there some way you could make it happen?”
There was another pause, then Frank replied:
“Not really, no.”
“I want it to go up,” I said, “even if it’s harder—hard, I mean. Disappear upwards. Become sky.”
They both thought about this for a while. Then Frank said:
“We could make the liquid travel upwards. In a tube, for example. We could lead a tube up from the holding tank towards the ceiling. We could even feed it through the roof and have it all sprayed upwards in a fine mist. But that’s…”
“I like that,” I said. “Try it. Try some other things along those lines too. See what you can come up with.”
Driving back to Brixton that day, I decided to detour past the original tyre shop. I was alone, driving my Fiesta. As I approached the railway bridge just before the shop, I noticed that the traffic in front of me was being held up. Some cars were turning round and heading back in the direction I’d just come from. I understood why when I was twenty or so feet from the traffic lights beside the bridge: there was a police cordon beyond them, demarcated by a line of yellow-and-black tape. It was the same type of tape they’d used to demarcate the siege zone two months before the accident—only that had been a hundred or so yards away, beyond the tyre shop. This new zone started near the phone box I’d called Marc Daubenay from, and ran down Coldharbour Lane, which was empty save for policemen standing and walking around.
I drove up to the tape and, ignoring a traffic officer’s signal to turn round, pulled my Fiesta to one side, stepped out and walked up to him.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“Incident,” he answered. “If you’d like to turn round and go back to the next intersection…”
“What type of incident?” I asked.
“Shooting,” he said. “Please go back to your car and…”
“Who was shot?” I asked.
“A man,” he said. “We don’t hand information out to onlookers. If you’d please return to your car and proceed back up to the next intersection…”
The small radio on his shoulder crackled, and a voice said something I couldn’t pick up. I peered beyond him. There were two police motorbikes standing in the middle of the street, plus several cars: three normal white police cars, a white police van, one of those special red cars and an unmarked metallic blue car with a magnetized light mounted on its roof. Two men in white boiler suits were walking down the middle of the road.
“You have to go back,” the traffic policeman told me. “You can’t leave your car there. You’ll have to detour via Camberwell or the centre of Brixton.”
“Detour,” I said. “Yes, of course.”
I snatched one more look across his shoulder, then got back into my car and drove off. When I walked into my flat, I heard Naz’s voice on my answering machine, leaving a message. I picked my phone up.
“It’s me,” I said. “The real me. I’ve just walked in.”
“I was just leaving you a message about Frank and Annie’s idea. They’ve devised this idea for the liquid. You requested…”
“Listen,” I said. “I’d like to find out about something.”
“Oh yes?” Naz said.
“There’s been some kind of incident on Coldharbour Lane,” I told him. “A shooting. I should like to know what happened.”
“I’ll see what I can learn,” Naz said.
He called back an hour later. Someone had indeed been shot. Details were vague, but it seemed to be drugs-related. It had happened outside Movement Cars. A black man in his thirties. He’d been on a bicycle, and two more black men had pulled up in a car and shot him. He’d died on the spot. Did I want to know more?
“Do you know more?” I asked Naz.
“Not yet,” he said. “But I can keep up to date on information as it comes out. Would you like that?”
I pictured the black man dying beside his bicycle outside the phone box I’d called Daubenay from the day the Settlement came through. I pictured the two other black men shooting him from their car. Had they stayed inside their car? I didn’t know. I remembered a man wheeling a coke machine into the cab office as the box’s display counted down the seconds. Movement Cars. Airports, Stations, Light, Removals.
“Hello?” Naz’s voice broke in.
“Yes,” I told him. “Keep me up to date. And Naz?”
“Yes?”
“I’d like you to procure the area once the police are done with it.”
“Procure it?” he repeated.
“Hire it. Obtain permission to