But to her amazement, this lanky stranger had impressed her. She wanted to let him in and hear him play his flute in her room. She wanted to hear him play over some of her basslines. Discordant indie bands had done it, she knew: My Bloody Valentine had used flutes. And while the result had left her as dead cold as the rest of that genre, surely the alliance itself was no more unlikely than this one. She realized that she was intrigued.

But she was not simply going to stand aside. She had a reputation for being intimidating. She was not used to feeling so disarmed, and her defences flared.

‘Listen,’ she said slowly. ‘I don’t know what you think qualifies you to speak about my tracks. Why should I play with you?’

‘Try it once,’ he said, and again that sudden change flooded his features, the same curled smile on the edge of the lips, the same heavy-lidded nonchalance about the eyes.

And Natasha was suddenly furious with this pretentious little art-school wanker, livid where a moment ago she had been captivated, and she leaned forward and up on tiptoes, until her face was as close to his as it would go, and she raised one eyebrow, and she said: ‘I don’t think so.’

She closed the door in his face.

Natasha stalked back up her stairs. The window was open. She stood next to it, close to the wall, looking down at the street without putting herself in view. She could see no sign of the man. She walked slowly to her keyboard. She smiled.

OK, you cocky fucker, she thought. Let’s see how good you are.

She turned the volume down slightly, and pulled another rhythm out of her collection. This time the drums came crashing out of nowhere. The bass came chasing after, filling out the snare and framing the sound with a funky backdrop. She threw in a few minimal shouts and snatches of brass, looped a moment of trumpet, but the treble was subdued; this was an offering to the man outside, and it was all about rhythm.

The beats looped once, twice. Then, sailing up from the street came a thin snatch of music, a trill of flute that mimicked the looping repetition of her own music, but elaborated on itself, changed a little with every cycle. He was standing below her window, his hastily assembled instrument to his lips.

Natasha smiled. He had made good on his arrogance. She would have been disappointed if he had not.

She stripped the beat down and left it to loop. She stood back and listened.

The flute skittered over the drums, teasing the beat, touching just enough to stay anchored, then transporting itself. It suddenly became a series of staccato flutterings. It lilted between drum and bass, now wailing like a siren, now stuttering like Morse code.

Natasha was… not transfixed, perhaps, but impressed.

She closed her eyes. The flute soared and dived; it fleshed out her skeletal tune in a way she could never achieve. The life in the live music was exuberant and neurotic and it sparked off the revivified bass, the very alive dancing with the dead. There was a promise to this tension.

Natasha nodded. She was eager to hear more, to feed that flute into her music. She smiled sardonically. She would admit defeat. So long as he behaved, so long as there were not too many of those knowing looks, she would admit that she wanted to hear more.

Natasha paced silently back down the stairs. She opened the door. He was standing a few feet back, his flute to his lips, staring up at her window. He stopped as he saw her, and lowered his hands. No trace of a smile now. He looked anxious for approval.

She inclined her head and gave him a sideways look. He hovered.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll buy it.’ He finally smiled. ‘It’s Natasha.’ She jerked her thumb at herself.

‘Pete,’ the tall man said.

Natasha stood aside, and Pete passed into her house.

Chapter Six

Again Fabian tried Natasha’s number, and again she was engaged. He swore and slammed his receiver down. He turned on his heel, paced pointlessly. He had spoken to everyone who knew Saul except for Natasha, and she was the one who mattered most.

Fabian was not gossiping. As soon as he had heard about Saul’s father he had got on the phone, almost before he was aware of what he was doing, and begun to spread the news. At some point he had rushed out to buy a paper, before starting again on the phone. But this was not gossip. He felt a powerful sense of duty. This, he believed, was what was needed of him.

He pulled on his jacket, tugged his thin dreadlocks into a ponytail. Enough, he decided. He would go to Natasha, tell her in person. It was a fair journey from Brixton to Ladbroke Grove, but the thought of the cold air in his face and lungs was beguiling. His house felt oppressive. He had spent hours on the phone that morning, the same phrases again and again — Six floors straight down… The filth won’t let me talk to him and the walls had soaked up the news. They were saturated with the old man’s death. Fabian wanted space. He wanted to clean out his head.

He shoved a page of newspaper into his pocket. He could recite the relevant story by heart: News in brief. A man died in Willesden, North London, yesterday, after falling through a sixth-floor window. Police will not say if they are treating the death as suspicious. The man’s son is helping them with their enquiries. The screaming accusation of the last sentence stung him.

He left his room for the filthy hall of the shared house. Someone was shouting upstairs. The dirty, ill fitting carpets irritated him always; now they made him feel violent. As he struggled with his bike, he glanced at the unwashed walls, the broken banisters. The presence of the house weighed down on him. He burst out of the front door with a sigh of relief.

Fabian treated his bike carelessly, letting it fall when he dismounted, chucking it against walls. He was rough with it. He yanked himself onto it now with unthinking brutality, and swung out into the road.

The streets were full. It was a Saturday and people were thronging the streets, coming to and from Brixton market, determined on their outward journey and slow on the way back, laden down with cheap, colourful clothes and big fruit. Trains rumbled, competed with the sounds of Soca, Reggae, Rave, Rap, Jungle, House, and the shouting: all the cut-up market rhythm. Rudeboys in outlandish trousers clustered around corners and music shops, touched fists. Shaven-headed men in tight tops and AIDS ribbons made for Brockwell Park or The Brixtonian cafe. Food wrappers and lost television supplements tugged at ankles. The capricious traffic lights were a bad joke: pedestrians hovered like suicides at the edge of the pavement, launched themselves across at the slightest sign of a gap. The cars made angry noises and sped away, anxious to escape. Impassive, the people watched them pass by.

Fabian twisted his wheels through the bodies. The railway bridge passed above him; some way ahead the clocktower told him it was mid-morning. He rode and walked intermittently past the tube station, wheeled his bike across Brixton Road, and again over Acre Lane. There were no crowds here, and no Reggae. Acre Lane stretched out wide. The buildings that contained it were separate, sparse and low. The sky was always very big over Acre Lane.

Fabian jumped back onto his bike and took off up the slight incline towards Clapham. From there he would twist across into Clapham Manor Street, wind a little through backstreets to join Silverthorne Road, a steep sine-wave of minor industrial estates and peculiarly suburban houses tucked between Battersea and Clapham, a conduit feeding directly into Queenstown Road, across Chelsea Bridge.

For the first time that day Fabian felt his head clear.

Early that morning a suspicious policeman had answered Saul’s phone, had demanded Fabian’s name. Outraged, Fabian had hung up. He had rung up Willesden police station, again refusing to give his name, but demanding to know why policemen were answering his friend’s phone. Only when he acquiesced and told them who he was would they tell him that Saul’s father had died, and that Saul was with them — again that disingenuous phrase — helping with enquiries.