Naturally, they went to Shub. Sooner or later, everyone does.

And if you've been very, very good (or, depending on your moral standpoint, very, very bad), Shub sometimes comes to you.

Shaloub 'Shub' N'gurath. Probably the most dangerous man in the world, if only the world knew he existed. That wasn't his real name, of course, only what he'd told Simon for communication purposes, and it was rumoured he never gave the same name to two people. 'I don't like being talked about,' he said, and by Christ he meant it.

How to describe him? The Bill Gates of international terrorism? The anti-Kofi Annan?

The Bill Gates comparison was probably better, in that no matter what you were up to, your cause, your enemy or your methods, you could be sure he was seeing a slice of the action, financially speaking. Another valid comparison would be with the Great Oz, as it was difficult to equate this bald, bespectacled and pot-bellied little man with the power he wielded and the reputation that preceded him. The aura of mystery and secrecy surrounding him functioned as part of his security and defence.

107.

Though rumours proliferated, they tended to be rendered even more shadowy and confused by the difficulty in two conversants establishing for certain who they were talking about, not to mention their mutual reluctance to confirm that he was who they meant, lest it ever get back to him.

Despite this, Simon had still heard plenty of stories. Some sounded like campfire tales, others Bogeyman myths likely to have been started or at least encouraged by the man himself, but one he had little difficulty believing was that Shub was represented on the boards of several of the world's leading arms manufacturers. Certainly if he hadn't existed, they'd have done very well to invent him (even though all of them - and their shareholders - deep down sincerely wished their products weren't necessary and that the world could be a happier, more peaceful place). His far-reaching efforts kept the fires of armed conflict well stoked around the globe, and those conflicts had made him an extremely wealthy man. In explaining his business to Simon, Shub had concentrated on the area of terrorism because that was to be his field of activity, but it was obviously only one slice of a very large and very bloody pie.

'Terrorism is merely an agent, an irritant,' Shub said. 'It causes the rash, the irritation, and governments are forced to scratch. Then, as every child is told, scratching makes it worse. More soldiers, more guns, more training, more unrest, more repression, more revolt, more terrorism, more irritation, and for me, for my friends, for you, for us all: ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching.' He had smiled, rubbing his thumb against his fingers in the internationally recognised gesture.

'Blood money' was the politicians' poe-faced and overused phrase, more accurate than they probably knew. Terrorism pumped cash around the globe like a heart: 108.

weapon sales, weapon smuggling, training camps, professional hits, kidnapping, drug-running, fundraising, protection rackets, money-laundering, security systems, surveillance technology, defence contracts ... ba-bump, ba- bump, bang-bang, bang-bang, ka-ching, ka-ching. And if terrorism was the heart, Shub was its pacemaker. World Peace would be a very bad day at his office, which was why strenuous efforts were being put in at all times to make sure such a cataclysm never came about.

Terrorism didn't just move money, either: it generated the stuff. In the most impoverished areas of the world there might not be any cash for food, but if you threw in some ethnic tension or an independence struggle, the war chests just filled up as if by magic. Most people would only associate Urkobaijan with Channel Four news footage of tearful refugees wading through mud, pulling all their earthly possessions on wooden carts, but that didn't mean Artro's mob couldn't spare a three hundred K advertising budget for letting the world know they still meant business.

The IRA had their deluded sugar daddies drinking Guinness in Bostonian Plastic-Paddy theme pubs, but they weren't unique. Every festering little conflict on the planet had its overseas fanclub, ex-pats or second-generation romantics trying to buy a sense of their own fading ethnicity as the world threatened to homogenise around them. Plus they could usually rely on further generosity from foreign parties who shared their antipathy towards the target nation and/or the target nation's allies, which was one of the many areas in which Shub specialised.

Gadaffi had infamously made Libya an international centre for terrorism. He brought people together from many nations and conflicts, gave them funding, helped them share resources, contacts, networks; offered them 109.

training camps, accommodation, swimming pools, room service and conference facilities (well, just about). However, this hospitality was only extended to those who fitted the left-of-centre ideological bill. It was like terrorism as a nationalised industry. Shub N'gurath, on the other hand, represented the free market end of things, and would never let something as crass as politics get in the way of making a deal.

The ScanAir bombing was a great example of Shub's ability to match people's needs and resources. In Brazno, Urkobaijan, Artro's shower had the money and the motive but not the means and definitely not the time. In Bridge of Don, Scotland, Simon had the nous but not the hardware. In Ghent, Belgium, a man named Michel Bruant had the hardware but no way of getting it out of the country. And in Le Havre, France, there was a freight firm running an unofficial sideline worth eight times its declared turnover. Shub put them all together, and took a minimum forty per cent at every step.

Serendipity doo-da.

Shub also had a talent for recognising not only the right man for a job, but in some cases the right job for the man. Bruant's package was designed as a suicide bomb, and Artro's brigade all liked the idea of Urkobaijani independence so much that they had every intention of still being there if and when it finally happened. Nonetheless, Shub would have had little difficulty finding them a volunteer if the price was right; he'd done it before.

There was nothing expressed the depth of your belief, courage, resolve and all-costs fanaticism quite like a suicide attack, but according to Shub, these rare qualities tended to be found only in 'those who were closest to their god'. By this he didn't mean the fundamentally religious, but 110.

the terminally ill, with little time left to do much but worry about their family's future welfare. 'Assisted euthanasia' he called it, the assistance being primarily financial in nature - though strapping twenty pounds of C4 to your chest and detonating it in a public place obviously helped you on your way. Quick and painless, too.

Shub had brokered plenty such deals, and might have organised another but for two factors. Factor one was the Urkobaijanis' stipulation that the target should be a civil aircraft, putting them into terrorism's elite bracket: the mile-high club. In the past, all he'd needed was someone capable of staggering from their oncology ward to the local police station or government building, but negotiating European airport security would take a sharper mind and a fitter body.

A suitable candidate would still have been found but for factor two, which was that Shub had been alerted to the existence of someone who might have the brains to do it without staying ringside for the show; someone who was showing great potential and might be ready to take off the stabilisers; someone who might be swayed to view it not so much as a task as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Simon got more than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for blowing up flight 941, which was enormously generous considering Shub probably guessed he'd have done it for nothing, given the ancillary benefits. There was an element of investment in it though, or maybe even 'nurture' was the word. In Shub's eyes, the people he did business with were split into two camps: customers and contractors. Those who were motivated by factors other than the financial were the customers, politicised fools just waiting to be parted from their money. Those cashing in were the ones he respected, the ones he could relate to.

111.

Simon was, at that stage, doing it principally because he enjoyed it, which was why Shub no doubt felt it mutually beneficial to teach him that the money could be enjoyable too.

Before flight 941, before Shub N'gurath, it was just a hobby, no matter how good he was getting at it; something he did for kicks in his spare time. Despite the enormity of what he had already achieved, and despite even the cash he had accrued, turning full-time pro was a far from simple progression. It wasn't as though he could turn to Alison one night and say, 'Honey, I'm going to follow my dreams before life passes me by. Are you with me?'

He could tell himself the respectable job and suburban existence were merely a useful cover, but his growing sense of frustration argued convincingly otherwise. They might provide a facade, but it was a facade he could only come out from behind for limited spells: glimpses of a world ,of freedom that he had to keep walking away from. He was earning a sight more from this 'hobby' than from his recognised job, but he couldn't touch the money. If he suddenly rolled into the driveway in a Beamie Boxter, Alison was bound to ask a few difficult questions, and the Inland Revenue were going to be curious too. He wasn't doing it for the money and he didn't particularly want a Beamie Boxter, but it encapsulated his problem. What he wanted was a life that seemed so tantalisingly within reach, a life he now knew he was born for, but first he had to get out of the life he was in.

Walking away was not the obstacle. He had to make sure he wasn't followed, and that was the tricky part. If he simply disappeared, went out one morning and didn't come home from work, there wouldn't be an official investigation, but people would forever be picking over the facts, 112.

sniffing for a trail. Alison was unlikely to spend the rest of her life or even the rest of her week asking 'why?', and she certainly wouldn't need to hire a detective to find the biggest answers, but when something isn't closed, curiosity remains. Add the element of mystery and you compound it tenfold. All these years later, people were still claiming to have seen someone who just might have been Richey Manic: spinning the cycle, feeding the enigma. The number of people who might think they'd recognised Simon's face in a foreign crowd was considerably smaller, but the principle worked the same. Someone somewhere would always be looking for him, and that was without knowing he'd killed anybody.

Shub N'gurath turned out to be his fairy godmother, the major-label A&R man who spotted him jamming in a pub band and said, 'Kid, you've got what it takes. How would you like to be a star?'

The timescale was tight - little more than a fortnight - with the Urkobaijanis in a hurry to get back on the newswires before the end of the month. That had suited Simon fine. It took minutes to devise his plan after Shub told him what was required, and with Bruant supplying the bespoke hardware, he only had to procure a couple of items himself and then fly the route to refresh his memory. The last thing he'd have wanted was a few spare weeks to dwell on all the ways it might go wrong, not to mention extending the task of acting normal at home and, in particular, at work. Keeping the fucking grin off his face around Sintek Energy just for those two weeks had been the biggest challenge of the entire undertaking.

He booked his flights, as ever, through Slipgate.com, invoicing the first journey to himself and the second to Sintek. Doing it through Slipgate on the web allowed him 113.

to select his seats and, equally important, verify the type of aircraft. He'd flown the Stavanger-to-Helsinki leg at least half a dozen times on Sintek business, and it was usually an Avionique 300, but there was one time it had been an Aerospace 146 (which might actually have been with a different airline) and he needed to be sure. Slipgate confirmed 300s for flight 941 on both trips: the reconnoitre and, six days later, the real deal.

He organised the first run for the preceding Tuesday, which he booked off work in lieu of a recent trip to Oslo that had eaten into a weekend. The date of the target flight had already been selected as Monday the twenty-sixth, the fate of those on board not decided by himself or even by the Urkobaijanis, but by Harald Johansen in Sintek's Helsinki office. Simon needed an official reason for his journey, and Monday was the only day of that week Harald was free for a get-together. There was a satisfying irony about it: having clocked up so many thousands of miles in pointless business travel, he was going to bow out en route to one final, utterly unnecessary meeting.

The recon trip was more than a memory-refreshing exercise. He needed a Stavanger airside ID and there was only one place to get it. Well, on-site there were a number of places, but having killed time there so often, he knew which one would be the easiest. There was a troll in the souvenir shop who always hung her jacket over the back of her chair, presumably so that none of the transit passengers would be denied the sight and smell of her permanently sodden armpits. She made frequent lumbering sorties around the store, leaving her laminate unguarded behind the cash register, itself in safely plausible loitering distance from the greetings card rack. When Simon got there, however, she was nowhere to be seen, and in her place was a diminutive, 114.

rodent-faced adolescent, eyeing up the customers with a suspicion that suggested it would absolutely make her day if she spotted one trying to purloin a Toblerone. Needless to say, her jacket was firmly on and she was sporting her ID badge like it said 'I AM THE LAW'.

This necessitated an otherwise highly inadvisable course of action: a trip to the coffee stall further along the concourse. He waited until the queue had cleared (ha ha), and ordered a large cappuccino, something nobody was ever likely to do twice, then made a fumbling show of trying to find the correct Norwegian coinage. All of this helped give the bored-looking Euro-dork behind the counter the impression that Simon was a wide-eyed and bumbling ingenu, something he then compounded by tumbling the Styrofoam cup from the counter and spilling the cappuccino across the floor. The gangling teen had a resigned look on his face as he reached for a cloth; it wasn't the first time it had happened, but presumably the customers normally tasted it first. Simon was profuse in his apologies, and fussed around him as he crouched down to mop up the mess, the dork too concentrated on keeping his sleeves out of the puddle to notice his laminate being gently unclipped as it dangled from his chest. Simon pocketed the ID, then made a show of being out of local currency when asked if he wanted a refill. The dork was understandably in no mood to offer a freebie, but Simon couldn't complain. He'd been generous enough already.

After that, he took a walk round to flight 941's departure gate and watched the in-flight caterers load up their shrink-wrapped gastroenteritis. They wore sky-blue overalls, as he remembered: separate slacks and shirts, company logo on the breast pocket. He picked up a similar set later in the week at a workware store in George Street and 115.

scanned the logo from a napkin he'd lifted on the flight, transferring it using a kid's iron-on T-shirt kit from the computer section at Toys R Us.

High-tech terrorism ou quoi?

The package from Ghent arrived on the Friday, as scheduled, but Shub made him sweat on the final element: his new passport, onward ticket and blank Amex cheques not showing up until late Sunday afternoon. Before they did, he'd been climbing the walls, concerned that the whole operation was going to be aborted due to this one failure. It was to prove a valuable experience, as from then onwards, on every job he set up, there was always one element that didn't quite fall into place until very close to showtime. The lesson was not to get frazzled and start channelling all your anxieties into this one thing, as the danger was that the distraction could cause you to miss a more significant unravelment elsewhere. In this case, it was only after the courier turned up at his doorstep that he remembered to check all the battery levels, and discovered the ones Bruant had put in the Walkman were on their last legs, presumably from over-rigorous testing.

Bruant's device was intended to be taken into the passenger cabin as hand luggage, and was consequently built around objects one might plausibly be carrying on board a flight. The components were housed in a modified briefcase with concealed compartments below the lid and above the base. These compartments would not show up under airport X-ray scanners for the simple reason that they would at that point be empty. What they were intended to contain was meanwhile accommodated in plain view for the inspection of security staff: two fruit juice cartons lying loose in the main body of the case. The cartons, in fact, each contained one constituent of a binary 116.

liquid explosive, perfectly harmless until mixed (unless of course you bunged a straw in and drank the stuff).

The briefcase's telescopic support arms detached at the base, and a few twists of their bottom-most sections brought forth tapered plastic injectors, to which you attached the cartons once you were airside. A modified Walkman supplied the pumping mechanism, connecting to an insulated port at the centre-rear of the case, its busy little cogs also turning a tape for the benefit of security inspectors. The pump drew the liquid into the concealed compartments above and below, where it mixed, ready for detonation. Mixing and detonation were controlled via a necessarily bulky mobile phone, the anachronistically large Ericsson housing the detonator and a digital altimeter, as well as an LCD display that projected the expected graphics when you pressed its buttons. The altimeter could be set to trigger mixing and detonation at specified altitudes. Simon selected three thousand feet, being the height the in-cabin display had read on his recon trip when they were directly above Boknafjorden.

To all of this he had added an object of his own: a battery- operated personal fan, as sold in the travel-gadgets section of every airport. This one had a few modifications, one of which being that it was now remotely operable via his electronic car key. Completing the briefcase's contents were some work folders from Sintek in a zip-locked PVC binder, to which he added a newspaper, a magazine and a king- size Mars bar at the airport newsagent.

He only had to clear security once, at Aberdeen, which he regarded as a soft point of entry. It was just too insignificant to have all but the most bog-standard cursory surveillance, with the most dangerous articles passing through the detectors being contraband half-bottles smuggled by 117.

the North Sea roughnecks. Once airside, he didn't have to pass any further checks, as at Stavanger there was no need to leave the departure area between flights.

The first thing he did when he got there was to visit the now once again troll-monitored gift shop, where he made the highly appropriate purchase of a bottle of champagne, plus a pair of jeans and a plain white T-shirt. Next, he went to the gents' toilet, locked himself in a cubicle and carefully assembled Bruant's device, before undertaking the preparatory work on his own gizmo. This consisted of unravelling the champagne's wire restraint and partially loosening the cork, before replacing the wire and connecting it to a conduit at the head of the travel fan. He gave the bottle a good shake and put it, with its entangled attachment, in the duty-free carrier bag. Lastly, he squeezed the jeans and T-shirt into the PVC binder, sealed it, then placed it delicately into the cistern.

He had booked an aisle seat in the backmost row, mere feet from both the toilets and the fuel tanks. The 300 was boarded by steps at the front and rear, and despite his seat allocation, he entered fore. He got the fare-inclusive smile from the stewardess on the door as she counted the passengers aboard, then joined the queue behind the familiar logjam of travellers storing their hand luggage, getting up to let each other in or playing pass-the-parcel with the statutory in-flight screaming infant. Amid this anxious settling- in activity, no-one paid much attention as he placed his duty-free bag in an overhead locker and then moved further on up the plane.

Another stewardess was on meet-greet-and-count duty at the aft steps. He gave her a 'silly me' smile and shrug as he approached from the wrong direction, waiting until she was obscured by another boarding passenger before 118.

taking his seat, so that she didn't take specific notice of where he was sitting. He placed his jacket - containing wallet, passport and return tickets - in the overhead locker, and sat down.

The flight was quiet, as expected, which was why he'd selected the midday run rather than early morning or late afternoon. It would be preferable if he had no-one sitting next to him or indeed opposite, something further ensured by choosing the back row, which was the last to be allocated by the boarding computers. Another passenger nearby wouldn't be a disaster - as no matter how many times he'd seen people get up and move seats prior to takeoff, he was yet to see someone query it with the cabin staff - but it was prudent to minimise possible complications. He held on to the briefcase in the meantime: ideally he would place it below the seat, but if he had company, he'd stow it overhead, out of sight, out of mind.

After a few minutes, the aisle was clear but for a ski- bum type having one more go at stuffing his Michelin-man inflatable anorak into the locker above his seat. The trolley dollies were exchanging confirmatory looks. It was almost time. He slid the briefcase under the seat next to him and pretended to read his magazine. A blue figure brushed past him, heading down the plane: the aft stewardess going to meet her fore counterpart, the dolly-in-chief, to add up the numbers. That left one more behind him, sliding metal drawers and banging hatches as she performed her preflight catering preparations.

At the front, the dolly-in-chief was handed a copy of the final manifest by a smiling ScanAir official, with whom she appeared to be exchanging cheerful banter. Her ratification of the tally would mean the doors would be closing imminently, but only after one last confirmatory headcount, 119.

which the aft stewardess was now embarking upon. She moved swiftly through the cabin from the front, the scarcity of passengers meaning her arithmetic would be done well before she reached the back.

Simon put his magazine into the seat pocket and took careful hold of his car key. He kept his head down to avoid eye contact, watching her legs approach, waiting for the turn that would mark the end of the count. It came. He lifted his head, focusing on the front again. The fore stewardess, having got the nod, was going for her door; the aft one likewise. Action stations.

He pressed the Unlock button on his electronic key. Six rows from the front, his travel fan spun into action, unwinding the wire from the shaken champagne bottle and unfettering the straining cork. There was a thud from the overhead locker, followed by a sudden cascade of liquid on to the head of the passenger below. The aft stewardess turned around again to investigate, the now irate passenger already getting to his feet in response to his baptism of Taittinger. The passenger opened the hatch to investigate, microseconds before the aft stewardess could stretch an arm to prevent him doing precisely that, and received a further drenching for his troubles. This, understandably, did little for his mood. You didn't have to speak Norwegian to understand that he was very forthrightly asking the passengers around him whose bottle it was, like anybody was going to own up. By this point the dolly-in-chief had closed her door and was moving in to assist, while the aft stewardess signalled to her colleague at the back to bring something to mop up the mess.

That was his cue. Simon waited until dolly three had urgently brushed past, then stepped into the toilet, where speed was the reward for the otherwise unthinkable 120.

indignity of wearing slip-on shoes. He quickly removed his polo-neck and trousers, revealing the blue overalls underneath, then stuffed his old clothes into the wastepaper chute and stepped back into the cabin.

The prepared line was going through his head - 'Tristjeg matte bruke toalettet' - for if he encountered one of the crew, but the diversion worked better than he'd hoped. He'd hit the jackpot in randomly placing the champagne above a distant relative of Thor, whose trip was not about to get any better. Closing the toilet door quietly behind him, Simon skipped lightly down the rear stairs then walked briskly but not hurriedly across the tarmac to the terminal building.

Once inside, he made his way back to the gents, where he retrieved the ziplocked folder and got changed into his new clothes, removing his replacement passport, ticket and traveller's cheques from the discarded garments. He sealed the overalls and ID laminate inside the folder, then carried it out to the departure lounge, from where he watched flight 941 push back, taxi and take off. By the time it exploded, he was already checking in for his flight to CDG.

To say it was amateurish would be too kind, even allowing that his subsequent standards were a lot higher. It was crude, sloppy, seat-of-the-pants stuff, a miracle of sheer jamminess that it came off. Some said you made your own luck, that fortune favours the brave, but he wasn't seduced by these retrospective sentiments of the negligent- but-spawny. All these years later, he still had gut-tightening flashbacks in which he vividly envisaged all the ways it could have gone wrong, all the individual factors that he'd had no contingency for if even one of them hadn't run exactly to plan.

In this game, you couldn't rely on being lucky, and after 121.

any operation, it was vital to acknowledge and analyse the ways in which he had been. This worked both ways, in identifying not only the shortcomings of Simon's own plans, but also any unforeseen defence weaknesses he had inadvertently exploited. In the case of flight 941, he might have enjoyed a large rub of the green, but he also learned a salutary lesson about the biggest, most gaping and indefatigably enduring flaw in anti-terrorist security worldwide: people simply don't expect to be attacked.

Those trolley dollies must have sat through dozens of briefings, training courses and rehearsed scenarios, all intended to raise awareness and condition their response to a potential terrorist threat. They might even have been put 'on alert' (whatever that meant) in light of the bombastic teddy-throwing that had followed Artro's arrest. In practice, none of it meant a damn thing, because practice was four flights a day, five hundred a year, throughout which the most realistic threat was posed by the pilot's hangover, and the principal thing they had to be 'alert' to was half-cut businessmen in first class trying to grope their tits as they leaned over to serve another G&T. The procedures they were following on flight 941 were intended to ensure that nobody missed the plane and that they weren't carrying anyone who hadn't sprung for a ticket. They were too busy getting on with their jobs to worry about terrorism. Christ, who wasn't? The average person didn't get up in the morning and start pondering whether today was the day someone would try to blow up their commuter train. He'd even heard people admit that their response to IRA bomb scares - and explosions - at London railway stations was to think 'Oh, well in that case, I'd better take the District Line'.

It wasn't just that people didn't think about it - it was 122.

that they didn't want to think about it, and who could blame them? The odds didn't make it worthwhile. People only had so much worry-time built into their daily thought processes, even for their more irrational imaginings. Going home at night, you maybe worried about the train crashing, or getting jumped on that stretch of pavement where the streetlight is knackered; not that the sportsbag in the luggage rack opposite is packed with Sarin gas, or that the next parked car you walk past might explode. If you did, you'd never be able to leave the house.

Yes, he had been lucky, and yes, he'd taken risks he'd never repeat, but he'd got away with it because to the terrorist, despite global-wide counter-intelligence and ever more sophisticated surveillance technology, this was still that oft-mourned world where people never locked their front door. Sure, someone had made him a very clever bomb that effectively got itself through airport security, but it didn't change the fact that a suburban marketing executive had been able to blow up a civilian passenger flight with the aid of some overalls, a stolen badge, a battery- operated fan and a bottle of bubbly.

Once he actually knew what the fuck he was doing, the possibilities were endless, especially given that officially, he no longer existed. His old life, his old name, in fact Simon Darcourt's entire identity perished in the crash, and in that moment he became traceless, invisible, a ghost upon the Earth. He had no name, no files, no records, no past, and only one other person knew he'd once been someone else. People who'd known him could look into his face and dismiss what their eyes were telling them. Even Larry the little drummer boy had looked but failed to comprehend.

Still, that didn't mean the incident could be ignored. Simon didn't believe in destiny - he left that to the deluded, 123.

self-important bastards who paid his invoices - but he did know to respect omens. Not in any supernatural, David- Warner-plate-glass-interface kind of way, but as the mind's little shorthand Post-it notes: incidents or images that reminded you to stay sharp and pay attention. Having come so far these past three years, he was back in Scotland for the execution of the biggest project he'd ever devised, and within minutes of landing he'd seen someone who could potentially unravel everything. The only thing preventing that chain of events from initialising was that the little drummer boy simply couldn't believe he was looking at a dead man. From there, it wasn't too far a leap to simply not believing the man he was looking at was dead. Not too far, and definitely not far enough for peace of mind.

With Mopoza unsure how much Thaba might have blabbed, there was an outstanding role to be filled in this production: that of a doomed, tragic fool; and merely by being there, by looking into Simon's eyes, the little drummer boy had successfully auditioned for the part. The irony, in hindsight, was that it had been Simon Darcourt who was looking at a dead man. Raymond Ash just didn't know it yet. And in payback for everything that had passed between them, Simon was going to enjoy giving him the message.

124.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER SECOND.

a cautionary tale against sensible decisions.The driver was patrolling back and forth on the walkway above, training his weapon on all possible approaches in turn. Ray couldn't see the not-jogger, who might well be down in the water too by now. As long as he stayed under the bridge, he was likely to remain out of the driver's line of sight, but he'd have to make a move soon, as the other gunman could be at his back any second. The familiar sight of the rusted ladder was dead ahead, dangling down from the centre of the bridge into the murky water beneath. He breathed in, lunged the last few feet and began climbing, his stomach tightening with the awareness of his vulnerability. On a ladder, you were the easiest of targets: moving slowly, in a rigidly straight line, your intended destination obvious to any predatory observer.

He reached the top intact, his position still hidden from the driver by the column in the centre. One side of the bridge was a dead-end, leading straight to the enemy. The other offered his only chance of escape, though at the cost of moving briefly into view. The driver would have time for just one shot, but if he was accurate, it would be enough. Ray started running, fixing his sights on his footing, not daring to look back. The path turned hard right at the far end of the bridge, and would take him out of the firing line temporarily if he ever got there. He was going flat out but it didn't seem fast enough, like he was moving through soup, or had bungee cords attached to his waist. He looked ahead.

127.

The not-jogger came round the corner, levelling his weapon. Behind him, the driver jumped down from the walkway.

Ray jumped over the side as they fired, disappearing into the flooded circular pit. His submersion muted the sound, but he could still hear the noise of one of them grabbing the Quad Damage power-up, multiplying the impact of his weapon by four. He then heard them both splashing into the water behind him, by which time he was already swimming through the tunnel. Q2DM5: The Pits. Ray knew every inch, every pixel. He had enough of a start to reach the lift and leave them trapped down in the armour room while he got away, unless they got lucky with the trajectory of a grenade bounce, or a prediction shot from the rocket-launcher.

There was a high-pitched, pulsing, screaming sound in his ears, getting closer, louder, then he felt something hit, his back. Light flashed everywhere and the room spun wildly around him. A quad-impact, and yet somehow he had survived. The sound grew louder still, now less pulsing and more constant. Again he felt the thump in his back.

'Ray.'

'Huh?'

He sat up suddenly, opening his eyes to see a flurry of blue fleece in the cot at the end of the bed, where Martin was pouring out his signature howl. Kate was sitting up alongside, her bedside light on, the clock beside it informing him that it was four forty-one.

'I think he's filled a nappy. Can you do the honours while I get ready to feed him?' 'Eh? What? Oh, yeah. Sorry.'

Ray climbed unsteadily out of bed, not quite awake, stalling in that transitory state in which the dream world and the one he'd woken up in had still to be fully separated 128.

and distinguished. Martin was playing a vocal part in sorting them out, but Ray remained confused about which immediate memories belonged to his dream and which to the evening preceding it. He remembered the airport. That was for real, wasn't it? Then there'd been . . . no. That must have been dreamt. He was dead. Ray still dreamed about him every so often, evidence that despite the years and even death, Simon was still creeping around his subconscious. Sometimes they were reconciling, catching up on what happened to each other; sometimes they were way back when, having the same arguments. Even in his dreams, Ray still came off second best.

Ray lifted Martin out of the crib and placed him on his shoulder, the familiar whiffs of puke and liquid keech surrounding him like an unwelcome aura. After the airport there'd been . . . no. That was dreamt too. They'd all ended up on a Q2 map, for Christ's sake. He thought he could picture them with pistols rather than railguns, but that was equally absurd, particularly the fact that they'd both missed.

Holding Martin in one arm, he switched on the bathroom light then knelt down and rubbed the changing mat to take the chill off it. He placed the infant carefully on the PVC and reached for the baby-wipes, which was when he caught sight of the washing basket, a still-dripping trouserleg dangling over the side.

'Aaawww, fuck.'

After that, the true events of the evening played back like a demo.

It was difficult to select a highlight, but the polis probably shaded it from the assassins and the imaginary dead flatmate. They had an almost effortless way of making everything seem worse, arguably eclipsed by their equally reliable ability to make it all seem your fault as well.

129.

Within moments of the interview commencing, he was wishing he'd just kept the whole thing to himself. He'd already lied to Kate about what happened, saying he'd been thrown over the bridge during an attempted mugging. Why didn't he just tell her he'd fallen in trying to save a drowning puppy? There'd have been no cover story for him visiting the cop shop, and at least that way, only one person would have looked at him like he was a sad, attention-seeking fantasist. She had said Ray should call the cops and ask them to come to him, but he didn't want her present when he gave his statement. He wasn't in the habit of hiding things from his wife, but reckoned she had enough on her plate these days without worrying that her husband was being hunted by hitmen or even just going out of his mind.

In Ray's experience, the quintessence of what was so infuriating about dealing with the polis was the incomparable frustration of being patronised by a stupid person. Naturally, mentioning what happened at the airport didn't help. He hadn't meant to; might even have made a point of not doing so if he'd retained any control over what he was saying. Once he started talking though, it just sort of fell out, along with everything else, as though the cop's half-interested promptings had opened some kind of narrative fuselage.

'You said you'd just come home from work. Were you aware of anyone following you then?'

'No, but I didn't come home directly. I went via the airport and to be honest I was a bit freaked after that so I wasn't paying ... I mean I wouldn't have noticed if someone was following me.'

'What were you doing at the airport? Seeing someone off? Picking someone up?'

130.

'I went there to buy a magazine. I did see someone, I mean I thought I saw someone I knew but it wasn't, I mean it couldn't have been so I suppose I didn't see him.'

'I'm sorry, you say you went to the airport to buy a magazine?'