I have eczema beneath my elbow, red lumps up my arm.

I am old and stooped

fresh and beautiful

my skin is the colour of autumn sunset

pale as snow

dark as oil

so warm I feel every capillary tingle in my fresh wide lips

so cold that my toes are no more than slabs of defrosted meat blocking the ends of my shoes.

I move between the galleries, stand beneath the stones of Egyptian temples, before the gaze of medieval saints, looking for the one who looks for me.

Where are you, Galileo?

Won’t be far.

Won’t have run, not this time.

Do you like what you see?

We have come here for this, you and I.

Come to make an end of it.

Do you like what you see?

And then I am…

armed security, because shots were fired in the Chinese tea garden, and a man is dead in his chair, a wealthy man, a sponsor of a great many cultural events, and there are bullet holes in the wall, and bullet holes in the glass ceiling, whose panels have cracked to let in the angry sky, and a woman lies bleeding on the floor, a handbag full of money and no recollection of how she came to be in this place, and so armed security have sealed off the wing and the police are sealing off the gallery, but that’s fine, Galileo, that’s absolutely fine.

Because where there are policemen, there are weapons, there is armour, there is opportunity.

I slip into a man with a great flat nose, black hair cut close to my head. I am NYPD, New York’s finest, shotgun held in both hands, body armour blue on chest, big black boots and knee pads, and I move with the team I’ve been assigned to because that is what I would do, and nod my answer to any questions, and do not speak, not knowing what it is I would say.

The NYPD seal off the Chinese tea room, set up cordons at the door, and where there were only half a dozen of us before, now there are twenty, thirty, trucks pulling up outside, and news crews too. A few hours and we’ll have made headlines, GUNS FIRED AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, and just you wait because there’s more to come; there’ll be bullets flying.

Will you close the museum?

No, we will not close the museum.

You must close the museum, sir.

Do you know how long it will take, how much it will cost?

A man is dead, sir.

And that’s a tragedy, but these things happen, and hell, you’ve already got the gun that did it, can you stop frightening our visitors?

I look around at the dozens of policemen and armed guards, and one of them is Galileo. We’ll have both gone for a weapon, preferably carried by someone in full body armour, now look, just look, seek out the anomaly, the man who staggers, the man who is slow, the man who does not respond to his name, the man who falls behind. Look for him who does not belong, whose shoulders are not drawn back in pride, for him whose finger nervously taps the trigger guard of his weapon, for the one who too closely scrutinises his neighbours.

Who among you speaks French when he should not speak French?

Which of you loves the Mets but has “Yankees” on his underpants?

(Mr Whatever-your-name-is.)

Who cannot remember the number of their badge.

What they had for breakfast.

Their very name.

(I am Kepler.)

Who are you, Galileo?

Then a man comes up to me, revolver at his side, badge clipped to his leather belt, and says, “You got it, Jim?”

I turn and look into his eyes, and he must be my partner, and I must be Jim, and perhaps I do have it, whatever it is, but damned if I can tell him that.

Or perhaps my name isn’t Jim at all.

He looks at me, and I look at him, and there is a moment which becomes a moment too long, and he smiles, trying to read the strangeness in my eyes, and I finger the trigger of my shotgun and wonder whether, at this very close range, he really stands a chance, even in the body armour. Or whether I do too.

“Jim?” he says again. “You got it?”

“No,” I reply. “Not yet.”

“Jim?” Irritation, worry in his voice. “Jim? Where is it?”

A moment, a doubt, a hesitation, and in the corner of my eye I see a movement that might be as innocent as the scratching of a nose, as circumspect as the tugging of an itchy earlobe, and I don’t hesitate but reach out and press my fingers against my partner’s neck and

blood splatters my face.

Point-blank range, blood and brain and little bits of skull, I stare into the face of the man who almost certainly was called Jim, and probably did have whatever it was I was asking for, stare into his eyes as he falls, crumpled like a paper cup before me, one hand slipping away from my neck, my shoulder as he drops, a dead weight to the floor, a bullet straight through the back of his head and out the forehead, slamming in a little bloody cloud into the pillar at my back.

Behind him, the shooter, a man of barely nineteen years old, gun held out in one hand, finger still resting on the trigger, policeman’s cap pulled down over his eyes, giggles.

I grab my gun, and as the shooter’s eyes widen in surprise put two in his chest and a third in his neck, firing as the arc of my weapon comes up from my hip, an empty sound of incoherent rage even as the body of the man I was rolls beneath my feet, his wet blood slipping under my shoes.

Arms grab me, pulling the gun from my hand, and I scream in fury as they take me down, three, four men knocking me off my feet, hands on my head, my face, my arms, but my fury is not for them, it’s for the three other men pulling the shooter down, pulling Galileo down as the blood pops and bubbles around his throat, bursts upwards with every breath in great splatters, and then

one of them steps away.

One of the men holding him down just steps away, and looks at me and smiles

and I scream again

and

a hand is against my face

I hold a hand against his face

pull it away from the writhing, bewildered body and myself free of the scrum and scream, “Galileo!”

He turns and runs.

I ran after him, leaving my bewildered colleagues behind, fumbled at my side, felt the gun, raised it to fire and he swerved round a corner, boundless giddy energy in his youthful, uniformed body, past statues of the serene Buddha, carved jade of fair Kuanyin, lute in hand, willow branches at her back. I fired and my shot went wide, impaling a screen of delicate wading birds brushed on to silk, which toppled as the people around screamed and parted before us, and then Galileo

staggered

and as he staggered his hand seemed to brush the arm of a woman dressed in purple and pigtails and I screamed again, “Galileo!”

And she looked back, and saw me coming, and saw that I saw her, and she ran on, beneath the dark wood of a Shinto arch, raised against all evil spirits, and swerved again, feet slipping on marble, into a room of violins and cellos, ivory-carved flutes and pearl-embossed guitars, a palace to the music of the ages, where she

caught the arm of a man dressed all in white, who looked towards me and, seeing that I looked at him, for the first time showed a little fear, and he too ran, his feet faster than hers had been, his shoes more appropriate for the chase, throwing off his coat and bag as he fled through rustic scenes of haystacks and lambs, of dancing farmgirls and dying saints, and again a turn, and again he tried a switch, not running this time but sitting still and serene in the body of the guard by the door, but to hell with that, I raised my gun to fire, and seeing my face the guard threw himself, tooth and nail, towards me, and I pulled the trigger, knocking him back, and as he fell his hand caught the hand of the very same man he’d just been, who at once leaped back to his feet and turned and ran again, leaving the screaming guard behind him.

“Galileo!”

My voice, strange, a copper’s throat, a smoker’s lung, echoed through the corridors. Now he is a woman who throws her bag at me as I pursue, now she is a teenager with an incredible stride, a breathtaking burst of speed, and I am panting, gasping for breath, but I will not give up this chase or this body with its armour and gun, so as he rushes fresh-faced and full of air through the halls I sweat and pound after him, a clear shot–just give me a clear shot.