'A mouse is a little thing,' he said at last. He fitted his pen back in its cap and held it up between thumb and forefinger, as if it were a dead field mouse he was pinching by the tail. 'You know that, Peggy, in real life.'

Mrs Kram swivelled through 180 degrees and back again.

'Clive-ling,' she said soothingly, even flirtatiously. 'Dear Clive, you know yourself the great benefit of conducting business in one's home is that one's clever friends, like Bruder Mouse, feel free to contribute to our meetings.'

'Peggy, you conduct business from home because you are agoraphobic.'

My mentor said nothing, although her colour rose.

'Peggy ...'

'I'd rather have Bruder Mouse than a man,' she said, and shook her hair.

'Oh Peggy, please, don't be embarra.s.sing!'

'You're the last one to talk,' she said. 'I wouldn't if I were you. I wouldn't even begin begin to talk.' to talk.'

'Just the same: this is not a mouse, Peg.' Now he turned and took her hand. 'We know that, don't we? A real mouse is not like this little gjent.'

'Let him outline the concept before you race to judgement.'

'Peggy.' Clive Baarder opened his pen again. 'What is this meeting for?'

'If you listen, you'll find out.'

'I only say this because I have another meeting starting in the Tentdorp in thirty minutes and I can see how tired you are.'

'I'm always tired, Clive. You know I never sleep. And don't think your cynicism is attractive.'

Clive Baarder smiled implacably.

'You think you can reduce everything to DNA, but you can't. I tell you, this is what the Great Historical Past was like. It doesn't really behove you to doubt me. History is my business. business. It was my business when you were an out-of-work Verteiler buying drugs from sc.u.m in Kakdorp. Who else but me preserves the Great Historical Past? No one would know what happened It was my business when you were an out-of-work Verteiler buying drugs from sc.u.m in Kakdorp. Who else but me preserves the Great Historical Past? No one would know what happened yesterday yesterday if it wasn't for the Ghostdorps.' if it wasn't for the Ghostdorps.'

'Peg, my dear, you are exceptionally tired.'

'And don't patronize me, Clive. I am not tired, and you have always had a rather smug att.i.tude towards the Ghostdorps which I find offensive.'

'My att.i.tude towards the Ghostdorps is totally to do with profit ...'

'A Ghostdorp is a safer environment for women and children.'

'Peggy, please, not today. Let's fight when it's just us.'

'When the Saints walked Voorstand, that is how it was, just like it is in the Ghostdorps. We were decent people then. The Sirkus was not just an entertainment. Bruder Mouse was not a clown. We knew him when we saw him. We did not argue about which was wild flesh and which was Bruder's flesh. We did not have all these codicils and revisions to the old laws. We ate beans and rice and raagbol pudding. We did not rape and murder. We did not thieve. We were better then.'

'You know that I don't disagree.'

'Bruder Mouse, the Saints, they walked amongst us.'

'Oh Peggy ...'

'f.u.c.k you,' screamed Peggy Kram. 'Don't argue with me. Here he is. Solid as a miller's wheel. He is looking at you and politely waiting to outline an idea that will have you planting bulbs and making toasts.'

'This is not a mouse.' Clive Baarder was shouting now, not at me, at Peggy Kram. He was standing up, gripping the long table like he wished to tip it over. 'A mouse is four inches long.'

'One mo nothing,' Mrs Kram shouted back, 'next mo there he was, in all his furry finery.' She sat down. 'Look out there,' she said, nodding her head towards the grey and humid sky. 'You are looking out on a corrupt and decaying city and you have lost the ability to believe in a future.'

'This is not Bruder Mouse, Peg,' Clive Baarder said between his teeth. 'And you d.a.m.n well know it isn't. You don't want to admit that it's a man, but it is some kind of man, a dwarf.'

Neither of them was looking at me now.

'So what if you're right,' she said. 'What does that do for you?'

'For me?' He shrugged.

'It makes you right, that's all,' she said. 'You see the st.i.tching on his suit. Hooray. I see it too. Is that the point? We see the gold paint on the Saint's crown. So what? The point is not the paint. The point is, we've lost our values. We're eating Bruder's flesh, we're putting animals in Sirkuses. That Efican sitting in my garden, what's his name, Millefleur riding on horses, frightening lions. That would never have been permitted thirty years ago. He would have gone to jail for even suggesting it.'

'Last week he was hearth folk. You said you liked him.'

'I do like him. That's why he's sitting in my garden. I've been discussing his future with the Bruder and it will be my great pleasure to employ him in something decent for a change.'

'All right, Meneer Mouse,' Clive Baarder said sarcastically. 'Please tell me what the pair of you have been cooking up.'

'It all began,' I said, 'when Mrs Kram observed that the Mayor had sold many of the roads and parks to foreign corporations.'

'Ent.i.ties,' he said. 'We call them ent.i.ties in Voorstand.' He turned to Mrs Kram. 'Are you paying attention to this, Peg? Only an Ootlander could call an "ent.i.ty" a "corporation".'

'His idea,' said Peggy Kram, 'is that we buy them back.'

'Oh Peggy, what is this?'

'Shut up, Clive. I know exactly what I'm doing.'

'Peggy, not even you can buy buy Saarlim, if that's what you have in mind.' Saarlim, if that's what you have in mind.'

'Yes I can. G.o.d d.a.m.n, I am sick of being afraid,' she said. 'I am sick that something bad will happen after dark. I'm tired of being afraid of sicko men with knives and poisons.'

'Peggy, you never go out.'

'But I want to.'

'You cannot run a city of ten million like a Ghostdorp. We cannot even run the Ghostdorps that we have. We cannot buy Saarlim.'

'Oh I can. I can buy the roads and parks back from the foreigners. The city's creditors will be happy. Everyone will be happy. It's a very patriotic thing to do.'

'Is this the Wishes of The People? Wishes of The People? Is this government by Is this government by Each Family Before G.o.d?' Each Family Before G.o.d?'

'I'm going to give the citizens of Saarlim exactly what they need. Clean streets. Well-dressed people.'

'Stop it, Peg. You're frightening me. You can't ask the bhurgers to be like actors in your Ghostdorp. No one will let you. I won't let you.'

'I'll let all the decent decent folk go about their business. It's quite legal, Clive. We talked to Frear Munroe.' folk go about their business. It's quite legal, Clive. We talked to Frear Munroe.'

'Oh Christ,' said Clive Baarder. 'Peggy, you are not well. You really must deal with your own past.'

'When you say past ...'

'I mean past.'

'No, no, you're talking code. You mean I want to do this because I was raped? Is that what you're saying?'

'No.'

'No? Good. Because I can run a clean Ghostdorp and I can run this city. I can have the parks safe all night long. I can have the streets tidy and neat. The gra.s.s in the park will be cut. It is so very simple. People will come from all over the world once again. We will be a great nation once again.'

'This is not your idea.'

'This bit is mine,' she said.

'And how would you make the streets safe exactly?'

'I wouldn't let unsavoury types walk on them.'

Clive Baarder nodded his head slowly. Then, for the first time since the meeting began, he turned and looked at me.

'Do you hate Voorstand?' he asked me.

'He loves Voorstand. Leave him alone.'

'He is an Ootlander,' he said to Peggy Kram. 'He uses Ootland words. Now he's trying to deprive us of our freedom.'

In answer to this charge, Bruder Mouse said not a word. He slipped out of his chrome and leather chair and walked in that rolling sailor's walk towards the longest wall of windows. Despite the comic nature of this walk, despite the broken tooth and the spangled blue waistcoat with the b.u.t.ton missing, anyone could see this was a powerful figure. He stood and faced Clive Baarder. Behind his back was all of Saarlim, all its territories and munic.i.p.alities, roads, Steegs, platzes, freeways, overpa.s.ses, intersections, public bridges, all glowing pink and dusty in the late summer light.

Such was the intensity of this moment for each of the three people in the trothaus boardroom that, when Wendell Deveau's pistol fired twenty feet away, they barely noticed it. A sort of phhht, that's all.

54.

Jacqui recognized that sound. She had heard it at the DoS in that long thin bas.e.m.e.nt room on the Boulevard des Indiennes the sound of a silenced Glock, like a fart.

'Tristan!' She ran across the glossy blue tiles, through the gla.s.s door, into the trothaus foyer. There, in that gloomy chapel-like s.p.a.ce with its Neu Zwolfe triptych and big gilt-framed mirrors, she heard a peculiar drumming noise which she later knew was her old lover's heels doing their death dance on the tiles.

They were lying together, the two men: Wendell on top, Wally Paccione underneath. The old man had his piano-wire garrotte around the agent's throat.

As Jacqui knelt, Wendell's great fleshy legs twitched. One foot had lost its shoe. The sock still had a gold stick-on label on its sole. His arm flopped out sideways. She jumped back, her hand to her mouth, as his Glock clattered to the floor.

'Help him,' Bill said.

But there was no one to help. Wendell had finally managed to shoot Wally Paccione through the rib cage the bullet had pa.s.sed upwards and sideways into his heart. Wally was dead. He was tied on to Wendell's throat with a piece of grisly piano wire.

In their struggle, a chair had broken. A 200-year-old plaster statue of the Dog-headed Saint lay on the floor, his plaster crown in fragments on the floor.

I sat on the floor amongst the broken plaster. I looked at Wally's dead, dead face, the hollow cheeks, the dried lips, the wide belligerent eyes, the arms that held the gory garrotte, all the tendons standing out like lines of cable underneath his skin.

I could see the line of small round white scars along his arms. Those arms and hands had bathed me, swaddled me, taught birds to dance, gripped his knees while he was the Human Ball, perhaps not in life, but always, forever, in my mind.

I whispered in the big old wattle of his ear. I was so close to him, the little white hairs, the freckles. I was full of my own poison. I told him that I had been wrong, that it was not his fault that we were robbed. I told him that I loved him. I could feel Peggy Kram pulling at my bulky suit. I felt so ill. My mask was full of my own foul air. I told him he had more love in his heart than any of us.

'Don't worry,' Peggy said, trying to help me up. 'I own five Sirkuses. I can promise you, there'll be no trouble.'

'Peggy ...' said Clive Baarder. 'Please watch what you say.'

'G.o.d d.a.m.n,' shrieked Peggy Kram, 'this is family. I said we'd fix it, Clive. We'll fix it. You get the d.a.m.n Mayor on the phone.'

'He's in court.'

'Get him out of d.a.m.n court.'

'They're Ootlanders.'

I turned from Peggy Kram and caught sight of all our images in the great mirror. What a filthy frieze it was that sweet old man and Bruder Mouse a perverse Pieta. How I loathed the Bruder's grinning face, those floppy ears. My stomach clenched and I knew I was going to be sick.

'Bill, help me,' but no one heard me.

'This is murder, Peg,' Clive Baarder said.

Now I was retching inside my suit. The contents of my stomach rose up inside the mask, were sucked down my nose.

Suffocating, I tried to pull the Binder's head off, but Peggy Kram got her little hands around my wrists.

'No,' she cried, 'no, please, I beg you.'

It was Jacqui who saved me. She was smaller, finer, lighter than Peggy Kram, but she yanked the produkter by her mane of hair and pulled her free. Then she placed her hands on either side of my Bruder head and dug her nails into the slit she had so diligently sewn up. And then she ripped, ripped my Mouse-head apart like it was orange peel. She tore the head off like a prawn.

In the mirror we all stood and stared at my true face. I turned, gagging, aching for breath.

Spare me, please, the memory of Peggy Kram's face when she saw my true nature.

55.