as it
had appeared, the illusion faded again.
  Cherrick withdrew his hand from the old man's chest,
narrowing his eyes against further mirages. He then
renewed  his retreat. He had taken three steps only
when  something broke cover to his left. He swung
round,  raised his rifle and fired. A piebald pig, one
of several that had been grazing around the huts, was
checked  in its flight by the bullet, which struck it in
the neck. It seemed  to trip over itself, and collapsed
headlong in the dust.
  Cherrick swung his rifle back towards the old man.
But he hadn't moved, except to open his mouth. His
palate was making  the sound  of the dying pig. A
choking squeal, pitiful and ridiculous, which followed
Cherrick back up the path to the jeep. Locke had the
engine running. 'Get in,' he said. Cherrick needed no
encouragement, but flung himself into the front seat.
The interior of the vehicle was filthy hot, and stank of
Stumpf s bodily functions, but it was as near safety as
they'd been in the last hour.
  'It was a pig,' he said, 'I shot a pig.'
  'I saw,' said Locke.
  That  old bastard
  He didn't finish. He was looking down at the two
fingers with which he had prodded the elder. 'I touched
him,' he muttered, perplexed by what he saw. The
fingertips were bloody, though the flesh he had laid
his fingers upon had been clean.
  Locke ignored Cherrick's confusion and backed the
jeep up to turn it around, then drove away from the

                     137
hamlet, down a track that seemed to have become
choked with foliage in the hour since they'd come up
it. There was no discernible pursuit.

The tiny trading post to the south of Averio was scant
of civilisation, but it sufficed. There were white faces
here, and clean water. Stumpf, whose condition had
deteriorated on the  return journey, was  treated by
Dancy, an Englishman who  had the manner of a
disenfranchised earl and a face like hammered steak.
He  claimed to have been a doctor once upon a sober
time, and though he had no evidence of his qualifications
nobody  contested his right to deal with Stumpf. The
German  was  delirious, and on occasion violent, but
Dancy, his small hands heavy with gold rings, seemed to
take a positive delight in nursing his thrashing patient.
  While Stumpf raved beneath his mosquito net, Locke
and Cherrick sat in the lamp-lit gloom and drank, then
told the story of their encounter with the tribe. It was
Tetelman, the owner of the trading post's stores, who
had most to say when the report was finished. He knew
the Indians well.
   'I've been here years,' he said, feeding nuts to the
mangy  monkey that scampered on his lap. 'I know
the way these people think. They may act as though
they're stupid; cowards even. Take it from me, they're
neither.'
  Cherrick grunted. The quicksilver monkey fixed him
with vacant eyes. 'They didn't make a move on us,'
Cherrick said, 'even though they outnumbered us ten
to one. If that isn't cowardice, what is it?'
  Tetelman  settled back in his creaking chair, throwing
the animal off his lap. His face was raddled and used.
Only  his lips, constantly rewetted from his glass, had
any colour; he looked, thought Locke, like an old whore.

                     138
'Thirty years ago,' Tetelman said, 'this whole territory
was their homeland. Nobody wanted it; they went where
they liked, did what they liked. As far as we whites were
concerned the jungle was filthy and disease-infected: we
wanted no part of it. And, of course, in some ways we
were right. It is filthy and disease-infected; but it's also
got reserves we now want badly: minerals, oil maybe:
power.'
  'We paid for that land,' said Locke, his fingers jittery
on the cracked rim of his glass. 'It's all we've got now.'
  Tetelman sneered. 'Paid?' he said. The monkey chat-
tered at his feet, apparently as amused by this claim as its
master. 'No. You just paid for a blind eye, so you could
take it by force. You paid for the right to fuck up the
Indians in any way you could. That's what your dollars
bought, Mr Locke. The government of this country
is counting off the months until every tribe on the
sub-continent is wiped out by you  or your like. It's
no use to play the outraged innocents. I've been here
too long ..."
  Cherrick spat on to the bare floor. Tetelman's speech
had heated his blood.
  'And so why'd you come here, if you're so fucking
clever?' he asked the trader.
  'Same  reason as you,' Tetelman  replied plainly,
staring off into the trees beyond  the  plot of land
behind the store. Their silhouettes shook against the
sky; wind, or night-birds.
  'What  reason's that?' Cherrick said, barely keeping
his hostility in check.
  'Greed,' Tetelman replied mildly, still watching the
trees. Something scampered across the low wooden roof.
The monkey  at Tetelman's feet listened, head cocked.
'I thought I could make my fortune out here, the same
way you do. I gave myself two years. Three at the most.

                    139
That was the best part of two decades ago.' He frowned;
whatever thoughts passed behind his eyes, they were
bitter. 'The jungle eats you up and spits you out, sooner
or later.'
  'Not me,' said Locke.
  Tetelman turned his eyes on the man. They were wet.
'Oh  yes,' he  said politely. 'Extinction's in the air,
Mr  Locke. I can smell it.' Then he turned back to
looking at the window.
  Whatever was on the roof now had companions.
  'They won't come  here, will they?' said Cherrick.
'They won't follow us?'
  The  question, spoken almost in a whisper, begged
for a reply in the negative. Try as he might Cherrick
couldn't dislodge the sights of the previous day. It wasn't
the boy's corpse that so haunted him; that he could soon
learn to forget. But the elder - with his shifting, sunlit
face - and the palms raised as if to display some stigmata,
he was not so forgettable.
  'Don't fret,' Tetelman said, with a trace of conde-
scension. 'Sometimes one or two of them will drift in
here with a parrot to sell, or a few pots, but I've never
seen them come here in any numbers. They don't like
it. This is civilisation as far as they're concerned, and
it intimidates them. Besides, they wouldn't harm my
guests. They need me.'
  'Need you?' said Locke; who could need this wreck
of a man?
  'They use our medicines. Dancy supplies them. And
blankets, once in a while. As  I said, they're not so
stupid.'
  Next door, Stumpf had begun to howl. Dancy's con-
soling voice could be heard, attempting to talk down the
panic. He was  plainly failing.
  'Your friend's gone bad,' said Tetelman.

                     140
  'No friend,' Cherrick replied.
  'It rots,' Tetelman murmured, half to himself.
  'What does?'
  The  soul.' The word was utterly out of place from
Tetelman's whisky-glossed lips. 'It's like fruit, you see.
It rots.'
  Somehow  Stumpf s cries gave force to the observation.
It was not the voice of a wholesome creature; there was
putrescence in it.
  More to direct his attention away from the German's
din than out of any real interest, Cherrick said: 'What
do they give you for the medicine and the blankets?
Women?'
  The  possibility clearly entertained Tetelman;  he
laughed, his gold  teeth gleaming.  'I've no use for
women,' he said. 'I've had the syph for too many years.'
He clicked his fingers and the monkey clambered back
up on to his lap. 'The soul,' he said, 'isn't the only thing
that rots.'
  'Well, what do you get from them then?' Locke said.
'For your supplies?'
  'Artifacts,' Tetelman replied. 'Bowls, jugs, mats. The
Americans buy them off me, and sell them again in
Manhattan. Everybody wants something made by an
extinct tribe these days. Memento mori.'
  'Extinct?' said Locke. The word had a seductive ring;
it sounded like life to him.
  'Oh certainly,' said Tetelman. 'They're as good as
gone. If you  don't  wipe  them  out, they'll do it
themselves.'
  'Suicide?' Locke said.
  'In their fashion. They just lose heart. I've seen it
happen half a dozen times. A tribe loses its land, and
its appetite for life goes with it. They stop taking care
of themselves. The women don't get pregnant any more;

                    141
the young men  take to drink, the old men just starve
themselves to death. In a year or two it's like they never
existed.'
  Locke  swallowed the rest of his drink, silently saluting
the fatal wisdom of these people. They knew when to
die, which was more than could be said for some he'd
met. The thought of their death-wish absolved him of
any last vestiges of guilt. What was the gun in his hand,
except an instrument of evolution?

On the fourth day after their arrival at the post, Stumpf s
fever abated, much to Dancy's disappointment. The
worst of it's over,' he announced. 'Give him two more
days' rest and you can get back to your labours.'
  'What are your plans?' Tetelrnan wanted to know.
  Locke  was watching the rain from the verandah.
Sheets of water  pouring from  clouds so low  they
brushed  the tree-tops. Then, just as suddenly as it
had arrived, the downpour was gone, as though a tap
had been turned off. Sun broke through; the jungle,
new-washed, was steaming and sprouting and thriving
again.
  'I don't know what we'll do,' said Locke. 'Maybe get
ourselves some help and go back in there.'
  'There are ways,' Tetelman said.
  Cherrick, sitting beside the door to get the benefit
of what little breeze was available, picked up the glass
that had scarcely been out of his hand in recent days,
and filled it up again. 'No more guns,' he said. He
hadn't  touched  his rifle since they'd arrived at the
post; in fact he kept from contact with anything but
a bottle and his bed. His skin seemed to crawl and
creep perpetually.
  'No  need for guns,' Tetelman murmured. The
statement hung on the air like an unfulfilled promise.

                     142
  'Get rid of them without guns?' said Locke. 'If you
mean waiting for them to die out naturally, I'm not that
patient.'
  'No,' said Tetelman, 'we can be swifter than that.'
  'How?'
  Tetelman gave the man a lazy look. 'They're my
livelihood,' he said, 'or part of it. You're asking me to
help you make myself bankrupt.'
  He not only looks like an old whore, Locke thought,
he thinks like one. 'What's it worth? Your wisdom?' he
asked.
  'A cut of whatever you find on your land,' Tetelman
replied.
  Locke nodded. 'What have we got to lose? Cherrick?
You  agree to cut him in?' Cherrick's consent was a
shrug. 'All right,' Locke said, 'talk.'
  'They need medicines,' Tetelman explained, 'because
they're so susceptible to our diseases. A decent plague
can wipe them out practically overnight.'
  Locke thought about this, not looking at Tetelman.
'One fell swoop,' Tetelman continued. 'They've got
practically no defences against certain bacteria. Never
had to build up any resistance. The clap. Smallpox.
Even measles.'
  'How?' said Locke.
  Another silence. Down the steps of the verandah,
where  civilization finished, the jungle was swelling to
meet the sun. In the liquid heat plants blossomed and
rotted and blossomed again.
  'I asked how,' Locke said.
  'Blankets,' Tetelman replied, 'dead men's blankets.'

A  little before the dawn of the night after Stumpf s
recovery, Cherrick woke  suddenly, startled from his
rest by bad dreams. Outside it was pitch-dark; neither
                     143
moon  nor stars relieved the depth of the night. But his
body-clock, which his life as a mercenary had trained to
impressive accuracy, told him that first light was not far
off, and he had no wish to lay his head down again and
sleep. Not with the old man waiting to be dreamt. It
wasn't just the raised palms, the blood glistening, that
so distressed Cherrick. It was the words he'd dreamt
coming from the old man's toothless mouth which had
brought on the cold sweat that now encased his body.
  What  were  the words?  He  couldn't recall them
now, but wanted  to; wanted the sentiments dragged
into wakefulness, where they could  be dissected and
dismissed as ridiculous. They wouldn't come though.
He lay on his wretched cot, the dark wrapping him up
too tightly for him to move, and suddenly the bloody
hands were there, in front of him, suspended in the
pitch. There was no  face, no sky, no tribe. Just the
hands.
  'Dreaming,' Cherrick told himself, but he knew
better.
  And  now, the voice. He was getting his wish; here
were the words he had dreamt spoken. Few of them
made  sense. Cherrick lay like a newborn baby, listening
to its parents talk but unable to make any significance
of their exchanges. He was ignorant, wasn't he? He
tasted  the  sourness  of  his stupidity  for the  first
time since childhood. The voice made him fearful of
ambiguities he had ridden roughshod over, of whispers
his shouting life had rendered inaudible. He fumbled
for comprehension, and was not entirely frustrated. The
man  was speaking of the world, and of exile from the
world; of being broken always by what one seeks to
possess. Cherrick struggled, wishing he could stop the
voice and ask for explanation. But it was already fading,
ushered away by the wild address of parrots in the trees,

                     144
raucous and gaudy voices erupting suddenly on every
side. Through the mesh of Cherrick's mosquito net he
could see the sky flaring through the branches.
  He sat up. Hands and  voice had gone; and with
them all but an irritating murmur of what he had
almost understood. He had thrown off in sleep his single
sheet; now he looked down at his body with distaste. His
back and buttocks, and the underside of his thighs, felt
sore. Too much sweating on coarse sheets, he thought.
Not for the first time in recent days he remembered a
small house in Bristol which he had once known as home.
  The  noise of birds was filling his head. He hauled
himself to the edge of the bed and pulled back the
mosquito net. The crude weave  of the net seemed
to scour the palm of his hand as he gripped it. He
disengaged his hold, and  cursed to himself. There
was again  today an  itch of tenderness  in his skin
that he'd suffered since coming  to the post. Even
the soles of his feet, pressed on to the floor by the
weight of his body, seemed to suffer each knot and
splinter. He wanted to be away from this place, and
badly.
  \ warm  trickle across his wrist caught his attention,
and he was  startled to see a rivulet of blood moving
down his arm from his hand. There was a cut in the
cushion of his thumb, where the mosquito net had
apparently nicked his flesh. It was bleeding, though
not copiously. He sucked at the cut, feeling again that
peculiar sensitivity to touch that only drink, and that
in abundance, dulled. Spitting out blood, he began to
dress.
  The clothes he put on were a scourge to his back.
His sweat-stiffened shirt rubbed against his shoulders
and neck; he seemed to feel every thread chafing his

                    145
nerve-endings. The shirt might have been  sackcloth,
the way it abraded him.
  Next door, he heard Locke moving around. Gingerly
finishing his dressing, Cherrick went through to join
him. Locke was sitting at the table by the window. He
was poring over a map of Tetelman's, and drinking a
cup of the bitter coffee Dancy was so fond of brewing,
which he drank with a dollop of condensed milk. The
two men had little to say to each other. Since the incident
in the village all pretence to respect or friendship had
disappeared. Locke now showed undisguised contempt
for his sometime companion. The only fact that kept
them together was the contract they and Stumpf had
signed. Rather than breakfast on whisky, which he knew
Locke would take as a further sign of his decay, Cherrick
poured himself a slug of Dancy's emetic and went out to
look at the morning.
  He  felt strange. There was something about this
dawning day which made him profoundly uneasy. He
knew  the dangers of courting unfounded fears, and he
tried to forbid them, but they were incontestable.
  Was  it simply exhaustion that made him so painfully
conscious of his many discomforts this morning? Why
else did he feel the pressure of his stinking clothes so
acutely? The  rasp of his boot collar against the jutting
bone of his ankle, the rhythmical chafing of his trousers
against his inside leg as he walked, even the grazing air
that eddied around his exposed face and arms. The world
was pressing on him - at least that was the sensation -
pressing as though it wanted him out.
  A large dragonfly, whining towards him on iridescent
wings, collided with his arm. The pain of the collision
caused him to drop his mug. It didn't break, but rolled
off the verandah and  was lost in the undergrowth.
Angered,  Cherrick slapped the  insect off, leaving a

                     146
smear of blood on his tattooed forearm to mark the
dragonfly's demise. He wiped it off. It welled up again
on the same spot, full and dark.
  It wasn't the blood of the insect, he realised, but his
own. The dragonfly had cut him somehow, though he
had felt nothing. Irritated, he peered more closely at his
punctured skin. The wound was not significant, but it
was painful.
  From  inside he  could hear  Locke  talking. He
was loudly  describing the inadequacy of his fellow
adventures to Tetelman.
  'Stumpf s not fit for this kind of work,' he was saying.
'And Cherrick -'
  'What about me?'
  Cherrick stepped into the shabby interior, wiping a
new flow of blood from his arm.
  Locke  didn't even bother  to look  up at  him.
'You're paranoid,'  he  said plainly. 'Paranoid  and
unreliable.'
  Cherrick was in no mood  for taking Locke's foul-
mouthing. 'Just because I killed some Indian brat,' he
said. The more he brushed blood from his bitten arm,
the more the place stung. 'You just didn't have the balls
to do it yourself.'
  Locke  still didn't bother to  look up   from  his
perusal of the map.  Cherrick moved  across to the
table.
  'Are you listening to me?' he demanded, and added
force to his question by slamming his fist down on
to the table. On impact his hand simply burst open.
Blood spurted  out in every direction, spattering the
map.
  Cherrick howled, and reeled backwards from the
table with blood  pouring from  a yawning  split in
the side of his hand. The bone showed. Through

                    147
the din  of pain in his head  he  could hear  a quiet
voice. The words were inaudible, but he knew whose
they were.
  'I won't hear!' he said, shaking his head like a dog with
a flea in its ear. He staggered back against the wall, but
the briefest of contacts was another agony. 7 won't hear,
damn you!'
  'What  the  hell's he talking about?' Dancy  had
appeared  in the doorway, woken  by  the cries, still
clutching the Complete Works of Shelley Tetelman had
said he could not sleep without.
  Locke re-addressed the question to Cherrick, who was
standing, wild-eyed, in the corner of the room, blood
spitting from between his fingers as he attempted to
staunch his wounded hand. 'What are you saying?'
  'He spoke to me,' Cherrick replied. 'The old man.'
  'What old man?' Tetelman asked.
  'He  means  at the village,' Locke said. Then, to
Cherrick, 'Is that what you mean?'
  'He  wants us out. Exiles. Like them. Like them!'
Cherrick's panic  was rapidly rising out of  anyone's
control, least of all his own.
  'The  man's got heat-stroke,' Dancy said, ever the
diagnostician. Locke knew better.
  'Your hand  needs bandaging . . .' he said, slowly
approaching Cherrick.
  'I heard him . . .' Cherrick muttered.
  'I believe you. Just slow  down.  We  can  sort it
out.'
  'No,' the other man  replied. 'It's pushing us out.
Everything we touch. Everything we touch.'
  He looked as though he was about to topple over, and
Locke reached for him. As his hands made contact with
Cherrick's shoulders the flesh beneath  the shirt split,
and Locke's hands were instantly soaked in scarlet. He

                     148
withdrew them,  appalled. Cherrick fell to his knees,
which in their turn became new wounds. He stared down
as his shirt and trousers darkened. 'What's happening to
me?' he wept.
  Dancy moved towards him. 'Let me help.'
  'No! Don't touch me!' Cherrick pleaded, but Dancy
wasn't to be denied his nursing.
  'It's all right,' he said in his best bedside manner.
  It wasn't. Dancy's grip, intended only to lift the man
from his bleeding knees, opened new cuts wherever he
took hold. Dancy felt the blood sprout beneath his hand,
felt the flesh slip away from the bone. The sensation
bested even his taste for agony. Like Locke, he forsook
the lost man.
  'He's rotting,' he murmured.
  Cherrick's body had split now in a dozen or more
places. He tried to stand, half staggering to his feet only
to collapse again, his flesh breaking open whenever he
touched wall or chair or floor. There was no help for
him. All the others could do was stand around like
spectators at an execution, awaiting the final throes.
Even Stumpf had roused himself from his bed and come
through to see what all the shouting was about. He stood
leaning against the door-lintel, his disease-thinned face
all disbelief.
  Another minute, and  blood-loss defeated Cherrick.
He keeled over and sprawled, face down, across the
floor. Dancy crossed back to him and crouched on his
haunches beside his head.
  'Is he dead?' Locke asked.
  'Almost,' Dancy replied.
  'Rotted,' said Tetelman, as though the word explained
the atrocity they had just witnessed. He had a crucifix in
his hand, large and crudely carved. It looked like Indian
handiwork, Locke thought. The Messiah impaled on the

                    149
tree was sloe-eyed and indecently naked. He smiled,
despite nail and thorn.
  Dancy  touched Cherrick's body, letting the blood
come with his touch, and turned the man over, then
leaned in towards Cherrick's jittering face. The dying
man's lips were moving, oh so slightly.
  'What are you saying?' Dancy asked; he leaned closer
still to catch the man's words. Cherrick's mouth trailed
bloody spittle, but no sound came.
  Locke  stepped in, pushing Dancy aside. Flies were
already flitting around Cherrick's face. Locke thrust his
bull-necked head into Cherrick's view. 'You hear me?'
he said.
  The body grunted.
  'You know me?'
  Again, a grunt.
  'You want to give me your share of the land?'
  The grunt was lighter this time; almost a sigh.
   There's witnesses  here,' Locke said. 'Just say yes.
They'll hear you. Just say yes.'
  The  body was trying its best. It opened its mourh a
little wider.
  'Dancy -' said Locke. 'You hear what he said?'
  Dancy   could not  disguise his horror at Locke's
insistence, but he nodded.
  'You're a witness.'
  'If you must,' said the Englishman.
  Deep  in his body Cherrick felt the fish-bone he'd first
choked on in the village twist itself about one final time,
and extinguish him.
  'Did he say yes, Dancy?' Tetelman asked.
  Dancy  felt the physical proximity of the brute kneeling
beside him. He didn't know what the dead man had
said, but what did it matter? Locke would have the
land anyway, wouldn't he?

                     150
  'He said yes.'
  Locke stood up, and went in search of a fresh cup of
coffee.
  Without thinking, Dancy put his fingers on Cherrick's
lids to seal his empty gaze. Under that lightest of touches
the lids broke open and blood tainted the tears that had
swelled where Cherrick's sight had been.
  They had buried him towards evening. The corpse,
though it had lain through the noon-heat in the coolest
part of the store, amongst the dried goods, had begun
to putrefy by the time it was sewn up in canvas for
the burial. The night following, Stumpf had come to
Locke and  offered him  the last third of the territory
to add to Cherrick's share, and Locke, ever the realist,
had accepted. The terms, which were punitive, had been
worked out the next day. In the evening of that day, as
Stumpf had hoped, the supply plane came in. Locke,
bored with Tetelman's contemptuous looks, had also
elected to fly back to Santarem, there to drink the jungle
out of his system for a few days, and return refreshed. He
intended to buy up fresh supplies, and, if possible, hire a
reliable driver and gunman.
  The flight was noisy, cramped and tedious; the two
men exchanged no words for its full duration. Stumpf
just kept his eyes on the tracts of unfelled wilderness they
passed over, though from one hour to the next the scene
scarcely changed. A panorama of sable green, broken
on occasion by a glint of water; perhaps a column of
blue smoke rising here and there, where land was being
cleared; little else.
  At Santarem they parted with  a single handshake
which left every nerve in Stumpf s hand scourged, and
an open cut in the tender flesh between index finger and
thumb.
                    151
Santarem wasn't Rio, Locke mused as he made his way
down to a bar at the south end of the town, run by a
veteran of Vietnam who had  a taste for ad hoc animal
shows. It was one of Locke's few certain pleasures, and
one he never tired of, to watch a local woman, face dead
as a cold manioc cake, submit to a dog or a donkey fora
few grubby dollar bills. The women of Santarem were,
on the whole, as unpalatable as the beer, but Locke had
no eye for beauty in the opposite sex: it mattered only
that their bodies be in reasonable working order, and
not diseased. He found the bar, and settled down for
an evening exchanging dirt with the American. When
he tired of that - some time after midnight - he bought
a bottle of whisky and went out looking for a face to
press his heat upon.

The woman  with the squint was about to accede to a
particular peccadillo of Locke's - one which she had
resolutely refused until drunkenness persuaded ner to
abandon what little hope of dignity she had - when there
came a rap on the door.
  'Fuck,' said Locke.
  'Si,' said the woman. 'Fook. Fook.' It seemed to be
the only word she knew in anything resembling English.
Locke ignored her and crawled drunkenly to the edge of
the stained mattress. Again, the rap on the door.
   'Who is it?' he said.
  'Senhor Locke?' The voice from the hallway was that
of a young boy.
  'Yes?' said Locke. His trousers had become lost in the
tangle of sheets. 'Yes? What do you want?'
  'Mensagem,' the boy said. 'Urgente. Urgente.'
  'For me?' He had found his trousers, and was pulling
them  on. The woman,  not at all disgruntled by this
desertion, watched him from  the head of the bed,

                     152
toying with an empty  bottle. Buttoning up, Locke
crossed from bed to door, a matter of three steps. He
unlocked it. The boy in the darkened hallway was of
Indian extraction to judge by the blackness of his eyes,
and that peculiar lustre his skin owned. He was dressed
in a T-shirt bearing the Coca-Cola motif.
  'Mensagem, Senhor Locke,' he said again, '. . . do
hospital.'
  The boy was staring past Locke at the woman on the
bed. He grinned from ear to ear at her cavortings.
  'Hospital?' said Locke.
  ''Sim. Hospital "Sacrado Coraqa de Maria".'
  It could only be Stumpf, Locke thought. Who else did
he know in this corner of Hell who'd call upon him?
Nobody. He looked down at the leering child.
  'Vem comigo,' the boy said, 'vem comigo. Urgente.'
  'No,' said Locke. 'I'm not coming. Not now. You
understand? Later. Later.'
  The boy shrugged. '. . . Ta morrendo,' he said.
  'Dying?' said Locke.
  'Sim. Ta morrendo.'
  'Well, let him. Understand me? You go back, and tell
him, I won't come until I'm ready.'
  Again, the boy shrugged. 'E meu dinheiro? he said, as
Locke went to close the door.
  'You go to Hell,' Locke replied, and slammed it in the
child's face.
  When, two hours and one ungainly act of passionless
sex later, Locke unlocked the door, he discovered that
the child, by way of revenge, had defecated on  the
threshold.

The hospital 'Sacrado Coraqa de Maria' was no place to
fall ill; better, thought Locke, as he made his way down
the dingy corridors, to die in your own bed with your

                    153
own sweat for company than come here. The stench of
disinfectant could not entirely mask the odour of human
pain. The walls were ingrained with it; it formed a grease
on the lamps, it slickened the unwashed floors. What
had happened to Stumpf to bring him here? a bar-room
brawl, an argument with a pimp about the price of a
woman? The German was just damn fool enough to get
himself stuck in the gut over something so petty. 'Senhor
Stumpf?' he asked of a woman in white he accosted in the
corridor. 'I'm looking for Senhor Stumpf.'
  The woman  shook her head, and pointed towards a
harried-looking man further down the corridor, who
was taking a moment  to light a small cigar. He let
go the nurse's arm and approached the fellow. He was
enveloped in a stinking cloud of smoke.
  'I'm looking for Senhor Stumpf,' he said.
  The  man peered at him quizzically.
  'You are Locke?' he asked.
  'Yes.'
  'Ah.' He drew on the cigar. The pungency of the
expelled smoke would surely have brought on a relapse
in the hardiest patient. Tm Doctor Edson  Costa,' the
man  said, offering his clammy hand to Locke. 'Your
friend has been waiting for you to come all night.'
  'What's wrong with him?'
  'He's hurt his eye,' Edson Costa replied, clearly indif-
ferent to Stumpf s condition. 'And he has some minor
abrasions on his hands and face. But he won't have
anyone go near him. He doctored himself.'
  'Why?' Locke asked.
  The doctor looked flummoxed. 'He pays to go in a
clean room. Pays plenty. So I put him in. You want to
see him? Maybe take him away?'
  'Maybe,' said Locke, unenthusiastically.
  'His head . . .' said the doctor. 'He has delusions.'

                     154
  Without offering further explanation, the man led off
at a considerable rate, trailing tobacco-smoke as he went.
The route, that wound out of the main building and
across a small internal courtyard, ended at a room with
a glass partition in the door.
  'Here,' said the doctor. 'Your friend. You tell him,'
he said as a parting snipe, 'he pay more, or tomorrow he
leaves.'
  Locke peered through the glass partition. The grubby-
white room was empty, but for a bed and a small table,
lit by the same dingy light that cursed every wretched
inch of this establishment. Stumpf was not on the bed,
but squatting on the floor in the corner of the room.
His left eye was covered with a bulbous padding, held
in place by a bandage ineptly wrapped around his head.
  Locke was looking at the man for a good time before
Stumpf sensed that he was watched. He looked up
slowly. His good eye, as if in compensation for the
loss of its companion, seemed to have swelled to twice
its natural size. It held enough fear for both it and its
twin; indeed enough for a dozen eyes.
  Cautiously, like a man whose bones are so brittle he
fears an injudicious breath will shatter them, Stumpf
edged up  the wall, and  crossed to the  door. He
did not open it, but addressed Locke  through the
glass.
  'Why didn't you come?' he said.
  Tm   here.'
  'But sooner,' said Stumpf. His face was raw, as if he'd
been beaten. 'Sooner.'
  'I had business,' Locke returned. 'What happened to
you?'
  'It's true, Locke,' the German said, 'everything is
true.'
  'What are you talking about?'

                     155
  'Tetelman told me. Cherrick's babblings. About being
exiles. It's true. They mean to drive us out.'
  'We're not in the jungle now,' Locke said. 'You've got
nothing to be afraid of here.'
  'Oh yes,' said Stumpf, that wide eye wider than ever.
'Oh yes! I saw him -'
  'Who?'
  'The elder. From the village. He was here.'
  'Ridiculous.'
  'He was here, damn you,' Stumpf replied. 'He was
standing where you're standing. Looking at me through
the glass.'
  'You've been drinking too much.'
  'It happened to Cherrick, and now it's happening to
me. They're making it impossible to live -'
  Locke  snorted. Tm  not having any problem,' he
said.
  'They won't let you escape,' Stumpf said. 'None of
us'll escape. Not unless we make amends.'
  'You've got to vacate the room,' Locke said, unwilling
to countenance any more  of this drivel. 'I've been told
you've got to get out by morning.'
  'No,' said Stumpf. 'I can't leave. I can't leave.'
  'There's nothing to fear.'
  'The dust,' said the German. The dust in the air. It'll
cut me up. I got a speck in my eye - just a speck - and the
next thing my eye's bleeding as though it'll never stop. I
can't hardly lie down, the sheet's like a bed of nails. The
soles of my feet feel as if they're going to split. You've
got to help me.'
  'How?' said Locke.
  'Pay them for the room. Pay them so I can stay 'til you
can get a specialist from Sao Luis. Then go back to the
village, Locke. Go back and tell them. I don't want the
land. Tell them I don't own it any longer.'

                     156
  Til go back,' said Locke, 'but in my good time.'
  'You must go quickly,' said Stumpf. 'Tell them to let
me be.'
  Suddenly,  the expression on the partially-masked
face changed, and Stumpf looked past Locke at some
spectacle down the corridor. From his mouth, slack with
fear, came the small word, 'Please.'
  Locke, mystified by the man's expression, turned.
The corridor was empty, except for the fat moths that
were besetting the bulb. 'There's nothing there -' he
said, turning back to the door of Stumpf s room. The
wire-mesh glass of the window bore the distinct imprint
of two bloody palms.
  'He's here,' the German was saying, staring fixedly at
the miracle of the bleeding glass. Locke didn't need to
ask who. He raised his hand to touch the marks. The
handprints, still wet, were on his side of the glass, not
on Stumpf s.
  'My God,' he breathed. How could anyone have
slipped between him and the door and laid the prints
there, sliding away again in the brief moment it had
taken him  to glance behind him?  It defied reason.
Again he looked back down  the corridor. It was still
bereft of visitors. Just the bulb - swinging slightly, as if
a breeze of passage had caught it - and the moth's wings,
whispering. 'What's happening?' Locke breathed.
  Stumpf, entranced by the handprints, touched his
fingertips lightly to the glass. On contact, his fingers
blossomed blood, trails of which idled down the glass.
He  didn't remove his fingers, but stared through at
Locke with despair in his eye.
  'See?' he said, very quietly.
  'What  are you  playing at?' Locke said, his voice
similarly hushed. This is some kind of trick.'
  'No.'

                     157
  'You haven't got Cherrick's disease. You can't have.
You didn't touch them. We agreed, damn you,' he said,
more heatedly. 'Cherrick touched them, we didn't.'
  Stumpf looked back at Locke with something close to
pity on his face.
  'We were wrong,' he said gently. His fingers, which
he had  now removed  from the glass, continued to
bleed, dribbling across the backs of his hands  and
down his arms. 'This isn't something you can beat into
submission, Locke. It's out of our hands.' He raised his
bloody fingers, smiling at his own word-play: 'See?' he
said.
  The  German's   sudden, fatalistic calm frightened
Locke. He  reached for the handle of the door, and
jiggled it. The room was locked. The key was on the
inside, where Stumpf had paid for it to be.
  'Keep out,' Stumpf said. 'Keep away from me.'
  His smile had vanished. Locke put his shoulder to the
door.
  'Keep out, I said,' Stumpf shouted, his voice shrill. He
backed away from the door as Locke took another lunge
at it. Then, seeing that the lock must soon give, he raised
a cry of alarm. Locke took no notice, but continued to
throw himself at the door. There came the sound of wood
beginning to splinter.
  Somewhere  nearby Locke heard a woman's voice,
raised in response to Stumpf s calls. No matter; he'd
have his hands on the German before help could come,
and then, by  Christ, he'd wipe every last vestige of a
smile from the bastard's lips. He threw himself against
the door with increased fervour; again, and again. The
door gave.
  In the antiseptic cocoon of his room Stumpf felt the
first blast of unclean air from the outside world.  It
was  no more  than a  light breeze that invaded his

                     158
makeshift sanctuary, but it bore upon  its back the
debris of the world. Soot  and seeds, flakes of skin
itched off a thousand scalps, fluff and sand and twists
of hair; the bright dust from a moth's wing. Motes so
small the human eye only glimpsed them in a shaft
of white sunlight; each a tiny, whirling speck quite
harmless to most living organisms. But this cloud was
lethal to Stumpf; in seconds his body became a field of
tiny, seeping wounds.
  He screeched, and ran towards the door to slam it
closed again, flinging himself into a hail of minute razors,
each lacerating him. Pressing against the door to prevent
Locke from entering, his wounded hands erupted. He
was too late to keep Locke out anyhow. The man had
pushed the door wide, and was now stepping through,
his every movement setting up further currents of air to
cut Stumpf down. He snatched hold of the German's
wrist. At his grip the skin opened as if beneath a knife.
  Behind him, a woman loosed a cry of horror. Locke,
realizing that Stumpf was past recanting his laughter,
let the man go. Adorned with cuts on every exposed
part of his body, and gaining more by the moment,
Stumpf stumbled back, blind, and fell beside the bed.
The killing air still sliced him as he sank down; with each
agonised shudder he woke new eddies and whirlpools to
open him up.
  Ashen, Locke retreated from where the body lay, and
staggered out into the corridor. A gaggle of onlookers
blocked it; they parted, however, at his approach, too
intimidated by his bulk and by the wild look on his
face to challenge him. He retraced his steps through the
sickness-perfumed maze, crossing the small courtyard
and returning into the main building. He briefly caught
sight of Edson Costa hurrying in pursuit, but did not
linger for explanations.

                    159
  In the vestibule, which, despite the late hour was busy
with victims of one kind or another, his harried gaze
alighted on a small boy, perched on his mother's lap.
He  had injured his belly apparently. His shirt, which
was too large for him, was stained with blood; his face
with tears. The mother did not look up as Locke moved
through the throng. The child did however. He raised
his head as if knowing that Locke was about to pass by,
and smiled radiantly.

There was nobody Locke knew at Tetelman's store; and
all the information he could bully from the hired hands,
most of whom were drunk to the point of being unable
to stand, was that their masters had gone off into the
jungle the previous day. Locke chased the most sober
of them and persuaded him with threats to accompany
him back to the village as translator. He had no real idea
of how he would make his peace with the tribe. He was
only certain that he had to argue his innocence. After
all, he would plead, it hadn't been he who had fired the
killing shot. There had been misunderstandings, to be
certain, but he had not harmed the people in any way.
How  could they, in all conscience, conspire to hurt him?
If they should require some penance of him he was not
above acceding to their demands. Indeed, might there
not be some  satisfaction in the act? He had seen so
much  suffering of late. He wanted to be cleansed of it.
Anything they asked, within reason, he would comply
with; anything to avoid dying like the others. He'd even
give back the land.
  It was a rough ride, and his morose companion com-
plained often and incoherently. Locke turned a deaf ear.
There was no time for loitering. Their noisy progress, the
jeep engine complaining at every new acrobatic required
of it, brought the jungle alive on every side, a repertoire

                     160
of wails, whoops and screeches. It was an urgent, hungry
place, Locke thought: and for the first time since setting
foot on this sub-continent he loathed it with all his heart.
There was no room here to make sense of events; the best
that could be hoped was that one be allowed a niche to
breathe awhile between one squalid flowering and the
next.
  Half  an hour  before nightfall, exhausted by  the
journey, they  came  to the outskirts of the village.
The  place had altered not at all in the meagre days
since he'd last been here, but the ring of huts was
clearly deserted. The doors gaped; the communal fires,
always alight, were ashes. There was neither child nor
pig to turn an eye towards him as he moved across the
compound. When  he reached the centre of the ring he
stood still, looking about him for some clue as to what
had happened there. He found none, however. Fatigue
irade him foolhardy. Mustering his fractured strength,
he shouted into the hush:
  'Where are you?'
  Two  brilliant red macaws, finger-winged, rose screech-
ing from  the trees on the far side of the village. A
few moments  after, a figure emerged from the thicket
of balsa and jacaranda. It was not one of the tribe, but
Dancy. He paused before stepping fully into sight; then,
recognising Locke, a broad smile broke his face, and he
advanced into the compound. Behind him, the foliage
shook as others made their way through it. Tetelman was
there, as were several Norwegians, led by a man called
Bj0rnstr0m, whom Locke had encountered briefly at the
trading post. His face, beneath a shock of sun-bleached
hair, was like cooked lobster.
  'My God,' said Tetelman, 'what are you doing here?'
  'I might ask you the same question,' Locke replied
testily.
                     161
  Bj0rnstr0m waved  down  the raised rifles of his three
companions  and strode forward, bearing a placatory
smile.
  'Mr Locke,' the Norwegian said, extending a leather-
gloved hand. 'It is good we meet.'
  Locke looked down  at the stained glove with disgust,
and  Bj0rnstr0m, flashing a self-admonishing look,
pulled it off. The hand beneath was pristine.
  'My  apologies,' he said. 'We've been working.'
  'At what?' Locke  asked, the acid in his stomach
edging its way up into the back of his throat.
  Tetelman  spat. 'Indians,' he said.
  'Where's the tribe?' Locke said.
  Again, Tetelman: 'Bj0rnstr0m claims he's got rights
to this territory . . .'
  'The tribe,' Locke insisted. 'Where are they?'
  The Norwegian  toyed with his glove.
  'Did you buy them out, or what?' Locke asked.
  'Not exactly,' Bj0rnstr0m replied. His English, like
his profile, was impeccable.
  'Bring him  along,' Dancy  suggested with some
enthusiasm. 'Let him see for himself.'
  Bj0rnstr0m nodded. 'Why not?' he said. 'Don't touch
anything, Mr Locke. And tell your carrier to stay where
he is.'
  Dancy had already about turned, and was heading into
the thicket; now Bj0rnstr0m did the same, escorting
Locke across the compound towards a corridor hacked
through the heavy foliage. Locke could scarcely keep
pace; his limbs were more reluctant with every step he
took. The ground had been heavily trodden along this
track. A litter of leaves and orchid blossoms had been
mashed  into the sodden soil.
  They had dug a pit in a small clearing no more than a
hundred yards from the compound. It was not deep, this

                     162
pit, nor was it very large. The mingled smells of lime and
petrol cancelled out any other scent.
  Tetelman, who  had reached the clearing ahead of
Locke, hung  back from approaching  the lip of the
earthworks, but Dancy was not so fastidious. He strode
around the far side of the pit and beckoned to Locke to
view the contents.
  The tribe were putrefying already. They lay where
they had been thrown, in a jumble of breasts and
buttocks and faces and limbs, their bodies tinged here
and there with  purple and  black. Flies built helter-
skelters in the air above them.
  'An education,' Dancy commented.
  Locke just looked on as Bj0rnstr0m moved around the
other side of the pit to join Dancy.
  'All of them?' Locke asked.
  The Norwegian nodded. 'One fell swoop,' he said,
pronouncing each word with unsettling precision.
  'Blankets,' said Tetelman, naming  the murder
weapon.
  'But so quickly . . .' Locke murmured.
  'It's very efficient,' said Dancy. 'And  difficult to
prove. Even if anybody ever asks.'
  'Disease is natural,' Bj0rnstr0m observed. 'Yes? Like
the trees.'
  Locke slowly shook his head, his eyes pricking.
  'I hear good things of you,' Bj0rnstr0m said to him.
'Perhaps we can work together.'
  Locke didn't even attempt to reply. Others of the
Norwegian  party had laid down their rifles and were
now getting back to work, moving the few bodies still
to be pitched amongst their fellows from the forlorn
heap beside the pit. Locke could see a child amongst the
tangle, and an old man, whom even now the burial party
were picking up. The  corpse looked jointless as they

                    163
swung it over the edge of the hole. It tumbled down the
shallow incline and came to rest face up, its arms flung
up to either side of its head in a gesture of submission,
or expulsion. It was the elder of course, whom Cherrick
had faced. His palms were still red. There was a neat
bullet-hole in his temple. Disease and hopelessness had
not been entirely efficient, apparently.
  Locke  watched while the next of the bodies was
thrown into the mass grave, and a third to follow that.
  Bj0rnstr0m, lingering on the far side of the pit, was
lighting a cigarette. He caught Locke's eye.
  'So it goes,' he said.
  From behind Locke, Tetelman spoke.
  'We thought you wouldn't come back,' he said, per-
haps attempting to excuse his alliance with Bj0rnstr0m.
  'Stumpf is dead,' said Locke.
  'Well,  even  less to divide  up,' Tetelman   said,
approaching him  and laying a hand on his shoulder.
Locke didn't reply; he just stared down amongst the
bodies, which were now being covered with lime, only
slowly registering the warmth that was running down
his body from the spot where Tetelman had touched
him. Disgusted, the man had removed his hand, and
was staring at the growing bloodstain on Locke's shirt.
                     164
    TWILIGHT  AT
    THE TOWERS
THE   PHOTOGRAPHS OF Mironenko which Ballard had
    been shown in Munich had proved far from instructive.
Only one or two pictured the KGB man full face; and of
the others most were blurred and grainy, betraying their
furtive origins. Ballard was not overmuch concerned. He
knew from long and occasionally bitter experience that
the eye was all too ready to be deceived; but there were
other faculties - the remnants of senses modern life had
rendered obsolete - which he had learned to call into
play, enabling him to sniff out the least signs of betrayal.
These were the talents he would use when he met with
Mironenko. With them, he would root the truth from the
man.
  The truth? Therein lay the conundrum of course, for
in this context wasn't sincerity a movable feast? Sergei
Zakharovich Mironenko had been a Section Leader in
Directorate S of the KGB  for eleven years, with access
to the most  privileged information on the dispersal
of Soviet Illegals in the West. In the  recent weeks,
however, he had made  his disenchantment with his

                     165
present masters, and his consequent  desire to defect,
known  to the British Security Service. In return for
the elaborate efforts which would have to be made on
his behalf he had volunteered to act as an agent within
the KGB  for a period of three months, after which time
he would be taken into the bosom of democracy and
hidden where his vengeful overlords would never find
him. It had fallen to Ballard to meet the Russian face to
face, in the hope of establishing whether Mironenko's
disaffection from his ideology was real or faked. The
answer would  not be  found on  Mironenko's lips,
Ballard knew, but in some behavioural nuance which
only instinct would comprehend.
  Time was when Ballard would have found the puzzle
fascinating; that his every waking thought would have
circled on the unravelling ahead. But such commitment
had  belonged to a man   convinced his actions had
some  significant effect upon the world. He was wiser
now. The agents of East and West went about their
secret works  year in, year out. They  plotted; they
connived; occasionally (though rarely) they shed blood.
There were  debacles and trade-offs and minor tactical
victories. But in the end things were much the same as
ever.
  This  city, for instance. Ballard had first come to
Berlin in April of 1969. He'd been twenty-nine, fresh
from  years of intensive training, and ready to live a
little. But he had not felt easy here. He found  the
city charmless; often bleak. It had taken  Odell, his
colleague for  those first two years,  to prove  that
Berlin was worthy  of his affections, and once Ballard
fell he was lost for life. Now he felt more at home
in this divided city than he  ever had  in London.
Its unease, its failed idealism, and - perhaps most
acutely of all - its terrible isolation, matched his. He

                    166
and it, maintaining a presence in a wasteland of dead
ambition.
  He found Mironenko at the Germalde Galerie, and
yes, the photographs had lied. The Russian looked
older than  his forty-six years, and sicker than  he'd
appeared in those filched portraits. Neither man made
any sign of acknowledgement. They idled through the
collection for a full half-hour, with Mironenko showing
acute, and apparently genuine, interest in the work on
view. Only when  both men  were  satisfied that they
were not  being watched  did  the Russian quit the
building and lead Ballard into the polite suburbs of
Dahlem  to a mutually agreed safe house. There, in
a small and unheated kitchen, they sat down and
talked.
  Mironenko's command  of English was uncertain, or
at least appeared so, though Ballard had the impression
that his struggles for sense were as much  tactical as
giammatical. He might well have presented the same
facade in the Russian's situation; it seldom hurt to
appear less competent than one was. But despite the
difficulties he had in expressing himself, Mironenko's
avowals were unequivocal.
  'I am no  longer a Communist,' he  stated plainly,
'I have not been a party-member - not here -' he put his
fist to his chest'- for many years.'
  He fetched an off-white handkerchief from his coat
pocket, pulled off one of his gloves, and plucked a bottle
of tablets from the folds of the handkerchief.
  'Forgive me,' he said as he shook tablets from the
bottle. 'I have pains. In my head; in my hands.'
  Ballard waited until he had swallowed the medication
before asking him, 'Why did you begin to doubt?'
  The Russian pocketed the bottle and the handker-
chief, his wide face devoid of expression.

                    167
  'How  does a man lose his ... his faith?' he said. 'Is it
that I saw too much; or too little, perhaps?'
  He  looked at Ballard's face to see if his hesitant words
had made  sense. Finding no comprehension there he
tried again.
  'I think the man who does not believe he is lost, is
lost.'
  The  paradox was  elegantly put; Ballard's suspicion
as to Mironenko's  true command   of English was
confirmed.
  'Are you lost nozi>?' Ballard inquired.
  Mironenko  didn't reply. He was  pulling his other
glove off and staring at his hands. The  pills he had
swallowed did not seem to be easing the ache he had
complained of. He fisted and unfisted his hands like an
arthritis sufferer testing the advance of his condition.
Not looking up, he said:
  'I was taught that the Party had solutions to every-
thing. That made me free from fear.'
  'And now?'
  'Now?' he said. 'Now I have strange thoughts. They
come to me from nowhere . . .'
  'Go on,' said Ballard.
  Mironenko made a tight smile. 'You must know me
inside out, yes? Even what I dream?'
   'Yes,' said Ballard.
  Mironenko nodded. 'It would be the same with us,'
he said. Then, after a pause: 'I've thought sometimes
I would break open. Do you understand what I say?
I would crack, because there is such rage inside me.
And  that makes me  afraid, Ballard. I think they will
see how much  I hate them.' He looked up at his
interrogator. 'You must be  quick,' he said, 'or they
will discover me. I try not to think of what they will
do.' Again, he paused. All trace of the smile, however

                     168
humourless, had gone. 'The Directorate has Sections
even I don't have knowledge of. Special hospitals, where
nobody can go. They have ways to break a man's soul
in pieces.'
  Ballard, ever the pragmatist, wondered if Mironenko's
vocabulary wasn't rather high-flown. In the hands of the
KGB  he doubted if he would be thinking of his soul's
contentment. After all, it was the body that had the
nerve-endings.

They  talked for an hour or more,  the conversation
moving back  and forth between politics and personal
reminiscence, between trivia and confessional. At the
end of the meeting  Ballard was in no doubt  as to
Mironenko's antipathy to his masters. He was, as he
had said, a man without faith.
  The  following day Ballard met with Cripps in the
restaurant at the Schweizerhof Hotel, and made his
verbal report on Mironenko.
  'He's ready and waiting. But he insists we be quick
about making up our minds.'
  'I'm sure he does,' Cripps said. His glass eye was
troubling him today; the chilly air, he explained, made
it sluggish. It moved fractionally more slowly than his
real eye, and on occasion Cripps had to nudge it with
his fingertip to get it moving.
  'We're not going to rushed into any decision,' Cripps
said.
  'Where's the problem? I don't have any doubt about
his commitment; or his desperation.'
  'So you  said,' Cripps replied. 'Would   you like
something for dessert?'
  'Do you doubt my appraisal? Is that what it is?'
  'Have something sweet to finish off, so that I don't feel
an utter reprobate.'
                    169
  'You think I'm wrong about him, don't you?' Ballard
pressed. When   Cripps  didn't reply, Ballard  leaned
across the table. 'You do, don't you?'
  'I'm just saying there's reason for caution,' Cripps
said. 'If we finally choose to take him on board the
Russians are going to be very distressed. We have to be
sure the deal's worth the bad weather that comes with
it. Things are so dicey at the moment.'
  'When  aren't they?' Ballard replied. 'Tell me a time
when there wasn't some crisis in the offing?' He settled
back in the chair and tried to read Cripps' face. His glass
eye was, if anything, more candid than the real one.
  'I'm sick of this damn game,' Ballard muttered.
  The glass eye roved. 'Because of the Russian?'
  'Maybe.'
  'Believe me,' said Cripps, 'I've got good reason to be
careful with this man.'
  'Name one.'
  'There's nothing verified.'
  'What have you got on him?' Ballard insisted.
  'As I say, rumour,' Cripps replied.
  'Why  wasn't I briefed about it?'
  Cripps made  a tiny shake of his head. 'It's academic
now,' he said. 'You've provided a good report. I just
want you to understand that if things don't go the way
you think they should it's not because your appraisals
aren't trusted.'
   'I see.'
  'No you don't,' said Cripps. 'You're feeling martyred;
and I don't altogether blame you.'
  'So what happens now? I'm supposed to forget I ever
met the man?'
  'Wouldn't do any harm,' said Cripps. 'Out of sight,
out of mind.'
                     170
Clearly Cripps didn't trust Ballard to take his own
advice. Though Ballard made several discreet enquiries
about the Mironenko case in the following week it was
plain that his usual circle of contacts had been warned
to keep their lips sealed.
  As it was, the next news about the case reached
Ballard via the pages of the morning  papers, in an
article about a body found in a house near the station
on Kaiser Damm. At the time of reading he had no way
of knowing how the account tied up with Mironenko,
but there was enough detail in the story to arouse his
interest. For one, he had the suspicion that the house
named  in the article had been used by the Service on
occasion; for another, the article described how two
unidentified men had almost been caught in the act
of removing the body, further suggesting that this was
no crime of passion.
  About noon, he went to see Cripps at his offices in the
hope of coaxing him with some explanation, but Cripps
was not available, nor would be, his secretary explained,
until further notice; matters arising had taken him back
to Munich.  Ballard left a message that he wished to
speak with him when he returned.
  As  he stepped  into the cold air again, he realised
that he'd gained an admirer;  a thin-faced individual
whose  hair had retreated from  his brow, leaving a
ludicrous forelock at the  high-water mark.  Ballard
knew  him  in passing from  Cripps' entourage but
couldn't put  a name   to the  face. It was swiftly
provided.
  'Suckling,' the man said.
  'Of course,' said Ballard. 'Hello.'
  'I think maybe we should talk, if you have a moment,'
the man said. His voice was as pinched as his features;
Ballard wanted none of his eossip. He was about to
                     171
refuse the offer when Suckling said: 'I suppose you
heard what happened to Cripps.'
  Ballard shook his head. Suckling, delighted to possess
this nugget, said again: 'We should talk.'
  They walked along the Kantstrasse towards the Zoo.
The  street was busy with lunchtime pedestrians, but
Ballard scarcely noticed them. The story that Suckling
unfolded as they walked demanded his full and absolute
attention.
  It was simply told. Cripps, it appeared, had made
an arrangement to meet with Mironenko in order to
make  his own  assessment of the Russian's integrity.
The house in Schoneberg chosen for the meeting had
been used on several previous occasions, and had long
been considered one of the safest locations in the city. It
had not proved so the previous evening however. KGB
men  had apparently followed Mironenko to the house,
and then attempted to break the party up. There was
nobody  to testify to what had happened subsequently
- both the men who had accompanied Cripps, one of
them  Ballard's old colleague Odell - were dead; Cripps
himself was in a coma.
  'And Mironenko?' Ballard inquired.
  Suckling shrugged. They  took him home  to the
Motherland, presumably,' he said.
  Ballard caught a whiff of deceit off the man.
  Tm   touched that you're keeping me up to date,' he
said to Suckling. 'But why?
  'You and Odell were friends, weren't you?' came the
reply. 'With Cripps out of the picture you don't have
many  of those left.'
   'Is that so?'
   'No offence intended,' Suckling said hurriedly. 'But
you've got a reputation as a maverick.'
   'Get to the point,' said Ballard.

                     172
  'There is no point,' Suckling protested. 'I just thought
you ought to know what had happened. I'm putting my
neck on the line here.'
  'Nice try,' said Ballard. He stopped walking. Suckling
wandered on a pace or two before turning to find Ballard
grinning at him.
  'Who sent you?'
  'Nobody sent me,' Suckling said.
  'Clever to send the court gossip. I almost fell for it.
You're very plausible.'
  There wasn't enough  fat on Suckling's face to hide
the tic in his cheek.
  'What do they suspect me of? Do they think I'm
conniving with Mironenko, is that it? No, I don't think
they're that stupid.'
  Suckling shook his head, like a doctor in the presence
of some incurable disease. 'You like making enemies?'
he said.
  'Occupational hazard. I wouldn't lose any sleep over
it. I don't.'
  'There's changes in the air,' Suckling said. 'I'd make
sure you have your answers ready.'
  'Fuck the answers,' Ballard said courteously. 'I think
it's about time I worked out the right questions.'

Sending Suckling to sound him out smacked of des-
peration. They wanted inside information; but about
what?  Could  they seriously believe he had  some
involvement with  Mironenko;  or worse, with  the
RGB   itself? He let his resentment subside; it was
stirring up too much mud, and he needed clear water
if he was to find his way  free of this confusion. In
one regard, Suckling was perfectly correct: he did have
enemies, and with Cripps indisposed he was vulnerable.
In such circumstances there were two courses of action.

                    173
He could return to London, and there lie low, or wait
around in Berlin to see what manoeuvre they tried next.
He  decided on the latter. The charm of hide-and-seek
was rapidly wearing thin.
  As he turned North onto Leibnizstrasse he caught the
reflection of a grey-coated man in a shop window. It was
a glimpse, no more, but he had the feeling that he knew
the fellow's face. Had they put a watch-dog onto him,
he wondered? He  turned, and caught the man's eye,
holding it. The suspect seemed embarrassed, and looked
away. A performance perhaps; and then again, perhaps
not. It mattered little, Ballard thought. Let them watch
him all they liked. He was guiltless. If indeed there was
such a condition this side of insanity.

A strange happiness had found Sergei Mironenko; hap-
piness that came without rhyme or reason, and filled his
heart up to overflowing.
  Only  the previous day circumstances had seemed
unendurable. The aching in his hands and head and
spine had steadily worsened, and was now accompanied
by an itch so demanding he'd had to snip his nails to the
flesh to prevent himself doing serious damage. His body,
he had concluded, was in revolt against him. It was that
thought which he had tried to explain to Ballard: that he
was divided from himself, and feared that he would soon
be torn apart. But today the fear had gone.
  Not so the pains. They were, if anything, worse than
they'd been yesterday. His sinews and ligaments ached
as if they'd been exercised beyond the limits of their
design; there were bruises at all his joints, where blood
had broken  its banks beneath the skin. But that sense
of imminent  rebellion had disappeared, to be replaced
with a  dreamy  peacefulness. And at its heart, such
happiness.
                     174
  When  he  tried to think back over recent events,
to work out what had  cued this transformation, his
memory played tricks. He had been called to meet with
Ballard's superior; that he remembered. Whether he had
gone to the meeting, he did not. The night was a blank.
  Ballard would know how things stood, he reasoned.
He had liked and trusted the Englishman from the
beginning, sensing that despite the many differences
between them they were more alike than not. If he let
his instinct lead, he would find Ballard, of that he was
certain. No doubt the Englishman would be surprised to
see him; even angered at first. But when he told Ballard
of this new-found happiness surely his trespasses would
be forgiven?

Ballard dined late, and drank  until later still in The
Ring, a small  transvestite bar which he had  been
first taken to by Odell almost  two decades  ago.
No  doubt his guide's intention had been  to prove
his sophistication by showing his raw  colleague the
decadence of Berlin, but Ballard, though he never felt
any sexual frisson in the company of The Ring's clientele,
had immediately felt at home here. His neutrality was
respected; no attempts were made to solicit him. He
was simply left to drink and watch the passing parade
of genders.
  Coming here tonight raised the ghost of Odell, whose
name  would now   be scrubbed  from conversation
because of his involvement with the Mironenko affair.
Ballard had seen this process at work before. History
did not forgive failure, unless it was so profound as to
achieve a kind of grandeur. For the Odells of the world
- ambitious men who had found themselves through
little fault of their own in a cul-de-sac from which all
retreat was barred - for such men there would be no

                    175
fine words spoken nor medals struck. There would only
be oblivion.
  It made  him melancholy  to think of this, and he
drank heavily to keep his thoughts mellow, but when
- at two in the morning - he stepped out on to the
street his depression was only marginally dulled. The
good burghers of Berlin were well a-bed; tomorrow was
another working day. Only the sound of traffic from the
Kurfurstendamm   offered sign of life somewhere near.
He made  his way towards it, his thoughts fleecy.
  Behind him, laughter. A young man - glamorously
dressed as a starlet - tottered along the pavement arm
in arm  with his unsmiling  escort. Ballard recognised
the transvestite as a regular at the bar; the client, to
judge by his sober suit, was an out-of-towner slaking
his thirst for boys dressed as girls behind his wife's back.
Ballard picked up his pace. The young man's laughter,
its musicality patently forced, set his teeth on edge.
  He heard somebody running nearby; caught a shadow
moving out of the corner of his eye. His watch-dog, most
likely. Though alcohol had blurred his instincts, he felt
some  anxiety surface, the root of which he couldn't fix.
He  walked on. Featherlight tremors ran in his scalp.
   A few yards on, he realised that the laughter from
the street behind him  had  ceased. He glanced over
his shoulder,  half-expecting to see the boy  and his
customer embracing. But both had disappeared; slipped
off down one of the alleyways, no doubt, to conclude
their contract in darkness. Somewhere near, a dog had
begun to bark wildly. Ballard turned round to look back
the way he'd come, daring the deserted street to display
its secrets to him. Whatever was arousing the buzz in his
head and the itch on his palms, it was no commonplace
anxiety. There was something wrong  with the street,
despite its show of innocence; it hid terrors.

                     176
  The bright lights of the Kurfurstendamm were no
more than three minutes' walk away, but he didn't want
to turn his back on this mystery and take refuge there.
Instead he proceeded to walk back the way he'd come,
slowly. The dog had now ceased its alarm, and settled
into silence; he had only his footsteps for company.
  He reached the corner of the first alleyway and peered
down it. No light burned at window or doorway. He
could sense no living presence in the gloom. He crossed
over the alley and walked on to the next. A luxurious
stench had crept into the air, which became more lavish
yet as he approached the corner. As he breathed it in the
buzz in his head deepened to a threat of thunder.
  A  single light flickered in the throat of the alley, a
meagre wash from an upper window. By it, he saw
the body of the out-of-towner, lying sprawled on the
ground. He  had  been so traumatically mutilated it
seemed an attempt might have been made to turn him
inside out. From the spilled innards, that ripe smell rose
in all its complexity.
  Ballard had seen violent death before, and thought
himself indifferent to the spectacle. But something here
in the alley threw his calm into disarray. He felt his limbs
begin to shake. And then, from beyond the throw of
light, the boy spoke.
  'In God's name  . . .' he said. His voice had lost
all pretension to femininity; it was a murmur  of
undisguised terror.
  Ballard took a step down   the alley. Neither the
boy, nor the reason for his whispered prayer, became
visible until he had advanced ten yards. The boy was
half-slumped against the wall amongst the refuse. His
sequins and taffeta had been ripped from him; the body
was pale and sexless. He seemed not to notice Ballard:
his eyes were fixed on the deepest shadows.

                    177
  The  shaking in  Ballard's limbs worsened as he
followed the boy's gaze; it was all he could do to prevent
his teeth from chattering. Nevertheless he continued his
advance, not for the boy's sake (heroism had little merit,
he'd always been taught) but because he was curious,
more than curious, eager, to see what manner of man
was capable of such casual violence. To look into the
eyes of such ferocity seemed at that moment the most
important thing in all the world.
  Now  the boy saw him, and muttered a pitiful appeal,
but Ballard scarcely heard it. He felt other eyes upon
him, and their touch was like a blow. The din in his head
took on a sickening rhythm, like the sound of helicopter
rotors. In mere seconds it mounted to a blinding roar.
  Ballard pressed his hands to his eyes, and stumbled
back against the wall, dimly aware that the killer was
moving  out  of hiding (refuse was overturned) and
making  his escape. He felt something brush against
him, and  opened his eyes in time to glimpse the
man  slipping away down the passageway. He seemed
somehow  misshapen; his back crooked, his head too
large. Ballard loosed a shout after him, but the berserker
ran on, pausing only to look down at the body before
racing towards the street.
  Ballard heaved himself off the wall and stood upright.
The noise in his head was diminishing somewhat; the
attendant giddiness was passing.
  Behind him, the boy had begun sobbing. 'Did you
see?' he said. 'Did you see?
  'Who was it? Somebody you knew?'
  The  boy stared at Ballard like a frightened doe, his
mascaraed eyes huge.
  'Somebody . . .?' he said.
  Ballard was about to repeat the question when there
came a shriek of brakes, swiftly followed by the sound of

                     178
the impact. Leaving the boy to pull his tattered trousseau
about him, Ballard went back  into the street. Voices
were raised nearby; he hurried to their source. A large
car was straddling the pavement, its headlights blazing.
The driver was being helped from  his seat, while his
passengers - party-goers to judge by their dress and
drink-flushed faces - stood and debated furiously as to
how the accident had happened. One of the women was
talking about an animal in the road, but another of the
passengers corrected her. The body that lay in the gutter
where it had been thrown was not that of an animal.
  Ballard had seen little of the killer in the alleyway but
he knew instinctively that this was he. There was no sign
of the malformation he thought he'd glimpsed, however;
just a man dressed in a suit that had seen better days,
lying face down in a patch of blood. The police had
already arrived, and an officer shouted to him to stand
away from the body, but Ballard ignored the instruction
and went to steal a look at the dead man's face. There
was nothing there of the ferocity he had hoped so much
to see. But there was much he recognised nevertheless.
  The man was Odell.

He  told the officers that he had seen nothing of the
accident, which was  essentially true, and made  his
escape from  the scene before events in the adjacent
alley were discovered.
  It seemed every corner turned on his route back to his
rooms brought a fresh question. Chief amongst them:
why  he had been lied to about Odell's death? And
what psychosis had seized the man  that made him
capable of the slaughter Ballard had witnessed? He
would  not get the answers to these questions from
his sometime colleagues, that he knew. The only man
whom  he might have beguiled an answer from was
                    179
Cripps. He remembered the debate they'd had about
Mironenko,  and Cripps' talk of 'reasons for caution'
when  dealing with the Russian. The Glass Eye had
known  then that there was something in the wind,
though surely even he had not envisaged the scale of the
present disaster. Two highly valued agents murdered;
Mironenko  missing, presumed dead; he himself - if
Suckling was  to be believed - at death's door. And
all this begun with Sergei Zakharovich  Mironenko,
the lost man  of Berlin. It seemed his tragedy was
infectious.
  Tomorrow,  Ballard decided, he would find Suckling
and squeeze some answers from him. In the meantime,
his head and his hands ached, and he wanted  sleep.
Fatigue compromised sound judgement, and if ever
he needed  that faculty it was now. But despite his
exhaustion sleep eluded him  for an hour  or more,
and when  it came it was no comfort. He dreamt
whispers; and hard upon them, rising as if to drown
them out, the roar of the helicopters. Twice he surfaced
from  sleep with his head pounding; twice a hunger
to understand  what  the whispers were  telling him
drove him  to the pillow again. When  he  woke  for
the third time, the noise between his temples had
become  crippling; a thought-cancelling assault which
made   him  fear for  his sanity. Barely  able to see
the room  through  the pain, he crawled  from his
bed.
  'Please . . .'he murmured, as if there were somebody
to help him from his misery.
  A cool voice answered him out of the darkness:
  'What do you want?'
  He  didn't question the questioner; merely said:
  'Take the pain away.'
  'You can do that for yourself ,' the voice told him.

                     180
  He  leaned against the wall, nursing his splitting head,
tears of agony coming and coming. 'I don't know how,'
he said.
  'Your dreams give you pain,' the voice replied, 'so you
must forget them. Do you understand? Forget them, and the
pain will go.'
  He understood the instruction, but not how to realise
it. He had no powers of government in sleep. He was
the object of these whispers; not they his. But the voice
insisted.
  'The dream means you harm, Bollard. You must bury it.
Bury it deep.'
  'Bury it?'
  'Make  an image of it, Ballard. Picture it in detail.'
  He  did as he was told. He imagined a burial party,
and a box; and in the box, this dream. He made them
dig deep, as the voice instructed him, so that he would
never be able to disinter this hurtful thing again. But
even as he imagined the box lowered into the pit he heard
its boards creak. The dream would not lie down. It beat
against confinement. The boards began to break.
  'QuicklyV the voice said.
  The  din of the rotors had risen to a terrifying pitch.
Blood had begun to pour from his nostrils; he tasted salt
at the back of his throat.
  'Finish if!' the voice yelled above the tumult. 'Cover it
upl'
  Ballard looked into the grave. The box was thrashing
from side to side.
  'Cover it, damn you!'
  He  tried to make the burial party obey; tried to will
them to pick up their shovels and bury the offending
thing alive, but they would not. Instead they gazed into
the grave as he did and watched as the contents of the
box fought for light.

                    181
  'No!' the voice demanded, its fury mounting. 'You
 must not look!'
  The  box  danced in the hole. The  lid splintered.
Briefly, Ballard glimpsed something shining up between
the boards.
  'It will killyou!' the voice said, and as if to prove its
point the volume of the sound rose beyond the point
of endurance, washing out burial party, box and all
in a blaze of pain. Suddenly it seemed that what the
voice said was true; that he was near to death. But it
wasn't the dream that was conspiring to kill him, but
the sentinel they had posted between him and it: this
skull-splintering cacophony.
  Only  now did he realise that he'd fallen on the floor,
prostrate beneath this assault. Reaching out blindly he
found  the wall, and hauled himself towards it, the
machines  still thundering behind his eyes, the blood
hot on his face.
  He  stood up as best he could and began to move
towards the bathroom. Behind him the voice, its tantrum
controlled, began its exhortation afresh. It sounded so
intimate that he looked round, fully expecting to see
the speaker, and he was not disappointed. For a few
flickering moments he seemed to be standing in a small,
windowless room, its walls painted a uniform white. The
light here was bright and dead, and in the centre of the
room  stood the face behind the voice, smiling.
  'Your dreams give you pain,' he said. This was the first
commandment   again. 'Bury them Ballard, and the pain
will pass.'
  Ballard wept  like a  child; this scrutiny shamed
him.  He looked  away from  his tutor to bury his
tears.
   'Trust us,' another voice said, close by. 'We're your
friends.'

                     182
  He  didn't trust their fine words. The very pain they
claimed to want to save him from was of their making; it
was a stick to beat him with if the dreams came calling.
  'We want to help you,' one or other of them said.
  'No . . .'he murmured. 'No damn you ... I don't
... I don't believe . . .'
  The room flickered out, and he was in the bedroom
again, clinging to the wall like a climber to a cliff-face.
Before they could come  for him with more  words,
more pain, he edged his way to the bathroom door,
and stumbled blindly towards the shower. There was a
moment  of panic while he located the taps; and then the
water came on at a rush. It was bitterly cold, but he put
his head beneath it, while the onslaught of rotor-blades
tried to shake the plates of his skull apart. Icy water
trekked down his back, but he let the rain come down
on him  in a torrent, and by degrees, the helicopters
took their leave. He didn't move, though his body
juddered with cold, until the last of them had gone;
then he sat on the edge of the bath, mopping water
from his neck and face and body, and eventually, when
his legs felt courageous enough, made his way back into
the bedroom.
  He lay down on the same crumpled sheets in much
the same  position as he'd lain in before; yet nothing
was the same. He  didn't know what had changed
in him,  or how.  But  he lay there without  sleep
disturbing his serenity through the remaining hours
of the night, trying to puzzle it out, and a little before
dawn he remembered the words he had muttered in
the face of the delusion. Simple words; but oh, their
power.
  'I don't believe . . .'he said; and the commandments
trembled.
                     183
It was half an hour before noon when he arrived at the
small book exporting firm which served Suckling for
cover. He  felt quick-witted, despite the disturbance
of the night, and rapidly charmed his way past the
receptionist and entered Suckling's office unannounced.
When   Suckling's eyes settled on his visitor he started
from his desk as if fired upon.
  'Good morning,' said Ballard. 'I thought it was time
we talked.'
  Suckling's eyes fled to the office-door, which Ballard
had  left ajar.
  'Sorry; is there a draught?' Ballard closed the door
gently. 'I want to see Cripps,' he said.
  Suckling waded through the sea of books and manu-
scripts that threatened to engulf his desk. 'Are you out
of your mind, coming back here?'
  Tell them I'm a friend of the family,' Ballard offered.
   'I can't believe you'd be so stupid.'
  'Just point me to Cripps, and I'll be away.'
  Suckling  ignored him  in favour of his tirade. 'It's
taken two years to establish my credentials here.'
  Ballard laughed.
  'I'm going to report this, damn you!'
  'I think you  should,' said Ballard, turning up the
volume. 'In the meanwhile: where's Cripps?'
  Suckling, apparently convinced that he was faced with
a lunatic, controlled his apoplexy. 'All right,' he said.
Til have somebody call on you; take you to him.'
  'Not  good  enough,' Ballard replied. He crossed
to Suckling  in two short strides and took hold  of
him  by  his lapel. He'd spent at most  three hours
with  Suckling in ten years, but he'd  scarcely passed
a  moment  in  his presence without itching to do
what he was doing now. Knocking the man's hands
away,  he  pushed  Suckling against the book-lined

                     184
wall. A stack of volumes, caught by Suckling's heel,
toppled.
  'Once more,' Ballard said. The old man.'
  'Take your fucking hands off me,' Suckling said, his
fury redoubled at being touched.
  'Again,' said Ballard. 'Cripps.'
  'I'll have you carpeted for this. I'll have you our!'
  Ballard leaned towards  the reddening  face, and
smiled.
  'I'm out anyway. People have died, remember?
London  needs a sacrificial lamb, and I think I'm it.'
Suckling's face dropped. 'So I've got nothing to lose,
have I?' There was no reply. Ballard pressed closer to
Suckling, tightening his grip on the man. ''Have /?'
  Suckling's courage failed him. 'Cripps is dead,' he
said.
  Ballard didn't release his hold. 'You said the same
about Odell -' he remarked. At the name, Suckling's
eyes widened. '- And I saw him only last night,' Ballard
said, 'out on the town.'
  'You saw Odell?'
  'Oh yes.'
  Mention of the dead man brought the scene in the
alleyway back to mind. The smell of the body; the boy's
sobs. There were other faiths, thought Ballard, beyond
the one he'd once shared with the creature beneath him.
Faiths whose devotions were made in heat and blood,
whose dogmas  were dreams. Where  better to baptise
himself into that new faith than here, in the blood of
the enemy?
  Somewhere, at the very back of his head, he could
hear the helicopters, but he wouldn't let them take to
the air. He was strong today; his head, his hands, all
strong. When he drew his nails towards Suckling's eyes
the blood came easily. He had a sudden vision of the face

                    185
beneath the flesh; of Suckling's features stripped to the
essence.
   'Sir?'
  Ballard glanced over his shoulder. The receptionist
was standing at the open door.
  'Oh. I'm sorry,' she said, preparing to withdraw. To
judge by her blushes she assumed this was a lover's tryst
she'd walked in upon.
  'Stay,' said Suckling. 'Mr  Ballard . . . was just
leaving.'
  Ballard released his prey. There  would  be  other
opportunities to have Suckling's life.
  Til see you again,' he said.
  Suckling drew a handkerchief from his top pocket and
pressed it to his face.
  'Depend upon it,' he replied.

Now  they would come for him, he could have no doubt
of that. He was a rogue element, and they would strive
to silence him as quickly as possible. The thought did
not distress him. Whatever they had tried to make him
forget with their brain-washing was more ambitious than
they had anticipated; however deeply they had taught
him to bury it, it was digging its way back to the surface.
He couldn't see it yet, but he knew it was near. More
than once on his way back to his rooms he imagined
eyes at his back. Maybe he was still being tailed; but
his instincts informed him otherwise. The presence he
felt close-by - so near that it was sometimes at his
shoulder - was perhaps simply another part of him. He
felt protected by it, as by a local god.
  He  had  half  expected there to  be  a reception
committee awaiting him at his rooms, but there was
nobody. Either Suckling had been obliged to delay his
alarm-call, or else the upper echelons were still debating

                     186
their tactics. He pocketed those few keepsakes that he
wanted to preserve from their calculating eyes, and left
the building again without anyone making a move to
stop him.
  It felt good to be alive, despite the chill that rendered
the grim  streets grimmer  still. He decided, for no
particular reason, to go to the zoo, which, though he
had been visiting the city for two decades, he had never
done. As he walked it occurred to him that he'd never
been as free as he was now; that he had shed mastery
like an old coat. No wonder they feared him. They had
good reason.
  Kantstrasse was busy, but he cut his way through
the pedestrians  easily, almost as if they  sensed a
rare certainty in him  and  gave  him  a wide  berth.
As he approached the entrance to the zoo, however,
somebody jostled him. He looked round to upbraid
the fellow, but caught only the back of the man's
head as he was submerged in the crowd heading onto
Hardenbergstrasse. Suspecting an attempted theft, he
checked his pockets, to find that a scrap of paper had
been slipped into one. He knew better than to examine
it on the spot, but casually glanced round again to see if
he recognised the courier. The man had already slipped
away.
  He  delayed his visit to the zoo and went instead to
the Tiergarten, and there - in the wilds of the great
park - found a place to read the message. It was from
Mironenko,  and it requested a meeting to talk of a
matter of considerable urgency, naming  a house in
Marienfelde as a venue. Ballard memorised the details,
then shredded the note.
  It was  perfectly possible that the invitation was a
trap of course, set either by his own  faction or by
the opposition. Perhaps a way to test his allegiance; or

                     187
to manipulate him  into a situation in which he could
be easily despatched. Despite such doubts he had no
choice but to go however, in the hope that this blind
date was indeed with Mironenko.  Whatever  dangers
this rendezvous brought, they were not so new. Indeed,
given his long-held doubts of the efficacy of sight, hadn't
every date he'd ever made been in some sense blind'?

By early evening the damp air was thickening towards a
fog, and by the time he stepped off the bus on Hildburg-
hauserstrasse it had a good hold on the city, lending the
chill new powers to discomfort.
  Ballard went quickly through  the quiet streets. He
scarcely knew  the district at all, but its proximity to
the Wall bled  it of what little charm it might once
have possessed. Many of the houses were unoccupied;
of those that were not most were sealed off against the
night and the cold and the lights that glared from the
watch-towers. It was only with the aid of a map that he
located the tiny street Mironenko's note had named.
  No lights burned in the house. Ballard knocked hard,
but there was no answering footstep in the hall. He had
anticipated several possible scenarios, but an absence of
response at the house had not been amongst them. He
knocked again; and again. It was only then that he heard
sounds from within, and finally the door was opened to
him. The hallway was painted grey and brown, and lit
only by a bare bulb. The man  silhouetted against this
drab interior was not Mironenko.
  'Yes?' he said. 'What do you want?' His German was
spoken with a distinct Muscovite inflection.
  'I'm looking for a friend of mine,' Ballard said.
  The man, who was almost as broad as the doorway he
stood in, shook his head.
  'There's nobody here,' he said. 'Only me.'

                     188
  'I was told -'
  'You must have the wrong house.'
  No sooner had the doorkeeper made the remark than
noise erupted from down the dreary hallway. Furniture
was being overturned; somebody had begun to shout.
  The Russian looked over his shoulder and went to
slam the door in Ballard's face, but Ballard's foot was
there to stop him. Taking  advantage of the man's
divided attention, Ballard put his shoulder to the door,
and pushed. He was in the hallway - indeed he was
half-way down it - before the Russian took a step in
pursuit. The sound of demolition had escalated, and
was now drowned out by the sound of a man squealing.
Ballard followed the sound past the sovereignty of the
lone bulb and into gloom at the back of the house. He
might well have lost his way at that point but that a door
was flung open ahead of him.
  The  room  beyond  had  scarlet floorboards; they
glistened as if freshly painted. And now the decorator
appeared in person. His torso had been ripped open
from  neck to navel. He  pressed his hands  to the
breached dam, but they were useless to stem the flood;
his blood came in spurts, and with it, his innards. He
met  Ballard's gaze, his eyes full to overflowing with
death, but his body had not yet received the instruction
to lie down and die; it juddered on in a pitiful attempt
to escape the scene of execution behind him.
  The  spectacle had brought Ballard to a halt, and the
Russian from the door now took hold of him, and pulled
him back into the hallway, shouting into his face. The
outburst, in panicked Russian, was beyond Ballard, but
he needed  no translation of the hands that encircled
his throat. The  Russian was  half his weight again,
and had  the grip of an expert strangler, but Ballard
felt effortlessly the man's superior. He wrenched the
                     189
attacker's hands from his neck, and struck him across
the face. It was a fortuitous blow. The Russian fell back
against the staircase, his shouts silenced.
  Ballard looked back towards the scarlet room. The
dead man  had gone, though scraps of flesh had been
left on the threshold.
  From  within, laughter.
  Ballard turned to the Russian.
  'What in God's name's going on?' he demanded, but
the other man simply stared through the open door.
  Even as he spoke, the laughter stopped. A shadow
moved  across the blood-splattered wall of the interior,
and a voice said:
  'Ballard?'
  There was a roughness there, as if the speaker had
been shouting all day and night, but it was the voice of
Mironenko.
  'Don't stand out in the cold,' he said, 'come on in.
And bring Solomonov.'
  The other man made  a bid for the front door, but
Ballard had hold of him before he could take two steps.
  'There's nothing to  be afraid of, Comrade,' said
Mironenko. 'The dog's gone.' Despite the reassurance,
Solomonov began to sob as Ballard pressed him towards
the open door.
  Mironenko  was right; it was warmer inside. And
there no sign of a dog. There was blood in abundance,
however. The man  Ballard had last seen teetering in the
doorway had been dragged back into this abattoir while
he and Solomonov had struggled. The body had been
treated with astonishing barbarity. The head had been
smashed open; the innards were a grim litter underfoot.
  Squatting  in the shadowy  corner of  this terrible
room,  Mironenko. He  had  been mercilessly beaten
to judge by the swelling about his head and upper

                     190
torso, but his unshaven   face bore a  smile for his
saviour.
  'I knew you'd come,' he  said. His gaze fell upon
Solomonov. They followed me,' he said. 'They meant
to kill me, I suppose. Is that what you  intended,
Comrade?'
  Solomonov  shook with fear - his eyes flitting from the
bruised moon of Mironenko's face to the pieces of gut
that lay everywhere about - finding nowhere a place of
refuge.
  'What stopped them?' Ballard asked.
  Mironenko  stood up. Even this slow movement
caused Solomonov to flinch.
  'Tell Mr Ballard,' Mironenko prompted. 'Tell him
what happened.' Solomonov was too terrified to speak.
'He's KGB,  of course,' Mironenko explained. 'Both
trusted men. But not trusted enough to be warned,
poor idiots. So they were sent to murder me with just
a gun and a prayer.' He laughed at the thought. 'Neither
of which were much use in the circumstances.'
  'I beg you . . .' Solomonov murmured, '. . . let me
go. I'll say nothing.'
  'You'll say what they want you to say, Comrade, the
way we  all must,' Mironenko replied. 'Isn't that right,
Ballard? All slaves of our faith?'
  Ballard watched Mironenko's  face closely; there was
a fullness there that could not be entirely explained by
the bruising. The skin almost seemed to crawl.
  'They have made us forgetful,' Mironenko said.
  'Of what?' Ballard enquired.
  'Of ourselves,' came the reply, and with it Mironenko
moved from his murky corner and into the light.
  What had Solomonov and his dead companion done
to him? His flesh was a mass of tiny contusions, and
there were bloodied lumps at his neck and temples

                     191
which  Ballard might have taken for bruises but that
they palpitated, as if something nested beneath the
skin. Mironenko made no sign of discomfort however,
as he reached out to Solomonov. At his touch the failed
assassin lost control of his bladder, but Mironenko's
intentions were not murderous. With eerie tenderness
he stroked a tear from Solomonov's cheek. 'Go back to
them,' he advised the trembling man. 'Tell them what
you've seen.'
  Solomonov  seemed scarcely to believe his ears, or else
suspected - as did Ballard - that this forgiveness was a
sham, and that any attempt to leave would invite fatal
consequences.
  But Mironenko  pressed his point. 'Go on,' he said.
'Leave us please. Or would you prefer to stay and eat?'
  Solomonov  took a single, faltering step towards the
door. When  no  blow came he  took a second step,
and a third, and now he was  out of the door and
away.
  Tell them!' Mironenko shouted after him. The front
door slammed.
  'Tell them what?' said Ballard.
  'That I've remembered,' Mironenko said. 'That I've
found the skin they stole from me.'
  For  the first time since entering this house, Ballard
began  to  feel queasy. It was  not  the blood  nor
the  bones underfoot, but  a look  in Mironenko's
eyes. He'd   seen eyes  as bright once  before. But
where?
   'You -' he said quietly, 'you did this.'
  'Certainly,' Mironenko replied.
  'How?' Ballard said. There was a familiar thunder
climbing from the back of his head. He tried to ignore
it, and press some explanation from the Russian. 'How,
damn you?'

                     192
  'We are the same,' Mironenko replied. 'I smell it in
you.'
  'No,' said Ballard. The clamour was rising.
  The  doctrines are just words. It's not what we're
taught but what we know that matters. In our marrow;
in our souls.'
  He  had  talked of souls once before; of places his
masters had built in which a man  could be broken
apart. At the time Ballard had thought such talk mere
extravagance; now he wasn't so sure. What  was the
burial party all about, if not the subjugation of some
secret part of him? The marrow-part; the soul-part.
  Before  Ballard could find  the words  to  express
himself, Mironenko  froze, his eyes gleaming more
brightly than ever.
  'They're outside,' he said.
  'Who are?'
  The  Russian shrugged. 'Does it matter?' he said.
'Your side or mine. Either one will silence us if they
can.'
  That much was true.
  'We must  be quick,' he said, and headed for the
hallway. The front door stood ajar. Mironenko was
there in moments.  Ballard followed. Together they
slipped out on to the street.
  The  fog had thickened. It idled around the street-
lamps, muddying their light, making every doorway a
hiding place. Ballard didn't wait to tempt the pursuers
out into the open, but followed Mironenko, who was
already well ahead, swift despite his bulk. Ballard had to
pick up his pace to keep the man in sight. One moment
he was visible, the next the fog closed around him.
  The  residential property they moved through now
gave way to more anonymous  buildings, warehouses
perhaps, whose  walls stretched up into the murky

                     193
darkness unbroken  by windows.  Ballard called after
him  to slow his crippling pace. The Russian  halted
and  turned back to Ballard, his outline wavering in
the besieged light. Was it a trick of the fog, or had
Mironenko's condition deteriorated in the minutes since
they'd left the house? His face seemed to be seeping; the
lumps on his neck had swelled further.
  'We  don't have to run,' Ballard said. 'They're not
following.'
  'They're always following,' Mironenko replied, and
as if to give weight to the observation Ballard heard
fog-deadened footsteps in a nearby street.
  'No time to debate,' Mironenko murmured, and
turning on his heel, he ran. In seconds, the fog had
spirited him away again.
  Ballard hesitated another moment. Incautious as it
was, he wanted to catch a glimpse of his pursuers so as
to know them for the future. But now, as the soft pad
of Mironenko's step diminished into silence, he realised
that the other footsteps had also ceased. Did they know
he was waiting for them? He held his breath, but there
was neither sound nor sign of them. The delinquent fog
idled on. He seemed to be alone in it. Reluctantly, he
gave up waiting and went after the Russian at a run.
  A few yards on the road divided. There was no sign of
Mironenko  in either direction. Cursing his stupidity in
lingering behind, Ballard followed the route which was
most heavily shrouded in fog. The street was short, and
ended at a wall lined with spikes, beyond which there
was a park of some kind. The fog clung more tenaciously
to this space of damp earth than it did to the street, and
Ballard could see no more than four or five yards across
the grass from where he stood. But he knew intuitively
that he had chosen the right road; that Mironenko had
scaled this wall and was waiting for him somewhere

                     194
close by. Behind him, the fog kept its counsel. Either
their pursuers had lost him, or their way, or both. He
hoisted himself up on to the wall, avoiding the spikes by
a whisper, and dropped down on the opposite side.
  The  street had seemed pin-drop quiet, but it clearly
wasn't, for it was quieter still inside the park. The fog
was chillier here, and pressed more insistently upon him
as he advanced across the wet grass. The wall behind
him - his only point of anchorage in this wasteland -
became a ghost of itself, then faded entirely. Committed
now, he walked on a few more steps, not certain that
he was even taking a straight route. Suddenly the fog
curtain was drawn aside and he saw a figure waiting
for him a few yards ahead. The bruises now twisted
his face so badly Ballard would not have known it to be
Mironenko,  but that his eyes still burned so brightly.
  The man  did not wait for Ballard, but turned again
and loped off into insolidity, leaving the Englishman to
follow, cursing both the chase and the quarry. As he did
so, he felt a movement close by. His senses were useless
in the clammy embrace of fog and night, but he saw with
that other eye, heard with that other ear, and he knew
he was not alone. Had Mironenko given up the race and
come back to escort him? He spoke the man's name,
knowing that in doing so he made his position apparent
to any and all, but equally certain that whoever stalked
him already knew precisely where he stood.
  'Speak,' he said.
  There was no reply out of the fog.
  Then; movement.  The fog curled upon itself and
Ballard glimpsed a form dividing the veils. Mironenko!
He  called after the man  again, taking several steps
through the murk in pursuit and suddenly something
was stepping out to meet him. He saw the phantom for a
moment only; long enough to glimpse incandescent eyes

                     195
and teeth grown so vast they wrenched the mouth into
a permanent grimace. Of those facts - eyes and teeth -
he was  certain. Of the other bizarrities - the bristling
flesh, the monstrous limbs - he was less sure. Maybe
his mind, exhausted with so much noise and pain, was
finally losing its grip on the real world; inventing terrors
to frighten him back into ignorance.
  'Damn  you,' he said, defying both the thunder that
was coming to blind him again and the phantoms he
would be blinded to. Almost as if to test his defiance,
the fog up ahead shimmered and parted and something
that he might have taken for human, but that it had its
belly to the ground, slunk into view and out. To his
right, he heard growls; to his left, another indeterminate
form came and went. He was surrounded, it seemed, by
mad men and wild dogs.
  And Mironenko; where was he? Part of this assembly,
or prey to it? Hearing a half-word spoken behind him,
he swung  round  to see a figure that was plausibly
that of the Russian backing into the fog. This time
he didn't walk in pursuit, he ran, and his speed was
rewarded. The figure reappeared ahead of him, and
Ballard stretched to snatch at the man's  jacket. His
fingers found purchase, and all at once Mironenko
was reeling round, a growl in his throat, and Ballard
was  staring into a face that almost made  him  cry
out. His mouth  was  a raw wound,  the teeth vast,
the eyes slits of molten gold; the lumps at his neck
had  swelled and spread, so that the Russian's head
was no  longer raised above his body but part of one
undivided energy, head becoming torso without an axis
intervening.
  'Ballard,' the beast smiled.
  Its voice clung to coherence only with  the greatest
difficulty, but Ballard heard the remnants of Mironenko

                     196
there. The more he scanned the simmering flesh, the
more appalled he became.
  'Don't be afraid,' Mironenko said.
  'What  disease is this?'
  'The  only disease I ever suffered was forgetfulness,
and I'm cured of that -' He grimaced as he spoke, as if
each word was  shaped in contradiction to the instincts
of his throat.
  Ballard touched his hand  to his head. Despite his
revolt against the pain, the noise was rising and rising.
  '. . . You remember too, don't you? You're the
same.'
  'No,' Ballard muttered.
  Mironenko reached a spine-haired palm to touch him.
'Don't be afraid,' he said. 'You're not alone. There are
many  of us. Brothers and sisters.'
  'I'm  not your brother,' Ballard said. The noise was
bad, but the face of Mironenko was worse. Revolted,
he turned his back on it, but the Russian only followed
him.
  'Don't you taste freedom, Ballard? And life. Just a
breath away.' Ballard walked on, the blood beginning
to creep from  his nostrils. He let it come. 'It only
hurts for a while,' Mironenko said. 'Then the pain
goes . . .'
  Ballard kept  his head down,  eyes  to the earth.
Mironenko, seeing that he was making little impression,
dropped behind.
  They  won't take you back!' he said. 'You've seen too
much.'
  The  roar of helicopters did not entirely blot these
words out. Ballard knew there was truth in them. His
step faltered, and through the cacophony  he heard
Mironenko murmur:
  'Look...'

                     197
  Ahead, the fog had thinned somewhat, and the park
wall was visible through rags of mist. Behind him,
Mironenko's voice had descended to a snarl.
  'Look at what you are.'
  The  rotors roared; Ballard's legs felt as though they
would fold up beneath him. But he kept up his advance
towards the wall. Within yards of it, Mironenko called
after him again, but  this time the words  had fled
altogether. There  was  only a  low  growl. Ballard
could not resist looking; just once. He glanced over
his shoulder.
  Again the fog confounded him, but not entirely. For
moments  that were both an age and yet too brief, Ballard
saw the thing that had been Mironenko in all its glory,
and at the sight the rotors grew to screaming pitch. He
clamped his hands to his face. As he did so a shot rang
out; then another; then a volley of shots. He fell to the
ground, as much  in weakness as in self-defence, and
uncovered his eyes to see several human figures moving
in the fog. Though he had forgotten their pursuers, they
had not forgotten him. They had traced him to the park,
and stepped into the midst of this lunacy, and now men
and half-men and things not men were lost in the fog,
and there was bloody confusion on every side. He saw a
gunman  firing at a shadow, only to have an ally appear
from the fog with a bullet in his belly; saw a thing appear
on four legs and flit from sight again on two; saw another
run by carrying a human head by the hair, and laughing
from its snouted face.
  The turmoil spilled towards him. Fearing for his life,
he stood up and staggered back towards the wall. The
cries and shots and snarls went on; he expected either
bullet or beast to find him with  every step. But he
reached the wall alive, and attempted to scale it. His
co-ordination had deserted him, however. He had no

                     198
choice but to follow the wall along its length until he
reached the gate.
  Behind him the scenes of unmasking and transform-
ation and mistaken  identity went on. His enfeebled
thoughts turned briefly to Mironenko. Would he, or
any of his tribe, survive this massacre?
  'Ballard,' said a voice in the fog. He couldn't see the
speaker, although he recognised the voice. He'd heard
it in his delusion, and it had told him lies.
  He felt a pin-prick at his neck. The man had come
from behind, and was pressing a needle into him.
  'Sleep,' the voice said. And with the words came
oblivion.

At first he couldn't remember the man's name. His mind
wandered  like a lost child, although his interrogator
would time and again demand his attention, speaking
to him as though  they were old friends. And there
was indeed something  familiar about his errant eye,
that went on its way so much more  slowly than its
companion. At last, the name came to him.
  'You're Cripps,' he said.
  'Of course I'm Cripps,' the man  replied. 'Is your
memory  playing tricks? Don't concern yourself. I've
given you some suppressants, to keep you from losing
your balance. Not that I think that's very likely. You've
fought the good fight, Ballard, in spite of considerable
provocation. When  I think of the way  Odell snap-
ped . . .' He sighed. 'Do you remember last night at all?'
  At  first his mind's eye was blind. But  then the
memories began to come. Vague forms moving in a
fog.
  'The park,' he said at last.
  'I only just got you out. God knows how many are
dead.'

                     199
  'The other . . . the Russian . . . ?'
  'Mironenko?' Cripps prompted. 'I don't know. I'm
not in charge any longer, you see; I just stepped in
to salvage something if I could. London will need us
again, sooner or later. Especially now they know the
Russians  have a  special corps like us. We'd  heard
rumours  of course; and then, after you'd met with
him, began to wonder about Mironenko. That's why
I set up the meeting. And of course when I saw him,
face to face, I knew. There's something in the eyes.
Something hungry.'
  'I saw him change -'
  'Yes,  it's quite a sight, isn't it? The  power  it
unleashes. That's why we developed the programme,
you see, to harness that power, to have it work for us.
But it's difficult to control. It took years of suppression
therapy, slowly burying the desire for transformation,
so that what we  had left was a man  with a beast's
faculties. A wolf in sheep's clothing. We thought we
had the problem beaten; that if the belief systems didn't
keep you subdued the pain response would. But we were
wrong.' He stood up and crossed to the window. 'Now
we have to start again.'
  'Suckling said you'd been wounded.'
  'No. Merely demoted. Ordered back to London.'
  'But you're not going.'
  'I will now; now that I've found you.' He looked
round  at Ballard. 'You're my   vindication, Ballard.
You're  living proof that my  techniques are viable.
You  have full knowledge of your condition, yet the
therapy  holds the leash.' He  turned  back to  the
window.  Rain lashed the glass. Ballard could almost
feel it upon his head, upon  his back. Cool, sweet
rain. For a blissful moment he seemed to be running
in it, close to  the ground,   and  the air was  full

                     200
of the scents the downpour  had released from the
pavements.
  'Mironenko said -'
  'Forget Mironenko,' Cripps told him. 'He's dead.
You're the last of the old order, Ballard. And the first
of the new.'
  Downstairs, a bell rang. Cripps peered out of the
window  at the streets below.
  'Well, well,' he said. 'A delegation, come to beg us to
return. I hope you're flattered.' He went to the door.
'Stay here. We needn't show you off tonight. You're
weary. Let them wait, eh? Let them sweat.' He left the
stale room, closing the door behind him. Ballard heard
his footsteps on the stairs. The bell was being rung a
second time. He got up and crossed to the window.
The  weariness of the late afternoon light matched his
weariness; he  and his city were  still of one accord,
despite the curse that was upon him. Below a man
emerged from the back of the car and crossed to the
front door. Even at this acute angle Ballard recognised
Suckling.
  There were voices in the hallway; and with Suckling's
appearance the debate seemed to become more heated.
Ballard went to the door, and listened, but his drug-
dulled mind could make  little sense of the argument.
He  prayed that Cripps would keep to his word, and
not allow them to peer at him. He didn't want to be a
beast like Mironenko. It wasn't freedom, was it, to be
so terrible? It was merely a different kind of tyranny.
But then he didn't want to be the first of Cripps' heroic
new order either. He belonged to nobody, he realised;
not even himself. He was hopelessly lost. And yet hadn't
Mironenko  said at that first meeting that the man who
did not believe himself lost, was lost? Perhaps better
that - better to exist in the twilight between one state
                     201
and another, to prosper as best he could by doubt and
ambiguity - than to suffer the certainties of the tower.
  The debate below was gaining in momentum. Ballard
opened the door so as to hear better. It was Suckling's
voice that met him. The tone was waspish, but no less
threatening for that.
  'It's over . . .' he was telling Cripps '. . . don't you
understand plain English?' Cripps made an attempt to
protest, but Suckling cut him short. 'Either you come
in a gentlemanly fashion or Gideon and Sheppard carry
you out. Which  is it to be?'
  'What is this?' Cripps demanded. 'You're nobody,
Suckling. You're comic relief.'
  'That was yesterday,' the man replied. 'There've been
some changes made. Every dog has his day, isn't that
right? You should know that better than anybody. I'd
get a coat if I were you. It's raining.'
  There was a short silence, then Cripps said:
  'All right. I'll come.'
  'Good man,' said Suckling sweetly. 'Gideon, go check
upstairs.'
   'I'm alone,' said Cripps.
  'I believe you,' said Suckling. Then to Gideon, 'Do it
anyway.'
  Ballard heard somebody move across the hallway, and
then a sudden flurry of movement. Cripps was either
making  an escape-bid or attacking Suckling, one of the
two. Suckling shouted out; there was a scuffle. Then,
cutting through the confusion, a single shot.
  Cripps cried out, then came  the sound  of him
falling.
  Now   Suckling's voice, thick with fury. 'Stupid,' he
said. 'Stupid.'
  Cripps groaned something which Ballard didn't catch.
Had  he asked to be dispatched, perhaps, for Suckling
                    202
told him: 'No. You're going back to London. Sheppard,
stop him bleeding. Gideon; upstairs.'
  Baliard backed away from  the head of the stairs as
Gideon  began his ascent. He felt sluggish and inept.
There was no way out of this trap. They would corner
him and exterminate him. He was a beast; a mad dog
in a maze. If he'd only killed Suckling when he'd had
the strength to do so. But then what good would that
have done? The world was full of men like Suckling,
men  biding their time until they could show their true
colours; vile, soft, secret men. And suddenly the beast
seemed to move in Baliard, and he thought of the park
and the fog and the smile on the face of Mironenko, and
he felt a surge of grief for something he'd never had:
the life of a monster.
  Gideon was almost at the top of the stairs. Though
it could only delay the inevitable by moments, Baliard
slipped along the landing and opened the first door he
found. It was the bathroom. There was a bolt on the
door, which he slipped into place.
  The sound of running water filled the room. A piece
of guttering had broken, and was delivering a torrent
of rain-water onto the window-sill. The sound, and the
chill of the bathroom, brought the night of delusions
back. He remembered the pain and blood; remembered
the shower - water beating on his skull, cleansing him
of the taming pain. At the thought, four words came to
his lips unbidden.
  'I do not believe.'
  He had been heard.
  'There's somebody up here,' Gideon called. The man
approached the door, and beat on it. 'Open up!'
  Baliard heard him quite clearly, but didn't reply. His
throat was burning, and the roar of rotors was growing
louder again. He put his back to the door and despaired.

                    203
  Suckling was up the stairs and at the door in seconds.
'Who's in there?' he demanded to know. 'Answer me!
Who's  in there?' Getting no response, he ordered that
Cripps be brought upstairs. There was more commotion
as the order was obeyed.
  'For the last time -' Suckling said.
  The  pressure was building in Ballard's skull. This
time it seemed the din had lethal intentions; his eyes
ached, as if about to be blown from their sockets. He
caught sight of something in the mirror above the sink;
something with gleaming eyes, and again, the words
came - 'I do not believe' - but this time his throat, hot
with other business, could barely pronounce them.
  'Ballard,' said Suckling. There was triumph in the
word. 'My God, we've got Ballard as well. This is our
lucky day.'
  No, thought the man in the mirror. There was nobody
of that name here. Nobody of any name at all, in fact,
for weren't names the first act of faith, the first board
in the box you buried freedom in? The thing he was
becoming would not be named; nor boxed; nor buried.
Never again.
  For a moment  he lost sight of the bathroom, and
found himself hovering above the grave they had made
him dig, and in the depths the box danced as its contents
fought its premature burial. He could hear the wood
splintering - or was it the sound of the door being broken
down?
  The  box-lid flew off. A rain of nails fell on the heads
of the burial party. The noise in his head, as if knowing
that its torments had proved fruitless, suddenly fled,
and with it the delusion. He was back in the bathroom,
facing the open door. The men who stared through at
him  had the faces of fools. Slack, and stupefied with
shock - seeing the way he was wrought.  Seeing the

                    204
snout of him, the hair of him, the golden eye and the
yellow tooth of him. Their horror elated him.
  'Kill it!' said Suckling, and pushed Gideon into the
breach. The man already had his gun from his pocket
and was levelling it, but his trigger-finger was too slow.
The beast snatched his hand and pulped the flesh around
the steel. Gideon screamed, and stumbled away down
the stairs, ignoring Suckling's shouts.
  As the beast raised his hand to sniff the blood on his
palm there was a flash of fire, and he felt the blow to his
shoulder. Sheppard had no chance to fire a second shot
however before his prey was through the door and upon
him. Forsaking his gun, he made  a futile bid for the
stairs, but the beast's hand unsealed the back of his head
in one easy stroke. The gunman toppled forward, the
narrow landing filling with the smell of him. Forgetting
his other enemies, the beast fell upon the offal and ate.
  Somebody  said: 'Ballard.'
  The beast swallowed down the dead man's eyes in one
gulp, like prime oysters.
  Again, those syllables. ''Ballard.' He would have gone
on with his meal, but that the sound of weeping pricked
his ears. Dead to himself he was, but not to grief. He
dropped the meat from his fingers and looked back along
the landing.
  The man  who was crying only wept from one eye;
the other gazed on, oddly untouched. But the pain in
the living eye was profound indeed. It was despair, the
beast knew; such suffering was too close to him for the
sweetness of transformation to have erased it entirely.
The weeping man  was locked in the arms of another
man,  who had  his gun placed against the side of his
prisoner's head.
  'If you make another move,' the captor said, Til blow
his head off. Do you understand me?'

                    205
  The beast wiped his mouth.
  'Tell him, Cripps! He's your baby.  Make  him
understand.'
  The one-eyed man tried to speak, but words defeated
him. Blood from the wound in his abdomen seeped
between his fingers.
  'Neither of you need die,' the captor said. The beast
didn't like the music of his voice; it was shrill and
deceitful. 'London would much  prefer to have you
alive. So why don't you tell him, Cripps? Tell him I
mean him no harm.'
  The weeping man nodded.
  'Ballard . . .'he murmured. His voice was softer than
the other. The beast listened.
  'Tell me, Ballard -' he said,'- how does it feel?'
  The beast couldn't quite make sense of the question.
  'Please tell me. For curiosity's sake -'
  'Damn  you -' said Suckling, pressing the gun into
Cripps' flesh. 'This isn't a debating society.'
  'Is it good?' Cripps asked, ignoring both man and
gun.
  'Shut up!'
  'Answer me, Ballard. How does it feel?
  As he stared into Cripps' despairing eyes the meaning
of the sounds he'd uttered came clear, the words falling
into place like the pieces of a mosaic. 'Is it good?' the
man was asking.
  Ballard heard laughter in his throat, and found the
syllables there to reply.
  'Yes,' he told the weeping man. 'Yes. It's good.'
  He had not finished his reply before Cripps' hand sped
to snatch at Suckling's. Whether he intended  suicide
or escape nobody would ever know. The trigger-finger
twitched, and a bullet flew up through Cripps' head and
spread his despair across the ceiling. Suckling threw the

                     206
body off, and went to level the gun, but the beast was
already upon him.
  Had  he been more of a man, Ballard might have
thought to make Suckling suffer, but he had no such
perverse ambition. His only thought was to render the
enemy  extinct as efficiently as possible. Two sharp and
lethal blows did it. Once the man  was  dispatched,
Ballard crossed over to where Cripps was  lying. His
glass eye had escaped destruction. It gazed on fixedly,
untouched by the holocaust all around them. Unseating
it from the maimed head, Ballard put in his pocket; then
he went out into the rain.
  It was dusk.  He did  not know  which district of
Berlin he'd been brought to, but his impulses, freed
of reason, led him via the back streets and shadows to
a wasteland on the outskirts of the city, in the middle
of which stood a solitary ruin. It was anybody's guess
as to what  the building might once have been  (an
abbatoir? an opera-house?) but by some freak of fate
it had escaped demolition, though every other building
had  been levelled for several hundred yards in each
direction. As he made his way across the weed-clogged
rubble the wind changed direction by a few degrees and
carried the scent of his tribe to him. There were many
there, together in the shelter of the ruin. Some leaned
their backs against the wall and shared a cigarette; some
were  perfect wolves, and haunted the darkness like
ghosts with golden eyes; yet others might have passed
for human  entirely, but for their trails.
  Though  he feared that names would be forbidden
amongst this clan, he asked two lovers who were rutting
in the shelter of the wall if they knew of a man called
Mironenko. The bitch had a smooth and hairless back,
and a dozen full teats hanging from her belly.
   'Listen,' she said.

                     207
  Ballard listened, and heard somebody talking in a
corner of the ruin. The voice ebbed and flowed. He
followed the sound across the roofless interior to where a
wolf was standing, surrounded by an attentive audience,
an open book in its front paws. At Ballard's approach
one or two of the audience turned their luminous eyes
up to him. The reader halted.
  'Ssh!' said one, 'the Comrade is reading to us.'
  It was Mironenko who spoke. Ballard slipped into the
ring of listeners beside him, as the reader took up the
story afresh.
  'And God  blessed them, and God said unto them, Be
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth . . .'
  Ballard had heard the words before, but tonight they
were new.
   '. . . and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of
the sea, and over the fowl of the air . . .'
  He  looked around the circle of listeners as the words
described their familiar pattern.
   '. . . and over every living thing that moveth upon the
earth.''
  Somewhere  near, a beast was crying.
                     208
THE BOOK OF BLOOD
   (A POSTCRIPT):
   ON JERUSALEM
      STREET
WYBURD LOOKED AT the book, and the book looked
 back. Everything he'd ever been told about the boy
was true.
  'How did you get in?' McNeal wanted to know. There
was neither anger nor trepidation in his voice; only casual
curiosity.
  'Over the wall,' Wyburd told him.
  The book nodded. 'Come to see if the rumours were
true?'
  'Something like that.'
  Amongst  connoisseurs of the bizarre, McNeal's story
was told in reverential whispers. How the boy had passed
himself off as a medium, inventing stories on behalf of
the departed for his own profit; and how the dead had
finally tired of his mockery, and broken into the living
world to exact an immaculate revenge. They had written
                      209
upon him; tattooed their true testaments upon his skin
so that he would never  again take their grief in vain.
They had turned his body into a living book, a book
of blood, every inch of which was minutely engraved
with their histories.
  Wyburd  was not a credulous man. He had never quite
believed the story - until now. But here was living proof
of its veracity, standing before him. There was no part
of McNeaFs  exposed skin which was not itching with
tiny words. Though it was four years and more since the
ghosts had come for him, the flesh still looked tender, as
though the wounds would never entirely heal.
  'Have you  seen enough?' the boy asked. 'There's
more. He's covered from head to foot. Sometimes he
wonders  if they didn't write on the inside as well.' He
sighed. 'Do you want a drink?'
  Wyburd  nodded. Maybe  a throatful of spirits would
stop his hands from trembling.
  McNeal  poured himself a glass of vodka, took a slug
from it, then poured a second glass for his guest. As he
did so, Wyburd saw that the boy's nape was as densely
inscribed as his face and hands, the writing creeping up
into his hair. Not even his scalp had escaped the authors'
attentions, it seemed.
  'Why  do you talk about yourself in the third person?'
he asked McNeal,  as the boy returned with the glass.
'Like you weren't here . . .?'
  The  boy?' McNeal  said. 'He isn't here. He hasn't
been here in a long time.'
  He sat down; drank. Wyburd began to feel more than
a little uneasy. Was the boy simply mad, or playing some
damn-fool game?
  The boy swallowed another mouthful of vodka, then
asked, matter of factly: 'What's it worth to you?'
  Wyburd  frowned. 'What's what worth?'

                      210
  'His skin,' the boy prompted. 'That's what you
came  for, isn't it?' Wyburd emptied his glass with
two swallows, making no reply. McNeal shrugged.
'Everyone has  the right to silence,' he said. 'Except
for the boy of course. No silence for him.' He looked
down  at his hand, turning it over to appraise the writing
on his palm. 'The stories go on, night and day. Never
stop. They tell themselves, you see. They bleed and
bleed. You can never hush them; never heal them.'
  He is mad, Wyburd thought, and somehow the reali-
sation made what he was about to do easier. Better to kill
a sick animal than a healthy one.
  'There's a road, you know . . .' the boy was saying.
He wasn't even looking at his executioner. 'A road the
dead go down. He  saw it. Dark, strange road, full of
people. Not a day gone by when he hasn't . . . hasn't
wanted to go back there.'
  'Back?' said Wyburd, happy to keep the boy talking.
His hand  went  to his jacket pocket; to the knife. It
comforted him in the presence of this lunacy.
  'Nothing's enough,' McNeal said. 'Not love. Not
music. Nothing.'
  Clasping the knife, Wyburd drew it from his pocket.
The boy's eyes found the blade, and warmed to the
sight.
  'You never told him how much it was worth,' he said.
  'Two hundred thousand,' Wyburd replied.
  'Anyone he knows?'
  The  assassin shook his head. 'An exile,' he replied.
'In Rio. A collector.'
  'Of skins?'
  'Of skins.'
  The boy put down his glass. He murmured something
Wyburd  didn't catch. Then, very quietly, he said:
  'Be quick, and do it.'
                      211
  He  juddered a little as the knife found his heart, but
Wyburd was efficient. The moment had come and gone
before the boy even knew it was happening, much less
felt it. Then it was all over, for him at least. For Wyburd
the real labour was only just beginning. It took him two
hours to complete the flaying. When he was finished -
the skin folded in fresh linen, and locked in the suitcase
he'd brought for that very purpose - he was weary.
  Tomorrow  he would fly to Rio, he thought as he left
the house, and claim the rest of his payment. Then,
Florida.
  He  spent the evening in the small apartment he'd
rented for the tedious weeks of surveillance and planning
which had preceded this afternoon's work. He was glad
to be leaving. He had been lonely here, and anxious with
anticipation. Now the job was done, and he could put
the time behind him.
  He  slept well, lulled to sleep by the imagined scent of
orange groves.
  It was not fruit he smelt when he woke, however,
but something savoury. The room was in darkness. He
reached to his right, and fumbled for the lamp-switch,
but it failed to come on.
  Now  he heard a heavy slopping sound from across the
room. He sat up in bed, narrowing his eyes against the
dark, but could see nothing. Swinging his legs over the
edge of the bed, he went to stand up.
  His first thought was that he'd left the bathroom taps
on, and had flooded the apartment. He was knee-deep
in warm water. Confounded, he waded towards the door
and reached for the main light-switch, flipping it on.
It was not water he was standing in. Too cloying, too
precious; too red.
  He made a cry of disgust, and turned to haul open the
door, but it was locked, and there was no key. He beat

                      212
a panicked fusillade upon the solid wood, and yelled for
help. His appeals went unanswered.
  Now  he turned back into the room, the hot tide
eddying about his thighs, and sought out the fountain-
head.
  The suitcase. It sat where he had left it on the bureau,
and bled copiously from every seam; and from the locks;
and from around the hinges - as if a hundred atrocities
were being committed  within its confines, and it could
not contain the flood these acts had unleashed.
  He watched the blood pouring out in steaming abun-
dance. In the scant seconds since he'd stepped from the
bed the pool had deepened by several inches, and still the
deluge came.
  He tried the bathroom door, but that too was locked
and keyless. He tried the windows, but the shutters were
immovable. The blood had reached his waist. Much of
the furniture was floating. Knowing he was lost unless
he attempted some direct action, he pressed through the
flood towards the case, and put his hands upon the lid in
the hope that he might yet stem the flow. It was a lost
cause. At his touch the blood seemed to come with fresh
eagerness, threatening to burst the seams.
  The  stories go on, the boy had said. They bleed and
bleed. And now he seemed to hear them in his head,
those stories. Dozens of voices, each telling some tragic
tale. The flood bore him up towards the ceiling. He
paddled to keep his chin above the frothy tide, but in
minutes there was barely an inch of air left at the top of
the room. As even that margin narrowed, he added his
own voice to the .cacophony, begging for the nightmare
to stop. But the other voices drowned him out with
their stories, and as he kissed the ceiling his breath ran
out.
                      213
The dead have highways. They run, unerring lines of
ghost-trains, of dream-carriages, across the wasteland
behind our lives, bearing an endless traffic of departed
souls. They have sign-posts, these highways, and bridges
and lay-bys. They have turnpikes and intersections.
  It was at one of thesejntersections that Leon Wyburd
caught sight of the man in the red suit. The throng
pressed him forward, and it was only when he came
closer that he realised his error. The man  was  not
wearing a suit. He was not even wearing his skin. It
was not the McNeal boy however; he had gone on from
this point long since. It was another flayed man entirely.
Leon fell in beside the man as he walked, as they talked
together. The flayed man told him how he had come to
this condition; of his brother-in-law's conspiracies, and
the ingratitude of his daughter. Leon in turn told of his
last moments.
  It was  a great relief to tell the story. Not because
he wanted to be remembered, but because the telling
relieved him of the tale. It no longer belonged to him,
that life, that death. He had better business, as did they
all. Roads to travel; splendours to drink down. He felt
the landscape widen. Felt the air brightening.
  What  the boy had  said was true. The dead have
highways.
  Only  the living are lost.
                      214