'Big words.' Makin had lost his smile. 'Fom a man who hasn't made a kill in nearly four years.'

3OChris shrugged, one eye on Makin's left hand where it rested on the table top. He mapped options. Reach down and pinion the arm. Snap the little finger of that hand, take it from there.

'Actually,' said a husky voice. 'I think they're quite small words from the man who took down Edward Quain.'

The focus of attention leapt away across the table. Liz Linshaw sat with one long-fingered hand propping her tousled blonde head away from the back of her seat. The other hand gestured with a cigarette.

'Now that,' she continued, 'Was the mother of all exemplary kills. No one ever thought Eddie Quain was coming back to work. Except maybe as lubricant.'

Somebody laughed. Nervous laughter. Someone else took it up, more certainly and the sound built around the table. Bryant joined in. The moment pa.s.sed. Chris gave Makin one more hard look and then started laughing himself.

The evening spread its wings under him.

FIVE.

An unclear s.p.a.ce of time later, he was relieving himself in a scarred porcelain urinal that reeked as if it hadn't been cleaned in a week.

Yellowed plaster walls crowded round him. Sullen, gouged graffiti ranged from brutal to incomprehensible and back.

PLAISTOW GANGWITS IN YER SOUP.

YOUR RAGS SUIT THEM.

f.u.c.k OFF MARKEY c.u.n.t.

MONEY MAKES THE WORLD GO BROWN.

EMMA SUCKED MY p.r.i.c.k HERE.

U SUCKED IT USELF.

ZEK TIV s.h.i.t.

BRING THE OMBUDSMEN.

f.u.c.k THE U.N.

p.i.s.s ON YOU TOO.

MEAT THE RICH.

It wasn't always clear where one message ended and the other began.

Either that or he was very drunk.

He was very drunk.

Bryant's idea, as numbers in the hotel bar began thinning; carry the party over into the cordoned zones.

'They may be s.h.i.t-poor over there,' voice blurred as he leaned across the table. 'But they know how to have a good time. There's a couple of places I know you can buy all sorts of interesting substances over the counter, and they've got floor shows you wouldn't believe.'

Liz Linshaw wrinkled her sculpted features. 'Sounds strictly for the boys,' she said. 'If you gentlemen will excuse me, I'm for a cab.'

She kissed Bryant on the lips, causing a small storm of whoops and yells, and left with a sideways grin at Chris. A couple of other womenexcused themselves from the group, in her wake and Mike's expedition began to look in danger of fizzling out.

'Oh, come on, you bunch of p.u.s.s.ies,' he slurred. 'What are you afraid of?. We've got guns.' He yanked out his Nemex and brandished it, 'We've got money, we've got this city by the b.a.l.l.s. What the f.u.c.k kind 32of life is it when we own the f.u.c.king streets they walk on and the [)locks they live in and we're still f.u.c.king scared to go there. We're supposed to be in charge of this society, not in hiding from it.'

It wasn't speech-making of Louise Hewitt's calibre, but Mike managed to rope in a half dozen of the younger men round the table and a couple of the harder-drinking women. Ten minutes later, Chris was in the pa.s.senger seat of Bryant's BMW, watching the emptied streets of the financial district roll by. In the back seat sat a nameless young male executive and an older woman called Julie Pinion - macho sales talk snarled back and forth between them. In the wing mirror, the following lights of two other cars. Shorn was descending on the cordoned zones in force.

'Okay, you two keep it down,' said Mike over his shoulder as they turned a corner. Up ahead the lights of a zone checkpoint frosted the night sky. 'They won't let us through here if they think there's going to be trouble.'

He brought the BMW to a remarkably smooth halt at the barrier and leaned out as the guard approached. He was, Chris noticed, chewing gum to mask the alcohol on his breath.

'Just going down to the Falkland,' Bryant called cheerfully, waving his Shorn a.s.sociates plastic. 'Take in the late show.'

The guard was in his fifties, with a spreading paunch beneath his grey uniform and broken veins across his nose and cheeks. Chris saw the cloud of vapour he made when he sighed.

'Have to scan that, sir.'

"course.' Bryant handed over the card and waited while the guard ran it through his hipswipe remote and handed it back. The unit chimed melodically, and the guard nodded. He seemed tired.

'You armed?'

Bryant turned back into the car. 'Show the man your peacemakers, guys.

Chris slid the Nemex out of its shoulder holster and displayed it.

Behind him he heard the two backseat disputants doing the same. The guard flashed his torch in the windows and nodded slowly.

'Want to be careful, sir,' he told Bryant. 'There's been layoffs at Pattons and Greengauge this week. Lot of angry people out getting drunk tonight.''Well, we'll stay out of their way,' said Bryant easily. 'Don't want any trouble. Just want to see the show.'

'Yeah, okay.' The guard turned back to the checkpoint cabin and gestured to whoever was inside. The barrier began to rise. 'I've got to check your friends as well. You want to park just past the gate till we clear them?'

33'Be glad to.' Mike beamed and drove the BMW through.

The second car pa.s.sed muster but with the third there was some trouble. They peered back and saw the guard shaking his head while suited forms craned from the windows front and back, gesturing.

'The f.u.c.k is going on back there?' muttered Julie Pinion. 'Couldn't they even act sober for a couple of minutes.'

'Stay here,' Bryant said, and climbed out into the night air. They watched him walk back to the third car, lean down and say something to those leaning out. The heads disappeared back into the vehicle, as if on wires. Bryant put his hand on the guard's shoulder and dug in his pocket. Something pa.s.sed between them. The guard said something to the driver of the third car. A clearly audible whoop of delight bounced out of the windows. Bryant came back, grinning.

'Gratuities,' he said as he got into the car again. 'Ought to be compulsory, the s.h.i.t they pay those guys.'

'How much did you give him?' asked Pinion.

'Hundred.'

'A hundred] Jesus.'

'Ah, come on Julie. I've tipped waiters better than that. And he's going to take a lot more heat than a waiter if this dinner party goes awry.

The little convoy pressed on into the cordoned zone.

It was an abrupt transition. In the financial district, street lighting was a flood of halogen, chasing out shadows from every corner. Here, the street lamps were isolated sentinels, spilling a scant pool of radiance at their feet every twenty metres of darkened street. In some places, they were out, lamps either fused or smashed. Elsewhere they had been destroyed more unambiguously, rendered down to jagged concrete stumps still attached to their trunks by a riot of cables and metal bands.

'Look at that,' said Pinion disgustedly. 'What a bunch of f.u.c.king animals. It's no wonder n.o.body wants to spend money fixing these places up. They'd just tear it all down again.'

Even the street beneath their wheels changed. Within a hundred metres of the checkpoint the ride turned b.u.mpy and Bryant had to slow down and negotiate rain-filled potholes the size of small garden ponds. On either side, the houses huddled. Here and there, for no visible reason, one had been taken down, sprawling smashed brick andspilled interior in the s.p.a.ce in which it had stood. There were no other vehicles on the streets, moving or parked. A few figures moved on the pavements on foot, but they grew immobile as the twilight-blue arm oured saloons with their Shorn a.s.sociates logos rolled by. Most turned up their collars or simply sank back into the shadows.

34'f.u.c.king creepy,' said the young executive behind Chris. 'I mean, 1 knew it was bad out here but--'

'Bad,' Julie Pinion coughed laughter at him. 'You think this is bad?

Mike, you remember the suburbs in that s.h.i.thole we got seconded to for Christmas last year.'

'Muong Khong, yeah.' Bryant looked in the rearview. 'Gives you a whole new perspective on what real poverty is, man. Chris, you ever been on secondment? With Emerging Markets, I mean?'

'Couple of times, yeah.'

'Pretty awful, huh?'

Chris remembered the call of a muezzin in the warm evening air, smells of cooking and a small child prodding three goats homewards.

Later, he'd been walking past a stone-and-thatch dwelling when a young girl of about fourteen came out and offered him fruit from their dinner table because he was a guest in the village. The unlooked-for kindness, with its hints of an antique and alien culture, had p.r.i.c.ked tears out on the underside of his eyes.

He never told anyone.

'It wasn't somewhere I would have wanted to live,' he said.

Pinion smirked. 'No s.h.i.t,' she agreed.

The Falkland- a squat brick building at the intersection of two streets still boasting a picturesque scattering of car wrecks. The vehicles looked old enough to have burnt leaded fuel when they were alive. Mike Bryant's little convoy swept to a disdainful halt and disgorged suits.

'No cars,' said the young executive, wonderingly. 'I only just noticed.'

'Of course, no cars,' said Pinion, rolling her eyes in Chris's direction.

'Who, outside of criminals, do you suppose can afford a tank of fuel around here? Or a licence, come to that?'

'Price of the green agenda,' said Mike as he alarmed the car. 'You guys coming or what?'

The door of the Falkland was beaten steel. Two black men in coveralls stood outside, one dangling a sawn-off shotgun negligently from his left hand, the other, older, watching the street, arms folded impa.s.sively across his chest. When he spotted Mike Bryant, he unwrapped and his face split into a huge grin. Mike lifted a hand in greeting as he crossed the street.

'Hey, Troy. What're you doing on the f.u.c.king door, man?''Protectin' my investment.' The rich treacle of a Jamaican accent.

'Being' seen. It's more than I can say for you, Mike. 'Ave not seen you in a f.u.c.kin' long time. What's the matter? Suki not let you out to play any more?'

'That's right.' Mike winked. 'Chopped it off and locked it in the 35ledro()m dresser. That way she can take it out and play with it while I'ill at work. Which, by the way, is all the f.u.c.king time.'

'That is the motherf.u.c.kin' truth.' He looked at the entourage Bryant had brought to the bar. 'These are friends of yours?'

'Yep. Julie, Chris. Meet Troy Morris. He owns this s.h.i.thole. Mnong others. Troy, Julie Pinion, Chris Faulkner. The rest I don't remember.'

Bryant waved back at the entourage he was trailing. 'Just sycophants, you know how it is when you're an important man.'

The Jamaican reeled off a deep chuckle. 'Faulkner,' he rumbled. 'No relation of Villiam, right?'

Chris blinked, confused. Before he could ask, Mike Bryant broke in again.

'They're all carrying, Troy. Left mine in the car, but these guys are new and they don't know the rules. Bear with us. You got a bag for the hardware?'

With the dozen-odd pistols dumped into a greasy holdall clearly reserved for this specific purpose, they pushed inside. Quiet slammed down through the smoke-hung bar. Even the girl on the stage stopped in mid writhe, one doped boa constrictor gripped in each fist. Music thumped on behind her, suddenly unchallenged by voices. Mike nodded to himself, took a chair to the centre of the bar and climbed onto it.

'As you may have noticed,' he said, pitching his voice above the music. 'We are zek-tivs. I know that may pa.s.s for a crime around here, but we don't want any trouble. All we want is to buy a drink for everyone in the house, and have a few ourselves. Anyone who has a problem with that can come and have a word with me, or my friend Troy Morris, and we'll sort your problem out. Otherwise, it's open bar for the next ten minutes and the drinks are on me.' He turned to the girl on the stage. 'Please. The show must go on. It looks like we got here just in time.'

He climbed down and went to talk to the barman. Conversations resumed slowly. The dancer went back, a little stiffly, to what she was doing with the two boas. People drifted to the bar, a few at first, then the bulk of those present. Bryant appeared to know a couple of them.

Chris was introduced, promptly forgot names and cornered Mike.

'What did Troy mean about being related to William?'

Bryant shrugged. 'Search me. Troy knows a lot of people. What are you drinking?'

And so it went on, the night swelling with noise and hilarity for a while, and then paring down again as people left. Chris's high began toflatten into something more reflective. Julie Pinion went home in a cab, the young executive she'd been arguing with in smug tow. el'he driver of one of the other cars announced his imminent departure around three 36a.m. and most of the remaining Shorn crew went with him. By four the party was down to one table - Chris and Mike, an off-duty Troy Morris and a couple of the floorshow dancers, now dressed and divested of most of their garish make-up. One introduced herself as Emma and lurching into the toilets, Chris had to wonder if she was the object of the f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o-inspired graffiti gouged there amidst the political commentary.

When he got back to the table, Emma had gone and Troy was leaving with her colleague. The gun bag from his doorman duties was dumped on the table, the sawn-off and Bryant's Nemex nestling together in the canvas folds. Chris joined in the round of farewells and there was much drunken promising to keep in contact. 'Yeah,' said Troy, pointing at Chris. 'You should write, Faulkner.'

He left, chortling inexplicably, with the shotgun slung over one shoulder and his other arm around the dancer's waist. At that moment Chris found himself possessed of a powerful desire to be Troy Morris, walking out of the Falkland into an entirely simpler and, to judge by the black man's laughter, more joyous existence.

He slumped into the chair opposite Bryant.

'I,' he p.r.o.nounced carefully, 'Have drunk far too much.'

'Well, it's Friday.' Bryant's attention was focused on heating a stained gla.s.s pipe. 'Switch horses, try some of this.'

Chris's eyes tightened on what the other man was doing.

'Is that--'

Bryant's eyes shuttled sideways above the pipe and lighter. Narrowed irritably. 'Ah, come on, man. Lighten up. Just a little drive-right.'

The contents of the pipe smouldered and Mike inhaled convulsively.

A shudder ran through his suited form. He made a deep grunting sound and his voice came out squeaky as he offered the pipe.