"Anyone for the slab?"

He looked at me with flat eyes.

"Man, I need a hit tonight or that last interest hike's gonna blow me outta the water. I'm gonna end up out here with these f.u.c.kin'

meltdowns." He jerked his thumb out of the window.

Denny was a freelance agent for the NHS and it was his job to find people willing to part with one of their kidneys--for a price, the right price. More than fifty percent of the people in this country between the ages of forty and fifty suffer from kidney damage, a direct legacy of the drug culture at the close of the millennium; more than fifty percent of the people in this country between the ages of forty and fifty can afford to buy a new kidney.

A seller's market.

But such was the lack of post-op care afforded donors, many didn't live long enough to enjoy their windfall and soon ended up in the morgue on the slab.

"Let's see what we can do," I said.

We climbed out of the shuttle.

Around the edge of the wheel each dwelling had its own entrance; the dwellings on the inside were reached by a communal entrance in front.

Denny headed for the main entrance; I turned to go clockwise around the wheel.

I walked slowly, pulling aside makeshift curtains to get a look at the occupants, barking commands for people to get on the shuttle, trying to keep the mix right; I didn't want a load of juice heads and runners.

Every now and then I could hear Denny shouting at someone, and the occasional thump of metal on flesh from within the wheel. Denny was the kind of guy who liked to throw his weight around. He was a qualified paramedic, but he chose to ride shotgun with me because he got to beat up on people.

A third of the way around the wheel I came across an old guy I had seen many times before.

"Hey, Wally, how you doin'?" I squatted down beside the small fire. He was cooking some eggs on the lid of an old paint tin.

He looked up at me, eyes swimming with a milky discoloration. His face bore the lines of someone who had learned to live with pain at an early age.

"You gonna come for the ride?" I said. Wally had been a regular pa.s.senger on the shuttle for a long time, but for a variety of reasons he had never been processed, the latest being that he was just too f.u.c.kin' old. But sometimes he liked to tag along and make out like old times.

He poked at the eggs with a long handled fork.

"Where you headed?"

"Does it matter?" I said He snorted, and his head wobbled around on his shoulders.

My legs were cramping, and I stood up. I took a pack of cigarettes out of my jacket and tossed one on the ground next to Wally. He picked it up and lit it from the coals of the fire.

"Maybe I'll give it a miss this time, huh?" Feathers of smoke drifted from his mouth as he spoke.

"One of these days I'm gonna come at you wi' this," I said, slapping the gun on my hip.

"Then maybe you ain't got no choice." I smiled at him.

I moved on, walking between broken belongings that lay scattered on the parched gra.s.s. It took me twenty minutes to walk around the wheel and when I returned to the shuttle it was already full. Denny was twisted 'round in his seat, shouting at someone in back.

"--and for the last time, no f.u.c.kin' jugs of booze in the Medibag, okay?"

I climbed into the driver's seat.

"What's going' on?"

I said, looking in the rearview mirror.

"These f.u.c.kin' guys are fiends, man. They wanna use my Medibag to cool their juice. You believe that?"

He sighed and shook his head.

I stifled a laugh. On the last trip out, someone had used Denny's Medibag, the icebox he used for transporting kidneys, to keep their Jug of beer cold. The next kidney to occupy the bag had become contaminated and worthless. It had cost Denny his month's rent; he relied on those little extras to meet his bills.

"Any troublemakers?" I asked. Normally, when confronted with Denny, people will just get on the shuttle as if under hypnosis, rarely is there any trouble.

But occasionally he will find some reason for stomping some poor guy's head.

"Just go," he said, his eyes beaming straight ahead.

I hit the ignition and we moved slowly out of the park. A light rain had begun to fall, and the vagrants moving through the mist looked like after-images of the people they had once been. Clouds of smoke curling out of slits in the tarpaulins glowed blue in the twilight.

We drove upriver and crossed the Thames at Westminster Bridge.

It was now four years since my son had been killed.

Eleven months into his National Service, Cal was pulling down extra hours to try to wind up early so he could get back to college with a running start on his final year. The extra workload was no hardship; for the whole of his time he had been stationed at a center for people with Alzheimer's and he had gotten to know a lot of the patients as friends, often staying late and trying to follow the scant logic of their conversations.

But the extra hours meant late nights, and late nights meant running risks out on the street.

He was killed by a single bullet from the gun of a juice head out on his stag night.

Once Virtual Reality had faded into the mainstream and become just another tired thread in the cultural fabric of the world, for a few dark souls a new frontier in entertainment was needed. And this time, the kill had to be for real. Guys like Billy Hendry were quick to fit!

the gap in the market; his White Hunter had been one of the first organized trips into the cold heart of the professional killer. For a price, you could take your pick of game: Cal--young, white, male--cheap at ten thousand.

The shooter had been easy to track down; a security camera by the ATM that Cal had been using at the time of his death had caught the murder on videotape: the jeep pulling up to the curb, the pistol appearing through the open window, the face twisted in cruel intensity as it drew a bead on the back of Cal's head... .

Together with a patrol cop I pulled the Juicehead from his bed and executed him in his own back yard.

In the morning, the cop had called the church and canceled the wedding.

After six months the official investigation was wound up. Our life savings and the services of a bounty hunter fueled our hopes and frustration and anger for another two months, but the bounty hunter could only come up with one sure thing: Billy Hendry had disappeared.

Soon after, Jolie walked out on me. She said that in shadow my profile was the same as that of Cal, and as her world was now full of shadows .. .

Last I heard she was running computer security for a telecommunications group up near Liverpool.

Some nights I watch the video from the security camera until I drift into a troubled sleep that burns images from the tape deep into my mind, so that every action, every thought, every memory is controlled by them.

The following morning I wake to static filling the screen and white noise filling my ears.

At nine I pulled into a service station to refuel and grab a bite to eat. Denny was asleep and I had to dig him in the ribs.

"You comin' in?" I asked him.

tt! better get these f.u.c.kers sorted first," he said, nodding to the rear of the shuttle. He rubbed at his face with the palms of his hands.

"I'll get you some coffee."

The restaurant was quiet, the only other customer a young kid in dark green overalls up at the counter.

His eyes were molded to the rear end of the waitress, sharply defined by her tight uniform. I walked to the rear and took a booth against the window. I held my hand up to the gla.s.s and saw Denny leading a group from the shuttle toward the back of the restaurant where the kitchen staff would hand out G-rations. He had his hand on the b.u.t.t of his gun and his eyes flitted anxiously over the group.

I ordered coffee for two and lamb chops and reflected on Denny's suitability for the job. Realistically, the post was little more than that of driver's gopher, but with his medical credentials and his blood l.u.s.t he had turned the shuttle into a carrier for his freelance kidney trading. Not that it bothered me; he always gave me a slice of his fee, and I enjoyed having to put my foot down when the temperature alarm on his Medibag showed red.

After a few minutes Denny came in through the back and slid into the booth opposite me. A crooked grin hung on his face like a broken mask.

"You okay?" I said.

"Those dogs out back?" He looked toward the back door, as if expecting the dogs to walk in at any moment.

"Those dogs--they were eating some guy's head this morning. You believe that?"

"Eating someone's head?" I said, raising my eyebrows.

"The guy out back, the chef, guy out having a smoke?"

"The dogs were eating the chef's head?"

"Hey, you wanna hear this, slap the wise guy, okay?"

"Okay, go on." I forked some lamb chop into my mouth.