'Oh, for f.u.c.k's sake.'

They left the curving street and swung left past decayed low-rise housing and steel-shuttered frontages. The usual graffiti leered from the walls, incoherent tribal rage and abstract flashing that looked like stretched purple and white skulls. Carla stared ahead, tight-lipped.

Chris felt his post-fight mellowness charring at the edges.

'Hey, perhaps you'd rather he'd beaten her to death while we all sat there and listened to it. Good training for my future in the ombudsmen.

Observe, take notes and never, never f.u.c.king intervene in anything.'

No response.

'Your father lives next door to that every f.u.c.king day of his life, Carla.

And he does Joth#zg. Vorse than nothing. He just shakes his f.u.c.king head and writes his agonised social commentary and he feeds it to people who'll never know the realities of the situations he describes, and they all shake their heads and do nothing. And next door, a thug goes on beating his wife to pulp.'

'My father's a man in his sixties. Did you see the size of that piece of s.h.i.t?'

'Yeah. That's why I shot him.'

'That," o solutions,t''I don't know - it seemed to slow him down.'

294'And what about when he recovers, Chris? When he's back on his feet and twice as angry as he ever was.'

'You're saying I should have killed him?'

'This i 't f.u.c.king fuJmy,n Chris twisted round to face her. 'No, you're right Carla, it isn't. It's sick. You're trying to get me, out of some twisted sense of moral outrage, to quit my job at Shorn and go work for men like Vasvik. And you saw how concerned he was back there. What a moral stand the f.u.c.king ombudsmen are prepared to take in the face of injustice.'

'He wasn't there for that, Chris.'

'Neither was I, Carla. But I did something about it. Just like I'm going to do something in the NAME. Jesus, you think you can go through this life with your pristine ideals, taking notes and trusting some f.u.c.kwit UN judge to make everyone play nice. You thinks'

The Landrover leaned abruptly on its suspension. The road swung away in the high beams, replaced by the cross-hatching of an empty parking area. An abandoned supermarket loomed up ahead, facades smashed in and boarded up in about equal measures. There seemed to be a white tubular metal reindeer riveted to the roof, face turned blankly to greet the shoppers in their cars. Vague, tangled debris that had once presumably been a sleigh trailed from the animal's rear and spilled down the roof as far as the sagging gutters. For one bizarre moment, the image reversed for Chris and he saw an amorphous tentacled creature dragging the reindeer down to its death.

Carla braked them to a halt in the middle of the car park.

For a moment, they both sat staring out at the mall front. Then she turned to look at him.

'What's happened to you, Chris?' she whispered.

'Oh, Christ, Carla--'

'I.' She gestured convulsively. 'I don't. Recognise you any more. I don't know who you are any more. Who the f.u.c.k are you, Chris?'

'Don't be stupid.'

'No, I mean it. You're angry all the time,furious all the time, and now you carry that gun around with you. When you started at Shorn, you told me about the guns, and you laughed about it. Do you retnmnber that? You made fun of it. You made fun of the whole place, just like you used to at HM. Now you barely laugh at anything. I don't know how totalk to you any more, I'm scared you're going to just snap and start yelling at me.'

'Keep on like this,' he said grimly, 'and guess what, I'll probably snap and start yelling at you. And no doubt it'll be my ficking fault agaiu.'

She flinched.

295'You want to know who i am, Carla?' lie was leaning across the Landrover towards her, in her fiace. 'You really want to know? I'm your f.u.c.king meal ticket. Just like I always have been. Need new clothes?

Need tickets to Norway? Need a handout for Daddy? Need to move out of the city and live somewhere nicer? Hey, that's okay. Chris has got a good job, he'll pay for it all. He doesn't ask much, just keep the car clean and the odd b.l.o.w. .j.o.b. It's a f.u.c.king bargain, girl!'

The words seemed to do something coming out. He felt tearing, somewhere indefinable. He felt dizzy, suddenly weak in the numb quiet that swallowed up what he'd said. He propped himself back away from her and sat waiting, not sure what for.

The silence hummed.

'Get out,' she said.

She hadn't raised her voice. She didn't look at him. She hit the central locking console and his door cracked open.

'You'd better be sure about--'

'I warned you before, Chris. You called me a wh.o.r.e once. You don't get to do it twice. Get out.'

He looked out at the deserted parking area, the darkness beyond the Landrover's lights. He smiled thinly.

'Sure,' he said. 'Why not. Been coming to this for long enough.'

He shouldered the door fully open and jumped down. The night air was warm and comfortable, edged with a slight breeze. It was easy enough to forget where you were. He checked he still had the Nemex in its holster, his wallet in the jacket pocket, still thick with cash.

'See you then, Carla.'

Her head jerked round suddenly. He met her eyes, saw what was in them and ignored it.

'I'll be at the office. Call me if the bills need paying, huh?'

'Chris--'

He slammed the door on it.

He strode away without looking back, aiming only to get beyond easy hailing distance. Behind him, he heard the Landrover put in gear and moving, tie wondered briefly if she'd come after him at kerb-crawl speed across the car park, and what, in that ridiculous scenario, he would do. Then the high beams washed once over him and fled left,away across the white boxed acreage of the parking area. The engine lifted through the gears as she picked up speed.

He felt a single stab of worry, that she might not be safe getting home on her own. He grimaced and slammed a door on that as well.

Then she was gone. He turned, finally, to look, and was in time to catch the tail lights of the Landrover disappearing amidst the low-rise huddle of housing on the other side of the car park. A few moments 296later the engine noise t]ded into the vehicle-free stillness of night in the ZOIleS.

He stood for a while, trying to get his hearings, geographical and emotional, but it was all utterly unfiamiliar. There was nothing recognisable on the skyline in any direction. The supermarket faced him with its wrecked frontages, and he felt a sudden insane desire to lever loose some of the boarding, use the b.u.t.t of the Nemex to do it, and slip inside, looking for-- He shivered. The dream marched through his head in neon-lit pulses. udden warm :ai of blood jailing He shook his head, hard. Turned his back on the facade. Then he picked an angle across the car park at random and started walking.

Up on the roof, the tube metal reindeer watched him go through eyes empty of anything except the cool evening wind.

Sat.u.r.day night, Sunday norning. The cordoned zones.

He'd expected trouble, had even, with some of the same twisted joy that had driven his actions at the Brundtland, been looking forward to it. The Nemex was a grab away beneath his jacket. His hands were Shotokan-toughened and itchy with the desire to do damage. Worst case scenario, his mobile would get him a police escort out, should he really need it.

Rather coldly, he kmew he'd have to be literally fighting for his life before he'd make that call.

Anything less, he'd never live it down.

He'd expected trouble, but there was nothing worthy of the name.

He walked for a while through anonynous, poorly-lit estates, emerging once or twice onto main thoroughfares to take his bearings from scarred and vandalised road signs and then plunging back in, heading what he estimated was east. TV light flickered and glowed in windows, game-show noise escaped through the cheap glazing. Occasionally figures moved within. Outside, he saw children perched on walls in the gloom, sharing cigarettes, two-litre plastic bottles and crudely hone made solvent pipes. The first set he ran across spotted the clothes and came jeering towards him. He drew the Nemex and met their eyes, and they backed off, muttering. He kept the gun where it could be seen alter that, and the other groups just watched him pa.s.s with bleak calculation.

hispered invective slithered in his wake.

Eventually, he came out onto a main road that looked as if it might run due east. Between the buildings on his left he thought he could make out the vaulted march of the M4o inrun converging from thenorth, which suggested he was somewhere near Ealing. ()r Greenford, 297it he'd miscalculated how far out Carla had dumped him. Or Alperton.

Or Or you're lost, Chris.

f.u.c.k it, you don't really know this part of town, so stop pretending you do.

Just keep moving. Pretty soon the sun's got to come up, and then you'll d.a.m.n well know if you're heading east or not.

Keep moving. It had to be better than thinking.

He started to see signs of nightlife. Clubs and arcades at intervals along the street, in various stages of turnout. Junk food carry-outs, most of them little more than white-neon-blasted alcoves in the brickwork.

The low-intensity stink of cheap meat and stale alcohol, laced once or twice with acid spikes of vomit.

Little knots of people in the street, eating and drinking, shouting at each other. Turning to stare at him as he pa.s.sed.

It couldn't be helped. He lengthened his stride, kept the Nemex lowered but clearly in view. Kept to the centre of the street.

In theory, he could have tried to call a cab. He had landmarks now, identifiable club frontages and, if he was prepared to look hard enough in the gloom, street name plaques. In practice, it was probably a waste of time. The companies his mobile knew numbers for mostly wouldn't come more than a few hundred metres the wrong side of the cordons, especially at this time of night. And those few that would tended to follow an esoteric driver's mythology on exactly which streets were safe to pick up from. Get the wrong configuration in this tarot of zone codes, and you could wait all night. Hearing a location they didn't like - better yet hearing some idiot raving about the corner of Old Something Smudged street, some nameless club and a pink neon rabbit with t.i.ts and a top hat - individual drivers were going to chortle grimly, ignore the controller and shelve the fare. There just wasn't enough zone custom to push things the other way. You went to the zones, you drove. Or you walked home.

He caught eyes, made no attempt to look away. He remembered Mike's demeanour on their previous expeditions to the zones, and aped it.

Be who you are, and f.u.c.k 'em if they don't like it.

The gun helped.

No one wanted to push it any further than a curled lip. No one came close. No one said anything.

Outside one of the clubs, two crack wh.o.r.es broke his run of luck.

They registered the clothes and stumbled across the road towards himlike kids wading into cold water on a shingle beach. Their bare legs worked as if badly jointed, their feet were wrenched on ludicrous stiletto heels. They wore push-up bras and black mesh microskirts cinched 298savagely tight. Their make-up was sweat-streaked anti caked, and their eyes looked bruised half shut. One was skinnier than the other, but otherwise the pre-dawn wh.o.r.e's makeover rendered them uniform, wiped difference away.

They were all of fourteen years old.

'You want to get sucked?' asked the skinny one.

'You got a place we can go?' The other was clearly the brains of the outfit, the forward thinker.

Chris shook his head. 'Go home.'

'Don't be harsh, baby. Just want to do you good.' The skinny girl amplified her sales pitch with a finger-licking display. She stuck the wet finger inside one cup of her barely necessary bra and rubbed it back and forth with a fixed little smile. Chris flinched.

'I said, go home.' He raised the Nemex where they couldn't miss it.

'You don't want anything to do with me.'

'Baby, that's a bg gun you got,' said the skinny girl.

'You want to put it somewhere warm?'

Chris fled.

He came through the westward cordons at Holland Park, an hour before dawn. The checkpoint detail gave him some strange looks, but they said nothing and once his Shorn card swiped clear, they called him a cab. He stood outside the cabin while he waited for it to arrive, staring back across the barriers the way he'd cotne.

His mobile queeped. He looked at it, saw it was Carla and turned it off.

The cab arrived.

He had the driver take him to work.

299THIRTY-EIGHT.

This early on a Sunday, the Shorn block was in darkness above the mezzanine level and the shutdown locks were still in place. He buzzed security, and they let him in without comment or visible surprise. He supposed, rather bitterly, that it couldn't be entirely unheard of for a Shorn exec to come in before dawn at the weekend.

He thought briefly about grabbing a few hours sleep in the hospitality suites, then dismissed the idea out of hand. Outside, it was already getting light. He wouldn't sleep unaided now. Instead, he rode the lift all the way up to the fifty-third floor, made his way through the cosy dimness of corridors lit at standby wattage and let hinself into his office.

On his desk, the phone was already flashing a message light.

He checked it, saw it was from Carla and wiped it. He stood afterwards with his finger on the stud for a while, reached once for the receiver but never made it. Reached for the lighting control on the datadown but changed his mind. The grey pre-dawn quiet the office was steeped in had an oddly comforting quality, like a childhood hiding place. Like a pillow under his cheek and a clock in front of his fiace showing a good solid hour before alarm time. Without the lights, he was in limbo, a comfortable state in which decisions did not have to be made, in which you didn't have to move forward any more. The sort of state that just couldn't last, but while it did-- He muted the phone's ring tone, went to the built-in cupboards by the door and took down a blanket. Crossing to the sofa-and-coffee table island in the corner of the office, he shucked his jacket, shoulder holster and shoes and then lowered himself onto the sofa. Then he covered himself with the blanket and lay staring at the white textured ceiling, waiting for the slow creep of morning to soak across it.

Back down at reception, the younger of the two security guards made bladder excuses and left his colleague while he went up to the mezzanine.

He pushed through the swing doors of the toilets, locked himself in a cubicle and took out his phone.

He hesitated for a moment, then grimaced and punched out a number.

300The phone purred beside a wide, grey-sheeted bed in a s.p.a.ce lit by hooded blue softs. A na.s.sive picture window in one wall was polarised to dark. On a table under the sill, a chess set of ornate figurines stood next to a screen that displayed the state of play in silver, black and blue.

Grecian-effect sculpture stood around the room on plinths in the shadows. Beneath the sheets, the curves of two bodies moved against each other as the ringing tone penetrated layers of sleep. Louise Hewitt poked her head up, reached for the receiver and held it to her ear. She glared balefully at the time display beside the phone.

'This had better be f.u.c.king important.'

She listened to the hastily apologetic voice at the other end, and her eyes opened wide. She twisted, struggled free of the sheet and propped herself up on one elbow.

'No, you were right to call me. Yes, I did say that. Yes, it is unusual, I agree. Of course. No, I won't forget this. Thank you.'

She cradled the receiver and turned over onto her back. Her gaze was dreamy on the blue-tinged ceiling, her tone thoughtful.

'Chris just rolled into work on his own. In a cab. Four-thirty on a Sunday morning. Looks like he's been up all night.'

The slim forn beside her stirred fully awake.