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  Angus realised suddenly that the look had been one of concern.

  – Hey! came a shout from behind them.

  The rest of the household was nearing the end of the garden, grinning feverishly. Belle was at the front, her arms round Katy, giggling and talking, a bindi glittering on her forehead. Tim handed her an enormous menthol joint. Further back towards the patio, Angus noticed, Paolo was brushing dust from Nick’s shoulder. They were talking intently, their heads held closely together, pointing up at the roof of the house.

  – Hiya! said Belle, squeezing through the gate. She bent down and put an arm round Angus’s neck, kissing him, pushing her tongue between his lips.

  – Hi, he said afterwards, swamped equally in panic and desire.

  Belle was flushed, her jaw working excitedly. She grinned and pressed herself against him – lustful – her nipples hard through the thin cloth. It was how she got on a decent pill: just like Angus had predicted.

  – I’m in heaven! she told him ardently. How about you?

  – I… For a few seconds Angus said nothing, reluctant to lie about it. Well. Belle, I didn’t actually take anything.

  Belle’s chewing stopped.

  – What…? she said. Her forehead creased. Her voice was almost mournful. No! Angus, you’re not serious?!

  Bit by bit, Belle slipped away from him, to Katy and Rob and the others. Angus knew it was happening but he might have been stone; there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

  It was a bit like a cartoon, where a scheming-eyed cat in a boiler suit switches the railway points; so the train containing the treasure of the Sierra Madre heads straight on east across the desert, while the train in pursuit gets sucked away onto another track, steaming in parallel with the first perhaps for a minute or two before turning in a great, inevitable arc among the cacti and vanishing back west.

  The future was laid out like that, Angus realised: nailed to sleepers, arranged along broken stone.

  When he looked back up, Belle had disentangled herself from Rob and was swaying down the bank towards the cabin cruiser. She gripped the railings, swinging herself over the side and climbing onto the roof above the cockpit. There she surveyed the bank, her chest swelling impressively as she prepared herself to speak, her belly lean with a ring through the navel, her legs long and tanned beneath the shorts, feet in expensive trainers. The sunlight on her forehead blinded him.

  – Hey! she said. There’s something I want to say. It’s only quick, so listen, yeah…? Check out the house! She pointed at it. Let’s never lose this spirit, yeah? Never, never, never! You know what I mean, I know you do. We must never forget about it! No-one forget, or they’ll have me to deal with…

  A pale impression of the moon was appearing among the trees on the other side of the river, ghostly in the blue of the sky. Belle settled herself on the side of the cabin cruiser, pulling a packet of cigarettes from a pocket and smoking, chewing, swinging her legs. She was dazzling.

  It was painful just looking at her.

  b: the pilot

  It was the last day of summer. Four in the afternoon. In his cupboard of a bedroom, Nick had woken and was slapping his head to rid it of the night before. Between the slaps the house was silent. The windows in the wall in front of him showed a grey featureless sky above the grey featureless Thames. A leaf or two fell almost vertically into the overgrown garden. Another drifted out past the lip of the bank, settling on the water. Nick shivered and pulled a hooded top over the T-shirt he’d slept in. He rifled for cigarettes in a pocket of his combats, hawking and swallowing as he searched through the debris on the floor for a lighter and a hat.

  Nick wore a hat devotedly. He had done for months. First there was the bald spot – soon a monk-like tonsure – then the fact that his head, when shaved, looked remarkably like that of a tortoise, as it did now. These days there was the heat-loss issue too. The house was freezing, always. Even on a day as still as this, draughts found their way around the metal window-frames, skirting the bits of newspaper squeezed into every crack and mustering into breezes. Nick cursed to himself as he peered among ashtrays, underpants, textbooks stained in bongwater, beercans, desiccated toast and tape cases, until finally he found a half-full forgotten box of matches, and a moneybag containing skunk.

  Nick looked at the skunk. He removed a cigarette from behind his ear and lit it, distractedly. With his right hand he picked up a fishing hat and put it on his head. He’d been determined not to smoke today – just for a few hours while he went to see his dad in Clapton.

  He opened the neck of the moneybag and pressed it to his nose, inhaling luxuriously.

  – Ohh… he said.

  Before turning towards the door, Nick picked up a few pills wrapped in clingfilm. He stuffed them, together with the moneybag, beneath the elastic of his left sock.

  The landing and main stairwell of the house faced away from the river: towards the yard, Tim’s Nissan, Pete’s ambulance, the wilderness of the shrubbery and suburban Kingston. Overhead, a plane was dropping towards Heathrow, a blur of noise which melted, gradually, into the purr of a car on the road outside, then the pop of chippings as it turned into the yard.

  Looking through the window, Nick froze. It wasn’t that the car – a navy-blue Astra – was particularly strange, but Nick knew it like a mouse knows the wind from a passing barn owl. Inch by inch, he lowered himself to the floor, goggling at the glass, the view becoming yellow-brown treetops and the greyness of the sky.

  It was only then that he heard Pete’s singing at the other end of the landing. A light Middlesbrough accent, tuneless:

  – I won’t let the sun go down on me…

  Nick’s eyes snapped from the window. A car door slammed in the yard. Water slapped peacefully against the side of the bathtub. He whimpered, looking momentarily back through the window before scurrying insect-like towards the bathroom door.

  – Pete! he hissed. Pete! Pete, get out! Get out! The pigs are here!

  The singing stopped. The doorbell played the Neighbours theme tune in the stairwell.

  – This is a drill, right? said Pete.

  – Pete, it’s them! It’s fucking them!

  Inspector Hooey rocked on his heels, flattening out his suit with the palms of his hands and inspecting the house before him. By and large he liked this part of the city. He liked the mahogany gates and the double glazing. He liked the speed bumps and the rows of neat little cars with months to go on their tax discs. The house before him, though, didn’t really fit into this general picture. His eyes ran over crumbling brickwork, single-glazed windows in peeling metal frames, plant life smothering the walls and most of the roof.

  – Hmmm, he said, disapprovingly.

  Turning back towards the car, he nodded at the driver, who scrambled out onto the chippings, standing erect by his door while the other two constables coaxed the prisoner to his feet.

  – Che cazzo! said Paolo, from beneath his ramshackle Afro. Figlio di puttana!

  – Mr Alkalai, said Hooey patiently. We’ve been through this, haven’t we?

  The prisoner growled, but his earlier bravado had all but evaporated. His swarthy skin was tinged with grey.

  Hooey stroked his moustache, then picked a piece of egg from between his teeth, which he ate. Looking again at the house he saw a head appear quickly in an upstairs window. It was pale, with a fishing hat, rings around its eyes and an expression of absolute horror.

  – Exhibit A, he murmured to himself.

  – Sir? said one of constables, stepping forward.

  – Nothing… said Hooey, then added, Can you keep an eye on the windows, please? If anyone tries to run for it, yell. Okay? Nick hated himself when he was frightened. He hated his hands for shaking, his breath for trembling, his chin for shrinking back into his neck.

  It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had training for this sort of thing. At his dad’s it had been quite a regular event: the policemen trooping into the lounge while his dad leant, smoking, again
st a wall in the hall. One of his earliest memories was watching round his bedroom door while the flat was being ransacked. He’d been wearing Batman pyjamas at the time. He remembered wetting himself, the soaked material clinging to his legs.

  – Do you understand? Hooey repeated.

  – Huh? said Nick, blinking. I mean, yeah…

  The inspector on the doormat was tall, with a moustache, an overgrowing flat-top and a tartan sweater, shirt collars poking from its neck. Behind him, Paolo was in handcuffs, surrounded by constables in uniforms and helmets. His clothes were grubby and his skin was the same colour as the walls.

  – Well then? Are any of your cohabitants here?

  – Er, yeah! said Nick, remembering. Yeah, Pete’s upstairs, in the bath.

  – Pete… said Hooey, looking down a list of names. Cleopatra?

  – No, Nick faltered. No, that’s Belle. It’s… Well, actually Pete doesn’t live here, officially. He lives in the ambulance, in the yard.

  Hooey nodded and inspected the three constables now wading across the living-room: ashtrays, newspapers, wine bottles, unwashed crockery, cushions, endless copies of British Empire magazine. They reminded him of children, hunting for crayfish in rock pools.

  Pete splashed a bit of water on his face and pulled himself reluctantly to his feet, stepping naked onto the filthy pink carpet and looking around him for a towel. He could hear a voice through the bathroom floor: deep, regular, obviously quoting. Nick was answering in syllables, obsequious-sounding. Which was a bit peculiar, now Pete came to think of it. What with his dad and everything, you really would have thought he’d be used to this sort of thing by now.

  The bathroom was pink, with a delta of mould on the wall where the watertank had leaked in the attic. Small piles of clothes and towels lay scattered in the corners, but they were dirty, and damp, so Pete took Belle’s dressing-gown down from the back of the door – her monogram on one of the pockets – and dried himself with that, then pulled it on. Cleopatra Isobel Armitstead, he thought as he set out onto the landing. What kind of name was that, anyway?

  A procession was working its way up from the living-room, Paolo at its head, in handcuffs and denim flares. Then came a pair of constables, Nick, in a fishing hat, his hands stuffed awkwardly in the pockets of his combats, then yet another constable. They passed Pete in silence, without making eye-contact.

  Halfway down, the stairs turned a ninety-degree corner and headed into the living-room. A man in a tartan jumper was leaning against a desk near the front door, leafing through a file.

  – Mr… Parsons? said Inspector Hooey.

  – Hello, said Pete.

  – Hello, said Hooey. My name is Inspector Hooey. I have to inform you that we have a warrant to search these premises, obtained under Section 18 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act.

  – Right, said Pete, nodding. What happened?

  – Mr Alkalai was found in possession of certain controlled substances, this morning, in Ladbroke Grove.

  – Ah, said Pete.

  – In a communal house of this kind, this means that we can search the rooms of those residents who are themselves present. Your friend Mr Carshaw, however, informs me that you are not in fact a resident, but a visitor. Is this correct?

  – Er… Pete picked up a rizla and a packet of tobacco from the arm of the sofa and began to roll a cigarette. Well, I live in the yard, in the ambulance.

  Hooey inhaled slowly.

  – Ye-es, he said. Well, Mr Parsons, we do not have a procedure for dealing with ambulances. And, to be frank, this experience is depressing enough already. So I’m going to save us both some trouble, okay?

  Pete licked the gum and stuck down the rizla.

  – Okay, he said.

  – Is there an LSD factory in there?

  Pete hesitated, then frowned and looked at him sideways.

  – You’re joking, he said. Right?

  – No, said Hooey. Yes or no?

  – No… said Pete, frowning. Should there be?

  Hooey made a short note in his file.

  – No, he said, there should not. However, we have received intelligence that someone in this locality is running an LSD factory, and seeing as how your friend – Mr Alkalai – was carrying quite a selection of proscribed substances… He cleared his throat. It seemed appropriate to check. Having seen the condition of your house, however, I’m surprised you seem capable of running a bath.

  Inspector Hooey smiled mirthlessly and returned to making notes.

  Fay often walked back along the river: it was the concreteness of Kingston, it got into her bones. The university was about two miles away, beyond the town centre with its shopping malls and one-way traffic system, adverts and twenty-four-hour garages. There weren’t even that many people about at this time of day. Nothing to abate the concrete and the endlessly flickering lights.

  The river restored a bit of a sense of balance to things. It flowed between the car parks and the kitsch little houses squeezed along its banks, reflecting the world back off itself – dark and inscrutable, constant where the house in Burnell Road was falling apart.

  Angus had been the first to leave, moving away to some cottage in Wales after only a few weeks. Then Rob had gone too, declaring that he was off to Amsterdam to straighten his head out; except that he’d got busted in France, and was now serving seven months in Dunkirk Prison for smuggling. None of which would have mattered that much if Katy had still been there, holding them all together.

  But Katy had left as well. The last Fay had seen of her, she was hunched in the back of a car in the yard while her mother went patiently round the house, collecting her clothes and her books. She’d been pregnant, for an agonised fortnight, slipping between despair and short, weird highs when she’d scribble out lists of names; then, without even telling Fay, she’d gone off one morning and had an abortion. After that, all her hopes for the house had seemed to collapse. She’d withdrawn into a silence, as if there’d been nothing worth responding to any more.

  Now there were only six of them left.

  Belle was leaning against the fence at the end of the garden when Fay got back. She was looking at the river, smoking, and didn’t seem to notice her till she was pretty much beside her.

  – Oh… she said, when she did. Hello.

  – Hello, said Fay.

  Belle looked incongruous outside. She’d barely moved off the sofa since Angus left and Rob disappeared to Amsterdam. She was smoking mechanically: slim and curvaceous, effortlessly sexy, her blonde hair tied up high on the back of her head.

  Fay had never quite known how to deal with Belle. Katy had had a talent for it – fussing over her, revelling in selecting compliments – but whenever Fay tried anything similar it sounded insincere, or even sardonic. It seemed safer to stick to questions.

  – What are you up to? she asked, stopping and pulling her long grey coat tight around her.

  – Thinking, said Belle. I think I’ve been wasting too much energy… On battles.

  – Battles? Fay repeated.

  Belle sucked on her cigarette, inspecting the ranks of streetlights on the opposite bank.

  – Internal battles… I have limited energy resources. I thought perhaps the river would help me recharge.

  – It always works for me, said Fay.

  – I’ve been standing here for hours, said Belle.

  Fay looked at her: pink cardigan, skintight hipsters. She was shivering noticeably.

  – Are you coming in now, then? she said.

  Belle said nothing, but she threw the rest of the cigarette in the river and followed as Fay squeezed through the jammed-ajar gate at the end of the garden, weaving through the bushes and setting off across the lawn.

  The house was dark, except for the flicker of the television in the French windows. Orange reflected from the slates on the roof. Another set of windows on the left led from the patio into Fay’s bedroom.

  – Hi, said Fay, opening the door into the living-roo
m, depositing her files on the bed.

  Belle left a trail of wet footprints on the clean green carpet.

  – Alright, said Pete.

  He and Nick were sitting at either end of the sofa. Tim was crouching on the floor to their left, rolling a joint a foot long. The room was murky with smoke and darkness, the faces pale in the light from the television. Belle slumped on the middle of the sofa, winding an arm around Pete.

  – You came back then? he said.

  – Yeah, said Belle.

  – Well, that’s something… He fell silent.

  Fay turned on the light beside her bed, took off her coat and hung it on the back of the door. She put some trip-hop quietly on the stereo, then crossed the carpet to a small sink in the corner, and turned on the hot water.

  – Er… Fay? said Pete, through the door.

  – Yeah, said Fay. She dipped a hand in the water and turned on a bit of cold.

  – You couldn’t come in here for a minute, could you?

  Fay crossed back to the living-room and sat on the bottom stair.

  – Has Paolo not turned up yet? she asked, frowning.

  – Er, no… said Pete. That’s what I’ve got to tell you about. The… Look, the house was raided this afternoon, yeah? About… two and a half hours ago. I thought yous ought to know.

  – Oh, said Fay.

  A cloud of skunk and menthol tobacco smoke was issuing from the end of the sofa.

  – Yeah, said Pete. They’d busted Paolo, but it’s no big deal. Honestly. He’s okay.

  – Where is he, then? said Belle. If it’s no big deal.

  – No, look, said Pete. Don’t worry about it. He twisted the stud in his lower lip. He only had bits and pieces on him, nothing major. They’ve probably just got him in for questioning or something…