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  – So, what about that call just now? said Hooey.

  – It’s just automatic, said Teather. It does that with loads of numbers. A team works here, each with a shortlist of a few thousand criminals – er, suspected criminals, rather – corresponding to one particular area. All of them get recorded. A few of them we actually get the machine to tell us about as the call happens… In here we do London. Drugs mainly, but you know how it is. People will pursue other lines of enterprise. Take that bloke Kofi, for instance. He’s always just been a regular dealer but we reckon he might be moving into shipments before long, out of Morocco and the ’dam. Hidden in soft toys, perversely enough. There’s even some signs he might be shifting old IRA weapons. It’s the decommissioning thing. There’s a good few people trying to get rid of stuff…

  Teather leant back in his chair, picked the tea bag out of his cup and threw it into the waste-paper basket, leaving a trail of tea-drops across the whitewashed walls.

  – Anyway, said Teather. That call just now? Here’s Kofi, and… here’s where he is.

  A photograph appeared on the screen. In its middle a tall mostly-black man was getting out of a beige Ford Escort with the curry houses of Brick Lane in soft focus in the background. To the left of him, a detailed map of the Bethnal Green area showed a small red light moving south down Brady Street, east down Darling Row, stopping at the junction with Cambridge Heath Road.

  – Mobile phones, Teather continued. Aren’t they fucking marvellous? Firing out microwaves the whole time. People are paying to be tagged! Paying for it!

  He was about to go on when a light blinking beside a name on a left-hand screen brought him suddenly alert. He swung the cursor across the screen and reclicked the Mute option. Instantly the sound of ringing appeared in the speakers.

  – It’s Steveyboy, Teather muttered. You know him? Right bastard. Steve Fisk?

  – Steve? said Hooey. Do I know Steve?! I’ve been on this Steve Fisk business since the start of it.

  – No shit? said Teather, starting to drum his nails against the table. By the way, we’re listening to a recording. For some reason it’s had to go through the translator – it’s automatic – so it’s like two, three, four minutes old. I don’t know.

  Finally the ringing stopped and, after a slight pause, a foreign – Italian – voice spoke a little nervously from the speakers.

  – Steve?

  – Yeah. A thicker, South London voice.

  – Alright, it’s Paolo…

  – Ah, Paolo! The voice became suddenly more affable. How you doing?

  – Shit! said Hooey, excitement rising in his stomach. I don’t believe it!

  On the two central screens, a pair of maps had appeared. One showed a flashing yellow light: a landline off Coldharbour Lane in Brixton. The other showed a flashing red light: a mobile beside the river in Kingston.

  – Yeah. No, no, the Italian was saying. Sure Steve. Vaffanculo! I know you’ve got people to satisfy…

  On the furthest screen to the right, the words GO AWAY AND PERFORM SEXUAL INTERCOURSE UPON YOURSELF had appeared in throbbing green capitals, which were halfway through fading back into black when they were replaced by the word BUT.

  – You are failing to understand me, said Steve. His voice had returned to its earlier rasp. I need you to meet the schedule.

  – Porcoddue, Steve! Paolo exclaimed. The words GOD IS A PIG burst onto the screen in the same lurid green. It was tight! The pigs even told us they were looking for an… A factory!… You think I’m going to show them the attic?

  – I don’t fucking believe it! said Hooey. The attic! They fucking had it! Teather, get your coat! We have an appointment in Kingston.

  There was a crack as Steve slammed down his phone, and the ensuing torrent of Italian and English tumbled into emptiness. The words THE VIRGIN MARY IS A PIG – followed shortly by YOUR MOTHER IS A FEMALE PORCINE FELLATRIX – leapt gleefully onto the screen. In their green, pulsing light, Room F sank into silence.

  g: having a dream, i will go up in the sky

  – Right. Okay, listen! said Paolo, almost arriving in the living-room but pausing on the second stair to maintain presence.

  No-one moved. On the sofa, Belle was smoking a joint she’d been smoking for some minutes. Pete was slumped beside her, dozing. Tim was kneeling before a rizla, a bag of skunk, a box of matches and a menthol cigarette. On the television – as ever, the only source of light in the room – Richard Briers was running across a field, escaping from a climactic incident involving a goat.

  Paolo felt suddenly as if he were looking into a nest of some kind, as if the room was a deliberate construction and not just knee-deep in filth after all. Pete, Tim and Belle were hibernating in their chosen element: a spilt ashtray, a broken personal stereo, an Indian drape, an empty Spar whisky bottle, a styrofoam box from McDonald’s. How the hell was he going to get these people to move?!

  He’d run through various possibilities upstairs – packing everything, waiting for Nick to finish in the attic – but most of them were utterly incredible, and obviously there was no way he could tell them what had actually happened.

  – What’s up? said Pete, raising his left eyelid.

  – Er… said Paolo. Look, yeah? I don’t want to worry you or anything, but, well… we’re going to have to get out of here.

  – What? said Pete.

  – What happened to your face, Paolo? said Belle, talking round her thumb, looking up from her pink fluffy cardigan.

  Credits were unfurling on the television. The bruise on Paolo’s cheek had darkened, the rest of his face so white now that a beige colour seemed to be welling from beneath it.

  – Oh… Nothing, said Paolo. It’s not important.

  – It looks quite important, said Belle.

  – For fuck’s sake, said Paolo. Listen to me! There’s no easy way to say this, but… The pigs are coming! Okay? We’ve got to go!

  There was a pause.

  Belle’s thumb was hanging from her mouth. Tim was looking up from his joint, staring across the room at him, his face cadaverous in the black-and-white light of an advert.

  – Huh?! he grunted.

  – You’re joking? said Pete, receiving the end of the joint from Belle. Right?

  – I swear to God, said Paolo. Man. They’re going to be here any minute!

  – Fuck! said Tim in a croak and staggered to his feet, stumbling through the rubbish towards the stairs. Oh fuck!

  – No, no, said Pete. Hang on. Paolo, how exactly do you know this? You’ve been in your bedroom for the past half an hour.

  Tim hesitated, looking round him confusedly.

  Before the bust, Paolo had never really known what it was like to be scared. It just wasn’t something he did. Paolo relaxed, and designated; and if his mother wasn’t around to be obedient then the chances were that someone else was. He was a closed-ranks group-member Roman. It was an inviolable condition. Even on four microdots lost in Elephant and Castle with half an ounce of skunk down his underpants, he’d never been worse than wasted.

  Now he was completely terrified.

  – What’s going on? said Fay, through the door to her room.

  There was a squeak of springs, and the sound of a book being dropped on the bedside table.

  – You’re wasted, right? said Pete. Paolo? You’re tripping or something?

  – I’m not fucking tripping! said Paolo. I’m totally fucking straight! Look! He glanced right as Fay appeared in the doorway to her bedroom, then flicked on the living-room light. Look at me! I swear to God, we have not got time for this! I was talking to Dave on the phone. He’s supposed to be coming round to get some pills and an ounce off me, but the phone was still on when we finished talking – Nick was passing me a joint – and I heard a police radio down it, in the background! Someone reading out my name and our address! Nick heard it too! Just fucking ask him! It said some other stuff about a traffic accident… They took my number down on Wednesday! I swear to God, you�
�ve got to believe me!

  6 Burnell Road was so much the nicest place Nick had ever lived, he was quite unable to explain why he found it so unpleasant. Even the leaking ceilings and concrete stairwells at his dad’s in Clapton had something homely about them: football in the car park, car stereos in the lounge, people he knew in the next-door flats. A sense of life, if nothing else. Creeping past the kitchen window, into the yard, the house beside him seemed somehow menacing and lifeless at the same time – like the statue of a crouching predator, its flanks all streaked with birdshit.

  Nick stashed the case and the cool-box out of the rain beneath the ambulance’s back bumper and pressed at the rubber-coated button that stuck from the right-hand door. He swung himself inside immediately, throwing Pete’s futon, clothes and scattered bedding out of the way and scrabbling at the catch that undid the spare-wheel compartment. It was a procedure that he’d run through two or three times before when no-one was about. The compartment’s lid fell back against a heap of books. Nick reached down into the hole and, pressing his left hand against the floor, hoisted the wheel up from its socket. Clinging to the tyre, he climbed back down into the yard.

  The shed was in a corner beneath a copper beech, sagging like a wet cardboard box. Inside were three non-functional lawnmowers, tangled in a heap. Cunningly tangled, in fact. With the wheel rolled into place behind them, you would never have known it was there.

  Escape! That was the thing! Getting the hell out of there! Nick realised suddenly that he was far more excited than he was frightened by the prospect. A clean break from this endless downwards slithering. He’d never been anywhere west of Swindon before. It had to be better than your average night in.

  Trickles that smelt of wet wool were streaming from Nick’s hat. As he ran back to the ambulance, he pulled it off his head and hurled it through the open doors, into the cab, where it hit the inside of the windscreen with a splat. He installed the cool-box carefully in the wheel’s cavity – lying it on its side – and stood the case upright in the remaining space at the end. Then he closed the lid and started to rearrange the bedclothes.

  There was a torrent of water spilling from the gutter about halfway round the side of the house – two feet of it shimmering in the light from the kitchen window. Nick barely faltered as he ran down the path. He flattened his skinny body against the wall and swung himself round the frame of the garden door, onto the bottom of the poky back stairs that led towards his room.

  Under the unshaded light the living-room no longer looked much like a nest. It looked, in fact, very much like what it was: a disgusting tangle of magazines, clingfilm, records, collapsed furniture and mouldering food. On the sofa, Belle and Pete were squinting, their eyes glassy and bloodshot. Fay was standing bemusedly in the doorway to her room, her face shining its moonlike white, in a blue fleece and grey trousers low on her hips.

  From behind the sofa Tim had just produced a large lockable moneybox, and was arranging piles of twenty-pound notes inside it, and a large number of bags full of pills, weed and cocaine.

  – Jesus… said Fay, staring.

  – Tim? said Pete, leaning forward to look at it, coiling his dreadlocks into a shape like a pineapple on top of his head.

  – Okay, said Fay, after a pause. That does look pretty dodgy.

  – It’s alright. Tim headed into the kitchen to fetch some acid from the fridge. The police need a separate warrant to get into a box with a lock on it.

  – You sure? said Fay.

  – Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, said Paolo, but I’ve got a fucking court case coming up. If the pigs show up, they will tear this place apart! Tim’ll go straight down and, after Wednesday, so’ll me and Nick. The rest of you’ll get done for possession at the very least. Probably assisting dealing or something too. I mean, think about it! End of house! Prison! Parents…!

  The banisters were rattling in the stairwell. Belle was perched on the edge of the sofa, her eyes so wide now you could see the whites right round her irises.

  – But… she said. I mean, what on earth would they say?!

  – Hey, said Nick, appearing on the stairs with a heap of blankets and a sports bag slung across his back. You lot coming, or what?

  – Shit! said Belle. Shit!

  She jumped up and sprang – surprisingly lithely – towards the stairs. Fay turned, and vanished back into her room. A moment later there was the sound of the sink filling, then the splashing of hands and the thud of the soap as it dropped back into its dish.

  – Pete, said Paolo. We can’t risk it.

  Pete sighed. He pulled himself to his feet.

  – I don’t know, he said. I’m wrecked, but… I mean, you’re not about to make something like that up, are you?

  – We’re going to have to go in the ambulance. We’ll never fit in Tim’s car. Like, if we can just get out of the road…?

  Nick pulled the front door open quietly, slinking outside. Pete took his wallet from the arm of the sofa and pushed it into a pocket of his jeans, blinking, his forehead lined horizontally.

  – Like, he said. But there isn’t any more to this than what you’ve just been saying, is there? I mean, I’m not trying to accuse you of anything, but it does all sound a bit weird.

  – Pete, said Paolo. I’ve had about two minutes longer to process it than you have. We’ve just got to get out of here, okay?

  With a roar the ambulance’s three-litre engine burst into an approximation of life. It choked and coughed to itself, stationary beneath the drizzle-haloed streetlights, exhaust drifting off down Burnell Road.

  Paolo and Nick were slumped breathlessly against the back bumper. In the cab, Bob Dylan was singing Talking World War Three Blues. Fay was sifting through the tape bag, nudging the accelerator to keep the engine going.

  – Oh fuck, muttered Nick, dragging himself to his feet and setting off back down the road. Wallet!

  A hundred yards away, Tim, Pete and Belle had just emerged from the gateway. Tim was reeling, his arms wrapped around his moneybox. Pete had a hand on his shoulder. Belle was bowed beneath an enormous bag. Paolo watched her as the three of them got closer: the sway of her hips, the swell of her breasts against her cardigan.

  He was starting to feel back in control of himself, confident even. All the seeds that he needed were there. Now he just had to hang back a bit and let the others piece it all together.

  The chippings ground loudly as Nick hurried across the yard, covering his chest pocket with his hands to keep it from the mizzle. Bounding into shelter on the doorstep, he removed a folded sheet of paper, checking behind him for anyone watching before slipping it securely into the metal frame that was screwed to the front of the door.

  As he skirted the puddles on the way back through the gateway, Nick became aware of distant police sirens. They were somewhere south, coming up through Kingston. Dozens of them, it sounded like, fused into a single unearthly wail, building by the second.

  He was sprinting by the time he arrived back on Burnell Road. His hat sparkled with water droplets. On either side of him, Toyotas were parked in shadows and prefabricated balconies stuck from detached pebble-dashed gables. The sirens were really getting loud. Ahead, the ambulance was rumbling quietly to itself, its brake lights staining the wet tarmac. The engine was idling more evenly now, its underused cylinders starting to find a rhythm.

  – Woh! said Fay, her head half out of the passenger window.

  – What? said Pete.

  – Where the hell are we going? said Belle.

  – I just saw Sonia! said Fay. Back there, between the streetlights!

  – Wh…? said Nick.

  – Don’t stop! said Paolo. Pete! Just get in the next road!

  Pete swung the steering-wheel anticlockwise and the ambulance lumbered out onto Richmond Road, accelerating slowly, the wipers whining on the windscreen. He flipped down the indicator.

  – Christ, Pete! said Fay. Come on, we can’t…

  She hesitated. In the
wing mirror, a platoon of police cars was appearing up Richmond Road, swamped in traffic, flashing and wailing. A grey Fiat Punto, several squad cars and a van were indicating as Pete spun the wheel and turned down Lauderdale Lane.

  He exhaled slowly, parking the ambulance in an unlit corner, pulling a cigarette from his pocket while continuing to coax the accelerator.

  – They were all after us?! said Fay.

  Blue light was glancing from the houses beside them.

  – Well, said Pete, through a mouthful of smoke. That does kind of change things… So what the hell do we do now?

  – Man, said Paolo. I only know what I told you. He paused a moment. But, we can’t exactly go to Dave’s, can we? I mean, it’s only a little flat and the pigs’ll have his number now anyway. Under the circumstances, I don’t think there’s anyone else in Kingston who’d put all six of us up…

  – Which means? said Pete.

  – Angus’s? said Fay.

  Her expression had become more serious. Her eyes were on the light in the trees and on the houses.

  – No! said Belle from the back. No, we can’t go and see Angus. I mean… Fuck! We can’t!

  – He’s the only person we all know who isn’t locked up.

  – Well, said Paolo. I can’t think what else we’re going to do. Seeing as how half a dozen police cars are parked around our house.

  – Fuck’s sake… said Pete. You weren’t talking about sarin or anything, were you, Paolo?

  – You know the way, Pete? said Nick.

  Pete rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers.

  – Look, he said, Angus lives miles away. I’m stoned, and there’s a very good chance that he won’t want to see us.