“Who are you?” he stammered. “What the fuck are you?”

“I am a ghost. I live through other people’s skins, wear the flesh of strangers. Quickly, painlessly, and without memory of the event. I’m not going to ask for a decision now. I’ll keep my distance and let you think it over. I’m in town for a few weeks running some errands. What I want–what I need–is a semipermanent body I can touch base with when the day is done, which won’t get up and walk away when I’m not in residence. Do you understand?”

“Fuck no!” he said, but he wasn’t shouting, wasn’t screaming, wasn’t running, which was in itself good news.

“The deal is simple. I’ll clean you up: new clothes, haircut, money, identification, whatever. I’ll put down six months’ rent on an apartment, somewhere nice, stock up the fridge, and put five thousand dollars into an account in whatever name you choose. If you have culinary preferences or sexual concerns, we can negotiate. In exchange, I get your body for three weeks.”

He shook his head, but it wasn’t anger or rejection. “You’re fucking insane,” he breathed.

“I am asking politely,” I replied. “It will be far more convenient if we enter into this arrangement willingly. If you doubt my word then it is my intention to leave this body tomorrow lunchtime. This host, unlike you, I acquired for the purpose of the bus ride to LA. He will not remember how he got here, he will not remember how he came to be wearing these clothes or where the insole that he sorely needed for his left shoe came from; the last three days will be a blank to him, and absolutely he will not remember how one thousand dollars in used notes came to be in the bottom of his suitcase. He may panic, he may run, he may do all sorts of things that alas I cannot influence or control, or he may take this for the gift it is. When he wakes, he too will be on that knife-edge that can change a life, and whether he dances or whether he slides will be his call. You just want to talk; that’s fine. You want to dance? Be at the junction of Lexington and Cahuenga tomorrow. It’s a good deal–consider it.”

So saying, I walked away.

Chapter 38

I hate LA.

Endless straight lines from nowhere particular to nothing much especially.

Even the places that should be green–parks and “recreation areas”–are no more than a slab of fenced-off concrete where the kids sit and drink while waiting for something more interesting to pass them by.

But say what you will for Los Angeles, you can always find someone willing to do something if it’ll cut them a break.

At 12.03 p.m. I left my host for the body of a passing stranger, walked far enough along Lexington for my former host not to suspect, then crossed over the street to where Will was waiting, squinting against the noonday sun.

“Hi,” I said, and to his credit he didn’t jump. “Make your mind up?”

Two weeks later we sat on the concrete stands of the stadium, he eating popcorn, me in the over-tanned, dry-skinned body of a handy stranger, when Will put his hand on my arm and said, “I can see you now.”

“See what?”

“You,” he replied. “Doesn’t matter who you’re wearing, where you’ve come from; I wait by the car and when you come to find me, I know it’s you.”

“How?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. Something in the way you walk. Something in the way you look. Something old. I can recognise you, whoever you are. I know who you are now.”

I tried to answer and found I had nothing. My eyes were hot, and I turned my face away and hoped he didn’t see me cry.

Chapter 39

The Kepler file made no mention of estate agents.

Its list of my bodies was far from comprehensive. Details were pieced together based on the testimony of witnesses, medical reports, but by definition the bodies I had worn had only gaps in their memories to offer, not hard information.

Nowhere did it tell of my previous employment.

If it had, perhaps Nathan Coyle would have tried that much harder when he came to pull the trigger.

A good estate agent will spend months researching a target.

For long-term habitation, a clean skin is advisable: those with no social connections or economic expectations, whose sudden alteration will not be noticed. The ideal candidate is, naturally enough, the comatose patient whose family have given up hope. With no one else at home, it’s as clean as it comes to pick the body up for whatever purposes you so desire. The downside of acquiring a body whose original inhabitant is in a vegetative state is you cannot always guarantee the extent of the biological trauma the body itself has suffered. Some muscle atrophy is inevitable; I find that bladder control and various secretions such as tears, saliva and snot can also take a hit, though these can be nursed back to stability with patience, a quality many of my kind lack.

In rare cases ghosts have been known to jump into a vegetative patient only to discover that as well as higher brain activity, muscle control and coordination are entirely out of the window, and so they remain, trapped, awake, paralysed, screaming without a voice, shrieking with no sound, until someone, God almighty be praised, some nurse or passing janitor, accidentally brushes their naked skin, and they can move out again. I once spent two days in such a state, until my body was given a sponge bath, and when I escaped into the nurse I fell on to the floor, weeping with relief to have a body back.

Whatever the risks, a long-term habitation of a clean skin is almost invariably preferable to one with an established history. An estate agent can help: they can teach you the names of brothers, fathers, mothers, daughters, colleagues, friends; they can show you where your skin keeps the car keys, help you learn the signature, fake the accent, tell the tales, to ensure that the leap from skin to skin happens with minimum fuss to the moving ghost. Hopping into any well-established skin is hard; ghosting into Marilyn Monroe was utterly insane.

“She’s taking drugs,” I said as Aurangzeb sat in my flat and drank my wine. The great glass window of the living room looked out and down from the LA hills on to a city like a circuit board, red and yellow twinkling in the smog beneath us.

“So?” she asked. “Who isn’t in this town?”

“She’s mixing drugs and drink.”

“Come on.” Aurangzeb rolled her eyes. “Having me in residence will be a lucky break for the girl! Couple of clean days, you know?”

“Have you had much experience of the physiological effect of dependency?”

“A day–two at most–I think the body will make it a coupla days without going to shit, you know? Gimme the stuff I can use. Who’s she sleeping with, what’s her agent’s name, who’s the guy she owes money to, that sorta stuff. Is she…” She shuffled forward eagerly. “Is she sleeping with Kennedy?”

“Even if she is,” I replied, “Monroe’s response is coyness, and I suggest you try that yourself. The golden phrase is ‘I don’t really want to talk about that now.’ ”

“Whatever–I can do that.”

“She’s no dope,” I added quickly. “Whatever you do, don’t play her as a dope. She becomes vapid as a defence mechanism, is blunt when she’s sure of her power. You can’t be sure of anything with this level of research, so for God’s sake play it empty. But not dumb.”

“I don’t know what you’re so worried about,” said Aurangzeb, stretching her stockinged legs across my tabletop. “I thought you’d be up for this.”