Carla braked them to a halt in the middle of the car park.

For a moment, they both sat staring out at the mall front. Then she turned to look at him.

‘What’s happened to you, Chris?’ she whispered.

‘Oh, Christ, Carla—‘

‘I.’ She gestured convulsively. ‘I don’t. Recognise you any more. I don’t know who you are any more. Who the fuck are you, Chris?’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘No, I mean it. You’re angry all the time, furious all the time, and now you carry that gun around with you. When you started at Shorn, you told me about the guns, and you laughed about it. Do you remember that? You made fun of it. You made fun of the whole place, just like you used to at HM. Now you barely laugh at anything. I don’t know how to talk to you any more, I’m scared you’re going to just snap and start yelling at me.’

‘Keep on like this,’ he said grimly, ‘and guess what, I’ll probably snap and start yelling at you. And no doubt it’ll be my fucking fault again.’

She flinched.

‘You want to know who I am, Carla?’ He was leaning across the Landrover towards her, in her face. ‘You really want to know? I’m your fucking meal ticket. Just like I always have been. Need new clothes? Need tickets to Norway? Need a handout for Daddy? Need to move out of the city and live somewhere nicer? Hey, that’s okay. Chris has got a good job, he’ll pay for it all. He doesn’t ask much, just keep the car clean and the odd blow job. It’s a fucking bargain, girl!’

The words seemed to do something coming out. He felt tearing, somewhere indefinable. He felt dizzy, suddenly weak in the numb quiet that swallowed up what he’d said. He propped himself back away from her and sat waiting, not sure what for.

The silence hummed.

‘Get out,’ she said.

She hadn’t raised her voice. She didn’t look at him. She hit the central locking console and his door cracked open.

‘You’d better be sure about—‘

‘I warned you before, Chris. You called me a whore once. You don’t get to do it twice. Get out.’

He looked out at the deserted parking area, the darkness beyond the Landrover’s lights. He smiled thinly.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Why not. Been coming to this for long enough.’

He shouldered the door fully open and jumped down. The night air was warm and comfortable, edged with a slight breeze. It was easy enough to forget where you were. He checked he still had the Nemex in its holster, his wallet in the jacket pocket, still thick with cash.

‘See you then, Carla.’

Her head jerked round suddenly. He met her eyes, saw what was in them and ignored it.

‘I’ll be at the office. Call me if the bills need paying, huh?’

‘Chris—‘

He slammed the door on it.

He strode away without looking back, aiming only to get beyond easy hailing distance. Behind him, he heard the Landrover put in gear and moving. He wondered briefly if she’d come after him at kerb-crawl speed across the car park, and what, in that ridiculous scenario, he would do. Then the high beams washed once over him and fled left, away across the white boxed acreage of the parking area. The engine lifted through the gears as she picked up speed.

He felt a single stab of worry, that she might not be safe getting home on her own. He grimaced and slammed a door on that as well.

Then she was gone. He turned, finally, to look, and was in time to catch the tail lights of the Landrover disappearing amidst the low-rise huddle of housing on the other side of the car park. A few moments later the engine noise faded into the vehicle-free stillness of night in the zones.

He stood for a while, trying to get his bearings, geographical and emotional, but it was all utterly unfamiliar. There was nothing recognisable on the skyline in any direction. The supermarket faced him with its wrecked frontages, and he felt a sudden insane desire to lever loose some of the boarding, use the butt of the Nemex to do it, and slip inside, looking for—

He shivered. The dream marched through his head in neon-lit pulses.

sudden warm rain of blood

falling

He shook his head, hard. Turned his back on the facade. Then he picked an angle across the car park at random and started walking.

Up on the roof, the tube metal reindeer watched him go through eyes empty of anything except the cool evening wind.

Saturday night, Sunday morning. The cordoned zones.

He’d expected trouble, had even, with some of the same twisted joy that had driven his actions at the Brundtland, been looking forward to it. The Nemex was a grab away beneath his jacket. His hands were Shotokan-toughened and itchy with the desire to do damage. Worst-case scenario, his mobile would get him a police escort out, should he really need it.

Rather coldly, he knew he’d have to be literally fighting for his life before he’d make that call.

Anything less, he’d never live it down.

He’d expected trouble, but there was nothing worthy of the name.

He walked for a while through anonymous, poorly-lit estates, emerging once or twice onto main thoroughfares to take his bearings from scarred and vandalised road signs and then plunging back in, heading what he estimated was east. TV light flickered and glowed in windows, game-show noise escaped through the cheap glazing. Occasionally figures moved within. Outside, he saw children perched on walls in the gloom, sharing cigarettes, two-litre plastic bottles and crudely homemade solvent pipes. The first set he ran across spotted the clothes and came jeering towards him. He drew the Nemex and met their eyes, and they backed off, muttering. He kept the gun where it could be seen after that, and the other groups just watched him pass with bleak calculation. Whispered invective slithered in his wake.

Eventually, he came out onto a main road that looked as if it might run due east. Between the buildings on his left he thought he could make out the vaulted march of the M40 inrun converging from the north, which suggested he was somewhere near Ealing. Or Greenford, if he’d miscalculated how far out Carla had dumped him. Or Alperton. Or

Or you’re lost, Chris.

Fuck it, you don’t really know this part of town, so stop pretending you do. Just keep moving. Pretty soon the sun’s got to come up, and then you’ll damn well know if you ‘re heading east or not.

Keep moving. It had to be better than thinking.

He started to see signs of nightlife. Clubs and arcades at intervals along the street, in various stages of turnout. Junk food carry-outs, most of them little more than white-neon-blasted alcoves in the brickwork. The low-intensity stink of cheap meat and stale alcohol, laced once or twice with acid spikes of vomit. Little knots of people in the street, eating and drinking, shouting at each other. Turning to stare at him as he passed.

It couldn’t be helped. He lengthened his stride, kept the Nemex lowered but clearly in view. Kept to the centre of the street.

In theory, he could have tried to call a cab. He had landmarks now, identifiable club frontages and, if he was prepared to look hard enough in the gloom, street name plaques. In practice, it was probably a waste of time. The companies his mobile knew numbers for mostly wouldn’t come more than a few hundred metres the wrong side of the cordons, especially at this time of night. And those few that would tended to follow an esoteric driver’s mythology on exactly which streets were safe to pick up from. Get the wrong configuration in this tarot of zone codes, and you could wait all night. Hearing a location they didn’t like -better yet hearing some idiot raving about the comer of Old Something Smudged street, some nameless club and a pink neon rabbit with tits and a top hat - individual drivers were going to chortle grimly, ignore the controller and shelve the fare. There just wasn’t enough zone custom to push things the other way. You went to the zones, you drove. Or you walked home.