 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