'Well, it's kind of on the way home and the parking's about the same as in town and there's not such big queues to get on to the M8 at that time of day.'

'And to confirm, you did or didn't see someone you knew there?'

'I didn't. I thought I did but it couldn't have been. It doesn't matter.'

'You say you were "a bit freaked" after visiting the airport. Why was that?'

'Just as I was telling you. It was the person I thought I saw -I couldn't have seen him because he's dead. Died in a plane crash.'

'And you think you saw him.'

'No, I thought I saw him, as in momentarily.'

'Right. What was his name?'

'It doesn't matter.'

'It's best if we have a comprehensive record, Mr Ash.'

'A comprehensive record including the name of someone I definitely didn't see tonight? What about the people I did see? The ones with the handguns.'

'We're looking into it, Mr Ash, but we'll need a full statement from you, especially as you seem to be the only witness at this point.'

'At this point? It only happened less than two hours ago.'

'PC Mackay was close to the area at the time, and he's down there now, making enquiries at the flats overlooking the Cart bridge. You're right, it's early days, but so far 131.

we've had no reports of anybody seeing anything suspicious, or of hearing shots being fired.'

'They were using silencers, I told you.'

'Right. So you did. And there was no-one else in the vicinity of the bridge or the path throughout this incident.'

'No. It tends to be quiet round there that time of night.'

'Of course.'

And so on, until: 'A new baby in the house, you say?'

'Yeah. Three months.'

'Got two myself. Grown up a bit now, though. Nine and six. You sleeping much?' 'Not really.'

'Stressful time, isn't it? Especially the first one. You're never sure you're going to cope. A new job too. How long have you been there?'

'Couple of weeks.'

'That can't be very easy on you either. Lot of pressure, lot of stress, not much kip. Difficult combination.'

Go fuck yourself. What would you know about it.

'It's the kind of thing that can make you feel.. . People can want to cry out for help, but they don't quite know how.'

'Are you saying you think I'm making this up?'

'I'm not saying anything, Mr Ash, just trying to make you weigh up the possibilities. People under stress can do irrational things. I can't say you didn't see these men; I'm sure you saw something, but maybe it wasn't what you thought you saw, like the other thing you thought you saw, at the airport.'

'Listen, I'm not in the habit of jumpin' into fuckin' rivers on my way out for a takeaway. I was shot at tonight by two men who confirmed my name before they opened fire, 132.

and you're tryin' to be my fuckin' shrink? Are you gaunny take this seriously or should I just go home?'

'Calm down, Mr Ash, please. We will be conducting a thorough investigation, but I have to caution you that wasting police time is a serious offence. In the meantime, I'd recommend you get back to your wife and baby and get yourself a good night's sleep.'

In an exchange generously endowed with understated sarcasm, that parting shot really took the honours. By the time Ray got back into his car, the usual nightly fatigue was taking hold, augmented this evening by his exertions and the after-effects of so much adrenaline flooding his system. Combined with his humiliations at the hands of Sergeant Bawheid, the cumulative effect was to dissipate his sense of self to the extent that he was beginning to doubt the veracity of his own account. The men had been there, unquestionably, but like Simon at the airport, had he projected something, mentally filled in the blanks in a way that made sense to his stressed and paranoid brain? Something similar used to happen when he was playing way too much Duke Nukem, back in the days when people thought the Build engine created a realistic 3D perspective. Any time he saw a ventilation grate or a fire extinguisher, he'd automatically think 'switch to pistol' with the intention of blowing a hole through to the next room. Then he'd remember he was standing in the Marks & Spencer's food hall, and the nearest thing to a weapon in his current inventory was a tub of low-fat houmous. Still, despite years of playing his way through every 3D-shooter, every sequel and every mission pack, there remained no precedent for imagining that ordinary people standing in front of him were actually holding guns. Nor was there any explanation for the fact that they'd known his name.

133.

Complicating it further was the fact that if they knew his name, they would almost certainly know where he lived too, and if so, why hadn't they just come up to the door? Why did they ambush him on the bridge? And having failed, why weren't they waiting there for him when he made his soggy way home? These were questions that had kept him awake despite his exhaustion, and that presented themselves again upon his confirmed return from a depressingly fleeting visit to the Land of Nod.

Possibly worse than the continued absence of plausible answers and the hanging shadow of mortal threat was the heart-sinking realisation that despite all of it, he still had to go to fucking work. There was no choice, no option for respite. Corn to be earned, offspring to be provided for, pursuing murderers or the onset of insanity notwithstanding. What was he going to do, get a sick note? 'Please excuse Raymond from school today because he has dioroa diarro dihor is being hunted down by hired assassins.'

Maybe Sergeant Bawheid was right. Maybe it was a cry for help, a smuggled note from inside this prison of responsibility, this forced march through the long-term career gulag at the order of a diminutive despot. Making it worse was the knowledge that he was trapped by his own decisions, confined through his own free will, and the road to his personal hell had been paved with only the best intentions. He'd given up The Dark Zone voluntarily, and it would have been difficult, even for Ray, to miss the developmental significance of preparing for fatherhood by moving on from a venture that attempted to provide a living through playing games. Choosing instead the role of teacher - mentor to the real children - merely underlined his subconscious intentions.

The Dark Zone hadn't ever really been a career move 134.

anyway. It had been a pub conversation that got out of control, a drunken idea that unexpectedly failed to look daft in the cruelly honest light of dawn. Bloody Id Software, that's who was to blame. Saint Paul would never have made any glib mutterings about putting away childish things if the bastard had played Doom. That was what changed everything, or at least the beginning of what changed everything; what changed computer games from a diversion to a lifestyle, a sub-culture and even, he'd thought, a career.

It was on 24 February 1996 that a ravenously awaited piece of code named qtest was released on to the net by Id. Div, with no wife or girlfriend needing use of the phone, got a complete download at around two in the morning of Sunday, 25 February. Ray was round at his house by two- thirty, with his machine and a serial cable.

After the usual start-up bugs and tweaking, Ray and Div played for nine solid hours, pausing only for toilet breaks and to make fresh coffee. It was an early test release with a small number of maps and a large number of glitches, but it was enough to demonstrate that computer games were about to be revolutionised. Not only did it look 3D, rendered in textures so detailed you could almost smell the slime on the walls, but it was negotiable in 3D, whether you were climbing stairs, riding lifts, swimming through pools or tumbling from castle walkways.

All of this was unprecedented, but what truly changed the face of gaming and had a fair crack at taking over Ray's life was Quake deathmatch. Up until then, the appeal of computer games was in an interactive experience that was nonetheless narrative-based and in many ways comparable to cinema or television. Multiplayer Quake, with its solidly tangible physics and a 3D engine so realistic it could induce motion 135.

sickness, provided an experience comparable to sport.

Even Ray wouldn't have argued that it was the new rock'n'roll, but he would make a case for comparisons with Punk, with its DIY ethos and a sense that it belonged to the participants. Every day saw the release of new maps, new models, and whole new modes of play, from 'Capture the Flag' to 'Catch the Chicken'. Players formed themselves into 'clans', and from there leagues sprang up amid thousands upon thousands of websites, the photocopied fanzines of their day. Friendships and enmities were forged, as well as relationships and even marriages. (Divorces too, no doubt, but most likely in households where only one spouse was a Quaker.) All life was to be found on the servers and chatrooms, but you could usually tell from clan-tags what a person's attitude was likely to be. Someone who played for Anorak Death Squad [ADS], Hash Bandits UK [HB-UK] or Cows with Fluff [CwF], for instance, was unlikely to be throwing tantrums if he or she got gibbed; whereas a more egotistical approach was suggested by names such as Elite Alliance [EA], or the labouring-too-hard-in-search-of-a-desired-acronym Extremely Violent Intelligent Lollipops [EVIL].

Everyone fantasises about somehow making their hobby their job, though the route was more obvious (if no less easy) for those whose hobbies were playing golf or football. The pastime of blowing people to pieces with absurdly powerful weapons in virtual environments did not yet have its Tiger Woods. What it did have was an ever-growing number of participants, a great many of whom had their enthusiasm for their games tempered by the frustrations of trying to play them over the erratic and unstable Internet. The only way to host a truly fair competition was to network a bunch of PCs so that everyone was the same 136.

negligible distance from the server. It was something he and a few pals had occasionally done over a winter weekend, and it was one such Sunday night, once all the machines were packed away again, that the pub postmortem spawned something more than the usual arguments over whose flat should next play host to this retarded-development self-help group.

At the time, he had been working for Div's firm, Network Transplant. They dismantled, transported and reinstalled PC networks during office relocations, ensuring that all of the machines made it from A to B, and that they still did what they used to when somebody hit the On switch. Div's relations with systems managers all across Scotland meant Ray had been able to tap into a valuable supply of second-hand hardware, the rate of depreciation in the computer business being steep enough to make a Ford Focus seem like a gilt investment.

He found a low-rent basement premises just off Victoria Road, there being few businesses for whom a lack of natural light was regarded as a locational advantage, and minimised decor costs by painting the place black from floor to ceiling. Thematic highlighting came in the form of promotional posters the games' distributors were happy to throw in when you were buying a dozen copies at a time, and after that it was merely a matter of hanging his hand- painted sign outside, sticking some Sonic Mayhem on the sound system and he was ready for action.

He'd toyed with calling the place The Level Playing Field, but Kate's marketing judgment prevailed as she opined that it sounded like a sports shop and lacked a certain futuristic resonance, or as she put it, 'it's not nearly geeky enough'. He opted instead for The Dark Zone, which scored high on the target geek-identification scale (you 137.

could never go far wrong with the word 'zone' when you were pitching to the SF/fantasy demographic). The fact that the place was like an experimental environment for inducing seasonal affective disorder may also have been a subconscious factor.

He recruited a couple of part-time assistants and launched in September with a free-play evening, leafleting the SF bookshops and hobby stores, student hang-outs, metal/indie-inclined pubs and games retailers. The winter months were pretty good, word-of-mouth having spread around throughout the autumn. December even saw office parties descend on the place as a novel supplement to the traditional programme of turkey lunch and photocopying each other's arses. Watching a respectably dressed professional woman in her forties clench a fist in her colleague's face as she yelled 'Eat that, loser' almost made Ray feel that his work on this Earth was done.

The lighter evenings, however, heralded a dramatic downturn. Even what passed for summer in Glasgow was enough to tempt much of his target market outdoors to have a go at games based on the Real Life(tm) engine, usually teamplay mods such as Football and Cricket, or that ever- popular two-player pursuit marketed variously as Dating, Winching and Lumbering. By the end of August, he was well into the red and, even more depressing, having to turn business away because customers were wanting to play new games that he didn't have the cash to buy, let alone the new graphics cards needed to run them.

To his and his bank manager's relief, the fluctuation proved seasonal, and business did start picking up again as the nights drew in, but much of the cash was swallowed by hardware upgrades as he struggled to keep pace with the latest fads. This was when he was forced to confront the flaw 138.

in his alcohol-tinted vision of hobby-as-business. There were dozens of new titles being released every month, and even though only a deserving few would snare the interest of the notoriously discerning multiplayer market, it was still a wider range than Ray could spread his enthusiasm across, never mind his money. If he was being honest, he had set up The Dark Zone as a digital coliseum for hardcore 'first- person shooters' - Quake, Unreal, Half-Life, Duke - and had accommodated the rest very much as a commercial necessity. As more and more customers came to the desk asking for an hour on games he'd never played, he began to fear he'd soon be in charge of a business he no longer entirely understood, like a metalhead record-store owner being asked for the latest 'bangin' Euro-trance'.

Nevertheless, it was still those FPS games that continued to bring in the bulk of the money, and it was his reliable understanding of that particular sub-culture that really made him fear for The Dark Zone's future viability. Quite simply, the Internet was becoming a more stable environment for gaming. At The Dark Zone, people could turn up and play against whoever else happened to be there, which could be ten others or could be just Ray. Over the Net, they could scan for servers and play against thousands of opponents - known and unknown - from all over northern Europe, and they could do it without leaving the house on a wet January night. Ray knew this better than anyone: despite having his own dedicated network a few feet from his desk, he often passed the quieter business hours fragging mercilessly on Barrysworld servers, based hundreds of miles away.

The game was changing, and his passion for keeping up with it was already on the wane when the baby question began to dominate the domestic agenda. He found himself recoiling from the lengthening days and the lean months 139.

they were sure to bring, so it wasn't that difficult a decision when the local council made their approach. They wanted to set up a community Internet centre, providing online access to people - particularly schoolchildren - who otherwise wouldn't get near a PC. The Dark Zone was earmarked because not only did it have all the hardware and a functioning network, but it was already a popular haunt for the local kids they intended to reach. They bought him out down to the last mouse-mat, even retaining all the games software in the knowledge that it would be easier to get the weans surfing educational websites if they were promised a deathmatch gib-fest at the end.

Selling up wasn't without regrets, but he was smart enough to know when he'd been jammy. He got out with a lump sum instead of a major debt, and regarded the cash as a fortuitous chance for a fresh start at something long- term, something grown-up. Something specific, in fact.

In an adult life that had been coloured by a vocational promiscuity bordering on the sluttish, the one notion that just kept coming back was teaching. During his university years, it had been a running joke among fellow arts students, regarding the credibility gap between their encouraged ambitions and their realistic future employment prospects. Whenever they got the beer-filled crystal ball out and waxed aspirational about where their degrees and desires might one day take them, it became traditional to end the discussion by saying 'but we'll probably all end up teachers'. For some, it had seemed like a superstition, a genuflection before providence in supplication that they be spared this unthinkable fate; and with that, no doubt, came the corresponding fear that it would be a self- fulfilling prophecy.

Ray had been less horrified by the prospect. In earlier 140.

student years, this was because the world of employment appeared too comfortably far off for him to worry about, and by the time the real world was months rather than years away, he was still able to exempt himself because he had his music-biz delusions to obscure the view. However, it didn't stop him wondering, and when he wasn't dreaming of a world where drummers were recognised as the true geniuses of rock, he could think of worse outcomes than being an English teacher. The pay would be dismal, sure, and he'd probably have to keep dipping into the vessel of unnecessary pain that was Othello, but something about it did appeal, other than just the long holidays.

Most likely it was the latent, unexorcised fantasy of a powerless schoolkid: oppressed, depressed or just plain bored, telling himself he'd do it differently, he'd do it better, given his own shot at the blackboard. School, at the time, had seemed an endless duration, and he doubted he was the only one there to dwell daily on the many ways in which it could be improved. In some people, this matured into formulating a vision - which they needed little invitation to share - of how they'd run the country were they Prime Minister (and what a happy-go-lucky state we'd be living in if any of those little dreams came true - 'Live from Wembley Stadium tomorrow: this month's mass execution of people who indicate wrongly at roundabouts!'). Ray, though, had merely zipped it into his 'What if...?' archive, from where it extracted itself again every few years.

Maybe the idea would have taken hold earlier, but the circumstances had never been right. Even before his graduation ceremony he was already in a patchwork of piecemeal employment, giving archery and crossbow lessons at the Castleglen Hotel & Country Club when he wasn't waiting tables or pulling pints. Casual and part-time jobs 141.

overlapped and superseded one another throughout his early twenties, when he was working merely to fill his hours and his pockets, living for nights and weekends. In those days, he had nothing but time.

When he hit twenty-five, he started finding it harder to ignore that bloody question - What do you want to be when you grow up? - and equally hard to believe that each job he took was anything other than a salaried procrastination. Remembering those student dream-extinguishing salutes, teaching loomed before him as the grown-up path to take, what with the Guardian still not advertising vacancies for Rock Gods or Professional Computer-Gamers. The obstacle back then - or maybe it was the excuse - was that he didn't think he could finance a post-grad year, not now that he and Kate were used to having some disposable income and a decent flat to live in. Maybe in a couple of years, he'd thought; after all, he was still young.

After The Dark Zone, he was out of time and out of excuses. He was also, to be honest, fed up with this consumer- age existentialism, fed up having to think of the answer at parties when someone asked him what he did for a living. Everybody was 'a' something. What did that make him?

The lump sum was a chance for a fresh start, a scarcely deserved second shot at adulthood. Maybe, he even thought, it was the ticket to somewhere he'd always been meant to go. Who knew? He'd find out when he got there, and he travelled hopefully in the meantime. Well, 'travelled desperately' might be a more accurate description of the journey's latter stages, as he counted down the days to having a worthy excuse for being out of the house, far away from the family he would be supporting.

Travelled hopefully, travelled desperately.

Then he arrived.

142.the best days of your life.'What you meant to be havin' next?'

'Double English. Mr Ash.'

'Mr Ash? Awww, he is a fuckin' fanny, man. That's who I'm meant to have right noo. We ripped the pish right oot him last time.'

They were dogging first double-period, going in late. Well, strictly speaking, only Wee Murph was dogging it, having slept in. Lexy had been to the dentist's for a checkup, so he had a note as cover, but he wasn't saying. He'd run into Wee Murph on the Hazelwood Road and they made their way up together from there, checking their pace against their watches to make sure they didn't arrive before the first lesson was finished. No point in letting some swine poke about your gums with a jaggy stick if you still showed up in time to get homework, and in English it was guaranteed. New teachers always gave it out, partly so's they didn't look like soft touches, but mainly because they never got you to do anything during class.

Mr Ash's had been a case in point: pure murder. He couldn't get Lexy's class to shut up, so he ended up losing the place and shouted at them at the top of his voice. It had gone tensely quiet for a second, until Johnny McGowan burst out laughing, and that set everybody off again. Mr Ash asked Johnny for his name, to which Johnny responded 'Andrew Lafferty', so after that everybody gave names of kids in other classes. The stupid bastard 143.

started checking the register, no clue what was going on.

'By the time he'd given up tryin' tae sort it oot/ Lexy told Murph, 'it was nearly time for the bell, so he just gave us the books an' tell't us we'd tae read up tae chapter three for the next class. Optimistic, is he no'?'

'Aye,' Murph agreed. 'Specially wi' Cammy in the class. Never mind read it, he'll have sell't it by noo. He'll be doon the toon seem' if he can get part-ex on hauf a Silk Cut.'

Wee Murph was a laugh. He hadn't been at the same primary as Lexy, but he'd been one of those names you heard about as soon as they all started at the big school. He always had lots of patter. Not just whatever was the new cool phrase everybody was trying to force into conversations to show off they knew it, but real patter, words and expressions that just poured out. The things he said made Lexy laugh even when he wasn't trying to make a joke. Wee Murph was in 2s3, Lexy in 2s6, which meant that although they weren't in the same class, they got the same teachers for most subjects.

'I heard one o' the fourth-year classes gie'd him a right session as well.'

'Aye,' Wee Murph said, his eyes lighting up. Lexy knew what had happened, but he wanted to hear Murph telling it. 'He opened wan o' the windaes, so Jai McGinty's big brer goes: "Get that shut" - an' Ash done it!'

'Jai McGinty's big brer's mental.'

'Total bampot. That's the fourth-year spam class as well. They shouldnae have handed that tae a new teacher. Like puttin' a coo in charge o' the lions' cage.'

'What did your mob dae tae him?'

'He was talkin' aboot images or somethin', how the wummin in the poem was meant tae be like a sheep. He asked us tae say whit animal the person next tae us made 144.

us think of. Marky Innes is first, an' he's sittin' beside Margaret Gebbie, so he says a dug.'

'A hound.'

'Aye. We aw pure pished oursel's. Ash goes "you've got tae say how she's like a dug". Marky says 'cause she looks like wan. So then Gebbie says Marky's like a pig, 'cause he smells like wan.'

'Who were you beside?'

'Charlie. But Linda Dixon's on the other side o' me.'

'She's a doll.'

'I know. So I said she made us think ay a beaver.'

'Aw man.'

'I know. Ash says how? I says 'cause she's always dead busy, a hard worker an' that. He was aboot tae turn tae Charlie, an' I goes "Plus, she builds dams oota trees." Charlie pure decked himsel'. He'd snotters comin' oot an' everythin'. You know Charlie. He'd laugh at a door shuttin'.'

'Aye.'

'Aw, but wait tae I tell you what else. He asked us tae write a hingmy, a composition, aboot goin' tae the swimmin', which was a mistake considerin' hauf o' that class don't know what a bath looks like, never mind a swimmin' pool. Somebody passed the message roon, an' when we aw handed in wur papers, every guy in the class had just drawn big knobs, no' even written a word.'

'Aw, man, that's brilliant. Whit did Ash dae?'

'It was gallus. You could tell he was pure squeezin' his baws, tryin' no tae laugh. He came on dead serious instead, makin' oot he never takes shite. Learner driver, man. No' got a clue.'

'Did he go an' get Doyle?'

'Naw. Cannae blame him. Imagine goin' tae Doyle's 145.

office, or the staff room, an' tellin' everybody your class aw drew big wullies instead o' writin' their essays.'