‘Jesus Christ,’ said a voice behind me, and I suppose that meant that someone else must have seen the gun too. I couldn’t be sure, because I was staring hard into Murdah’s eyes.

‘It’s over,’ I said.

Murdahstared back at me, the mobile phone dropping down from his mouth.

‘It’s over,’ I said again. ‘Not off.,

‘What… what are you talking about?’ he said.

Murdahstood watching the gun, and the knowledge of it, the beauty of our little tableau, rippled outwards through the sea of tight shirts.

‘The expression is,’ I said, ‘to kick over the traces.’

Twenty-six

The sun has got his hat on,

Hip hip hip hooray,

L. ARTHUR ROSE AND DOUGLAS FURBER

We’re back on the roof of the consulate now. Just so as you know.

The sun is already bobbing its head along the horizon, evaporating the sky-line of dark tiles into a misty strip of whiteness, and I think to myself that if it was up to me, I’d have the helicopter airborne by now. The sun is so strong, so bright, so hopelessly blinding that, for all I know, the helicopter might already be there - there might be fifty helicopters, hovering twenty yards up-sun of me, watching me unwrap my two packets of brown, grease-proof paper. Except, of course, I’d hear them. I hope.

‘What do you want?’ says Murdah.

He is behind me, perhaps twenty feet away. I have handcuffed him to the fire escape while I get on with my chores, and he doesn’t seem to like that very much. He seems agitated.

‘What do you want?’ he screams.

I don’t answer, so he goes on screaming. Not words, exactly. Or, at least, none that I recognise. I whistle a few bars of something to block out the noise, and continue attaching clip A to retaining lug B, while making sure that cable C is not fouling bracket D.

‘What I want,’ I say eventually, ‘is for you to see it coming. That’s all.’

I turn to look at him now, to see how bad he’s feeling. It’s very bad, and I find I don’t mind all that much.

‘You are insane,’ he shouts, tugging at his wrists. ‘I am here. Do you see?’ He laughs, or almost laughs, because he can’t believe how stupid I am. ‘I am here. The Graduate will not come, because I am here.’

I turn away again, and squint into the low wall of sunlight. ‘Well I hope so, Naimh,’ I say. ‘I really do. I hope you still have more than one vote.’

There is a pause, and when I turn back to him, I find that the sheen has folded itself into a frown.

‘Vote,’ he says eventually, in a soft voice. ‘Vote,’ I say again.

Murdahwatches me carefully.

‘I don’t understand you,’ he says.

So I take a deep breath, and try and lay it out for him. ‘You’re not an arms dealer, Naimh,’ I say. ‘Not any more. I’ve taken that privilege away from you. For your sins. You’re not rich, you’re not powerful, you’re not connected, you’re not a member of the Garrick.’ That doesn’t register with him, so maybe he never was anyway. ‘All you are, at this moment, is a man. Like the rest of us. And as a man, you only get one vote. Sometimes not even that.’

He thinks carefully before he answers. He knows I’m mad, and that he must go gently with me.

‘I don’t know what you’re saying,’ he says.

‘Yes you do,’ I say. ‘You just don’t know whether I know what I’m saying.’ The sun inches a little higher, straining on its tip-toes to get a better view of us. ‘I’m talking about the twenty-six other people who stand to gain directly from the success of The Graduate, and the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who will gain indirectly. People who have worked, and lobbied, and bribed, and threatened, and even killed, just to get this close. They all have votes too. Barnes will be talking to them at this moment, asking for a yes or no answer, and who’s to say how the numbers will come out?’

Murdahis very still now. His eyes are wide and his mouth is open, as if he’s not enjoying the taste of something. ‘Twenty-six,’ he says, very quietly. ‘How do you know twenty-six? How do you know this?’

I make a modest face.

‘I used to be a financial journalist,’ I say. ‘For about an hour. A man at Smeets Velde Kerplein followed your money for me. Told me a lot of things.’

He drops his gaze, concentrating hard. His brain has got him here, so his brain must get him out.

‘Of course,’ I say, forcing him back on to the track, ‘you may be right. Maybe the twenty-six will all rally round, call it off, write it off, whatever. I just wouldn’t stake my life on it.’

I leave a pause, because I feel that, one way and another, I’ve earned the right to it.

‘But I’m very happy to stake yours,’ I say.

This shakes him. Knocks him out of his stupor.

‘You are insane,’ he shouts. ‘Do you know that? Do you know that you are insane?’

‘Right,’ I say. ‘So call them. Call Barnes, tell him to stop it. You’re on the roof with a madman, and the party is off. Use your one vote.’

He shakes his head.

‘They will not come,’ he says. And then, in a much quieter voice, ‘They will not come, because I am here.’

I shrug, because it’s all I can think of. I’m feeling very shruggy at this moment. The way I used to feel before parachute jumps.

‘Tell me what you want,’ screams Murdah, suddenly, and he starts to rattle the iron of the fire-escape with his handcuffs. When I look across again, I can see bright, wet blood on his wrists.

Diddums.

‘I want to watch the sun rise,’ I say.

Francisco, Cyrus, Latifa, Bernhard, and a bloody Benjamin have joined us up here on the roof, because this seems to be where the interesting people are at the moment. They are variously scared and confused, unable to get a grip on what is happening; they have lost their place in the script, and are hoping that somebody will call out a page number very soon.

Benjamin, needless to say, has done his best to poison the others against me. But his best stopped being good enough the moment they saw me coming back into the consulate, holding a gun to Murdah’s neck. They found that strange. Peculiar. Not consistent with Benjamin’s wild theories of Betrayal.

So they stand before me now, eyes flitting between me and Murdah; they are sniffing the wind, while Benjamin trembles with the strain of not shooting me.