You said you’ve spent time in hospitals.

Yes, I have.

I talked to Osako in Paris.

I loved Osako, Janus replied. Osako had lovely fingers.

She mentioned cysts.

Yes. That was a problem.

And Miami…

Are we going to talk about only the past, Kepler?

… in Miami your host on the Fairview Royale. She had no hair and I thought it was a style thing, but now I think back, she had no eyebrows too. And what about Greta? Interesting choice, older than your usual tight-arsed Adonis, all that make-up on such frail flesh…

Janus, licking sauce off the edge of his plate.

Sometimes, he said, it’s good to experience something new.

“Janus–” I lay my fork to one side, press my hands into my lap “–is there something you want to tell me?”

“Why, certainly, sweetheart,” he replied. “I’m dying.”

“And how’s that going for you?”

“Well. Really well. You know, I think it’s probably the best thing I’ve done for a while.”

“But never quite followed through on.”

A slight intake of breath. “Not yet.”

“Osako’s cysts, they were more than just an inconvenience.”

“Yes.”

“But you ran away. Mr Petrain had such a lovely arse. You know, if you wanted to jump off a roof I’m sure you could have found someone with terminal… whatever… who’d be up for the plunge.”

“Have you ever tried? Stood on the edge, looked at the fall, known it didn’t have to be that way?”

“I’m not in a hurry to die.”

“Yet.”

“Seems to me you have the vision, not the commitment.”

“Kepler…”

“My name is Samir.”

He twirled the stem of his wine glass back and forth between two fingers and thumb. Greta had done the same thing as we ate duck in Montpellier. It took a moment to remember not to be surprised.

“Done much research into Samir, have you?” he asked.

“Not really.”

“Sloppy, for an estate agent. I always wondered why you did the work. Clearly it wasn’t for the money or the flesh–you could have got both any other way. Was it the curiosity?”

“Something like that.” Hard to look away from the glass, spinning, spinning between Janus’ fingers. I spoke to pull my mind from it: “Easier to be in a body when you know its friends. Discernment is the first step to picking a skin, one we tragically tend to lack. Perhaps… there is a kind of intimacy too. Say I decide to be a brain surgeon. Cutting heads open isn’t what I’m interested in, that’s not the point of ‘brain surgeon’ at all. I want to be someone admired by my peers, loved by my students and for new-found friends to look awed at my expertise. Do I love my mother? Is my smile real or forced? Do I wear purple spotted pants underneath my sensible brown trousers? I look at people in the same way an architect might look at a great house. This is a shack crumbling round the edges… this a palace waiting to be filled… here a tiny cottage of bitter resentments and half-lies; there a terraced house squashed between its friends. Watching their films, feeling their clothes, smelling their soap–there is something beautiful in the choice of soap a stranger makes. There is an intimacy that comes from that kind of knowing, and from our circumstances we can look with a sort of dispassion that need make no allowances for the sins of others, nor has no history that blinds it to the wonders before it. An estate agent looks at people, wonderful and whole, living their lives, and if you look long enough and hard enough, perhaps for a moment you can feel what that must be like. What it must be to be… not just the skin, but the person. The whole thing, right down to the heart.”

The glass was still between Janus’ fingers, his eyes fixed on my face. At last:

“Were you never tempted to try and live a life? Ten years, twenty, a long-term host?”

“I could never follow through.”

“Why not?”

“Because it was hard.”

Silence, save for the ticking of the clock, the falling rain. Then, with a note of caution to his voice, “Kepler…”

“Don’t call me that.”

“It’s your name.”

“It’s a file.”

“It’s you.”

“I’m Samir Chayet.”

“No, you’re not.”

“It’s what my driving licence says.”

“No, you’re not!” His fist hit the table, sending cutlery clattering. I caught my glass before it fell, looked up and saw his single brilliant eye burning at me across the tabletop. “Who is Samir Chayet?” he hissed. “Who is he? Is he funny? Is he dry, droll, witty, a magnificent lover, a ballroom dancer, a baker of dubious pies? What the fuck is Samir Chayet to you? How the fuck dare you dishonour him by taking his name, you useless fucking parasite!”

I held on to my glass by the bottom of its stem and waited for more. Janus exhaled, shuddering with more than merely effort, half-closed his eye, wrapped his fingers round the edge of the table, and then inhaled again, long and slow. “I loathe you,” he breathed, teeth clenching round the words as they shivered out.

“That’s OK. I’m not exactly enamoured of you either.”

A laugh that dissolved into a choke of pain, as quickly as it had grown.

“Let me get you some morphine,” I said. “I can—”

“No.”

“You’re in pain.”

“That’s fine. That’s… good.”

“How can pain possibly be good?”

“Leave the fucking morphine!” he roared, and I flinched away. He breathed out, breathed in, slowing himself down, and, face turned towards nothing, murmured, “What do you know about Samir Chayet?”

“Why?”

“Tell me what you know.”

“What is this?”

“Kepler–Samir–whatever. Tell me.”

“I… not much. I’m a nurse at the university hospital. I was finishing my shift, had car keys in my hand. I needed a car. I’m comfortable. It was an acquisition of opportunity, no more. Marcel—”

“My name is Janus.”

“It’s a ridiculous name.”

“Is it?” he breathed. “I rather like it. I think it has… weight. Time and power.”

“Janus–” my fingers tight across the table edge “–what the hell is going on here?”

He opened his eye, but there was no anger in his broken face, no retribution, merely the cold resignation of an empty stare. “Galileo is coming.” My flesh locked. No breath, no sound, no reply. “I called Osako–she was convenient too. I called her, said my name was Janus, said I was sorry, wished her well, that I had some money stashed she could take if she wanted it; I wouldn’t be needing it any more. She cried and hung up. But I think she may have cried for just long enough.”

“Long enough for what?” He didn’t answer. I was on my feet, not sure how I’d got there. “Long enough for what?”

A sigh, a stretch, a flash of pain. “For Aquarius to trace the call,” he replied. “Long enough, I think, for that.”

“When?”

“I think…” he plucked a number from the air “… three hours ago.”

“Did you…” The words stumbled on the tip of my tongue.

“Mention you? No. But by now it’ll be too late to run; you’ll only draw attention to yourself. I suppose the question therefore is, how well do you really know Samir Chayet?”

“Why? Why did you do this?”

“Kepler–” he spoke like a father, sad at a school report “–you are a slave trader. A murderer. A thief of time. But this isn’t even about you. I’m far too self-important to enact petty revenge on a passing acquaintance such as yourself. What you must understand is, much as I loathe you, more than that–more a thousandfold than that–I find myself disgusting. Truly repugnant. The luxury of having armed killers prepared to do that which for so long I have longed to do to myself but lacked the courage to attempt is, it seems to me, such a rare privilege that I dare not pass it up.”

The sound of rain.

I stood, hands locked on the back of a squat wooden chair, knuckles curling white. Janus swirled the last dregs of wine in the glass. Swallowed. His gaze wandered to look at nothing much, before drifting up to the ceiling, some other place.