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  With his first bite, he took Baum's arm off up to the elbow. The host disintegrated like wet paper in his gullet. He swallowed, and fingers relaxed in his belly.

  Baum shrank within himself, and tried to run. But he was caught. This was not feeding. This was killing.

  Then, King of the Cats no longer, he bit the Irish Jew's head off. And was done with it.

  EIGHT

  ANNE PHONED the offices from the Nellie Dean in Dean Street. She had to offload some of her responsibilities.

  'Hello. Editorial,' said the voice she had hoped not to hear.

  'Mark?'

  'Anne. Hi,' a long pause. 'What happened to you? You never came back to the phone…'

  She realised her receiver would be buzzing, still off the hook in the flat.

  'The policeman? I was trying to tell you that that dopey Sharon gave out your home address.'

  'It's all right.'

  'You're not on the electoral roll? That's how they usually trace you.'

  'No.' She had slipped through, three moves ago, and only now felt ashamed of it. She was committed, so she ought at least to be able to vote.

  There was a fuss in the background.

  'We've got a crisis right now,' Mark said before she could answer. 'We're trying to get the Central America thing into the Christmas issue. Can I call you back?'

  'I'm on a pay phone. Listen, my sister has died. I need some time.'

  'Lord…'

  She could picture Mark not knowing what to say. She wished someone she knew less well had answered her call, someone who could take down her information like notes for a news item and tell everyone who needed to be told.

  'What are you going to do?'

  'Nothing stupid. Don't worry. But I need to ask some questions. I can't just let it drop, you know.'

  'Okay. Well, I've got you down to write the Poll Tax vigil piece. Clare can do that. The homelessness feature is Nigel's baby, really. I'll do the sidebars myself.'

  'My notes are on the computer. It's mostly done.'

  'Fine. But there's the Aziz inquest. You've been on that story from the first.'

  Anne had not thought of that. She felt she owed Mrs Aziz her continued support. And Erskine was still out there, waiting to get back on the beat.

  'Don't worry,' Mark said, drawing in a breath, 'I was just thinking aloud. There's no blame involved. I'll deal with it.'

  She imagined him juggling notes on his desk, trying to find room for what he wanted to say to her.

  'Anne, about last night…'

  'I know, Mark. Look, I'm sorry, but…'

  She tried to picture his expression. It was hard to tell what he was thinking face to face. The telephone disguised him completely.

  'Anne, I understand. This isn't a normal thing. Call in when you want to come out of the cold. Can I get you at the flat?'

  'I don't know. Maybe not. I think I've got a week or so left over in holiday time. And it's Christmas the week after next, anyway.'

  'Christ yes. I'm sure the collective can get its collective head around the concept of compassionate leave. I'll stamp it through the next magazine meeting.'

  She thanked him, hearing the bustle of the newsroom in the background. Phones ringing, people laughing, typing, making tea. Life going on. She supposed she would not be at the office party this year. Just as well. It would only have meant another painfully circumspect hour or two with Mark. And she could do without the mistletoe and drunkenness jokes, or Clare trying to get everyone to dance to her old Abba records.

  'Your sister?' he asked. 'The one who had the trouble?'

  'Judi. Yes. Trouble.' The pips sounded. 'I don't have any more change. I'll be…'

  Buzz.

  She had lied; she did have two more twenty pence pieces. She dropped them in the slot, and punched the Aziz number. She owed Charlie's mother an explanation. She could talk to the woman. As she listened to the unanswered phone ringing, she wondered how alike she and Mrs Aziz were in their reactions to death. After a full minute, she assumed everyone was out, and gave up. She must call later. She did not want Mrs Aziz to hear from Mark that she was off the story for now.

  Reclaiming her coins, she collected a perrier water and an egg salad sandwich from the bar, and sat down alone. It was not twelve yet and the pub was practically empty. A fat alternative comedian Anne had seen on television was insulting the barmaid, and she was pretending he was hilarious. The bland Christmas record she hated - 'Christmas Caroline' - was playing through the speakers over the bar.

  The largest of Judi's effects was a leather handbag. Anne had put all the other stuff in it and thrown away the plastic carrier the police had given her. Hollis had said that Judi's clothes would be released later, before the funeral.

  Shit, the funeral. Anne did not even know how to go about arranging that. She supposed she would just have to look up 'Undertakers' in Yellow Pages and go with the Acme Funeral Company or whoever was at the top of the list. The Nielsons were third generation agnostics. A critic had once said their father spent his whole life looking for God, but Anne could not see that. She knew she would go for the simplest, most secular ceremony available. She was tempted to collapse, and play on Mark's British protectiveness to have him take care of the arrangements. He would know what to do, and be supremely efficient at it, sparing her as much of the strain as possible. But she could not do that. Anne Nielson did not use men as crutches. These were the '90s. Besides, Mark would use it as a way of getting closer to her, and he was too close already. This was family.

  Judi's lighter had cracked, and the inside of her bag smelled flammable. There was not much to pick through, but she sorted all the items out and laid them on the table. Some plain rings; a skull earring; a studded leather armlet; a plastic bottle of codeine; a package of paper tissues; three shades of lipstick, scarlet, crimson and black; American Express and Visa cards; fifty pounds in fives; a purseful of loose change; a cardboard tube with a rocketship in it that contained two 'Invader' brand prophylactics, 'Launched by Automach Peterborough'; an imitation leather-bound diary/address book; and a man's wallet.

  Anne played with the wallet. It was stuffed with photographs and newspaper clippings. There was an old snapshot of the sisters, as children, with a pony, somewhere in New England; Anne was standing, smiling, holding the bridle while Judi, little more than a baby, perched fat and fed-up on the saddle, dress ridden up over her thighs. A photo booth strip of a young man Anne did not recognise. Judi grown up, with two other girls, caught in a flashbulb glare, trying to look deliriously abandoned in a nightclub. The last shot made Anne shiver.

  The cuttings were an odd selection: a piece from The Guardian about father's stroke, a favourable review of one of Cam's concerts at the Pompidou Centre, a Radio Times listing for a late night screening of On the Graveyard Shift at Sam's Bar-B-Q and Grill, and samples of Anne's work from various papers and magazines. There was also an ancient anonymous letter Anne remembered arriving at the house and upsetting Dad. It called him a fink for informing on fellow travellers in '57. It had disappeared, and only now she realised Judi must have sent it herself, and that Dad must have known: over the years, there had been a steady trickle of abuse, but this one had really nettled their father. The only thing there that was about Judi was a report on a coroner's hearing she had given evidence at. Anne had not heard of the dead man, a stabbing victim, and could not work out what his connection with Judi had been.

  'Checking the loot, eh, love?' said the comedian, laughing. 'Funny how the muggers get younger and prettier every day, innit?'

  Anne looked up at the man. His chins were shaking, and he had a beerfoam moustache.

  'Fuck off,' she said, her eyes fixed. His grin froze, and fell apart. He turned back to the barmaid, and made a remark Anne did not catch, laughing again.

  Anne looked again at the items on the table, and tried in her mind to connect them with Judi.

  As soon as Judi had arrived in London, she had telephoned her sister, but
only to cadge some money. That had been two years ago. The sisters had not met since. Like Anne, Judi had right of residence thanks to their English mother. Two years was time enough to make a whole life. She picked up the armlet. The leather was cracked, and a few of the studs were missing, leaving tiny wounds. Not for the first time, Anne wondered how exactly her sister had lived.

  And what was she looking for anyway? Keepsakes? Messages from the grave? Clues?

  She had saved the book until last. It was such an obvious source of information. Under today's date was neatly printed 'N. Club D.E. 1.00'. N? A name? One o'clock? Morning or afternoon? Club D.E.? Going through the addresses at the back of the book, she found any number of people with N for a first or second initial, and addresses for several clubs, among them the Club Des Esseintes. That was in Brewer Street, just around the corner.

  The Club Des Esseintes.

  NINE

  HIS HAIRCUT cost more than the average suit, and his suits individually cost more than the average good-condition second-hand car. Clive Broome had the Business sussed, and the first thing he had learned was the importance of always being well turned-out. If transactions needed to be made in venues where his style would be suspicious, he could always buy some spiky-haired lout to handle it. He preferred not to get too close to the retail end of the trade anyway. He was moving up the pyramid, and he wanted everyone he dealt with to know it.

  Most nights of the week, Clive liked to screw somebody. But he insisted on sleeping alone. He hated the thought of waking up with a pair of alien elbows in his ribs and the sheets in a mess. After they had done the business, he had shifted last night's cunt into the spare room. By the time he was ready to get up, she was long gone. He also liked to sleep late.

  As far as he could tell, nothing was missing. Gretchen, from Barnet, with a butterfly tattoo. She should be not hard to find. If any of his things had taken a walk, he would have the Sergeant Major cut one of her boobs off. Or give her to Mr Skinner.

  He went cold, fast-forwarding through yesterday's business. The call from Mr Skinner, the deliveries, the white faces of the girls, the disposal. That was not over yet. One down, he told himself, one to go. He should not really get involved in deals like that. But they were useful. The Games Master was such a strange customer. It was well worth the risk of the disposal job to have Mr Skinner wrapped up and tied in with something messy. The man was monied enough to have some pull somewhere, and Clive could always use someone with pull. After the disposal, Mr Skinner owed him plenty. Still, Judi's face had been a frightener.

  After dressing, he sat down in his work-room to go through the post and deal with the morning's telephone messages. Most of the letters were Christmas cards, from Business contacts and sentimental cunts, but there was also a whingeing note from his mother and his subscription copies of Viz and The Economist. Most of the people who had called him up had not left any sort of message, but Mink said that he had received the shipment of Brussels sprouts he had been expecting.

  Clive still thought the vegetable talk was fucking stupid. He was supposed to be a wholesale produce importer, supplying his own chain of fashionably overpriced health food shops. Through design-oriented marketing, he had ridden the Green wave and successfully negated the duffel-coated hippie image of health foods to target the high disposable income of yuppies in high-stress jobs who would follow any dietary plan as long as it was expensive and minimal. The food business was even quite lucrative, but actually his real trade was drugs. The code-names just made Mink feel like he was in a spy film. It was a typical dopehead way of justifying habitual paranoia. It also suggested he thought he was just playing a game, and Clive was serious about what he did for a living. He was not thirty yet, but already he had been in the Business twice as long as most of the people he worked with. It was all about being careful.

  But Mink's message was good news. Clive could now go down to the Hackney wholefood store and pick up the heroin his people were waiting for. New drug-of-the-month crazes like Ecstasy and crack might come along, and Clive was conscious that he had to keep such items in stock, while cocaine was capturing a more exclusive portion of the market but heroin was the white bread of the Business. There was always a market for the old staple diet of junkies. After a night in the space behind his airing cupboard, the gear would go to the Sergeant Major and be repackaged for his men in the marketplace. And he would be able to meet Mr Skinner's standing order.

  Mr Skinner would be very pleased. Clive sometimes wondered what the man was up to. Obviously, the skag he bought wound up in someone or other's arm. His version was that heroin was much more convenient than cash. He was right there. Surely, the Games Master wasn't stuck on the H himself. He was not anyone's idea of normal, but he was not stupid. Clive was well aware of his position in the Business, at precisely that cusp where men in smart suits with career structures deal with deadbeats in torn jeans with minimal life expectancies. Mr Skinner was higher up the pyramid. When you got to where he was, it stopped being Business and started getting Political. Right now, it was down to Clive to make himself indispensible.

  Clive started doing sums on his expensive pocket calculator. He had an upper second in business studies from the University of East Anglia. Most of the people he had known up there were working in the City, for the media or unemployed these days. Several of them were customers, although they saw the Sergeant Major's lads rather than him. He liked to think he was making more money and paying less tax than any of them. His calculator played the first eight notes of 'Money Makes the World Go Around'. That always gave him a giggle.

  He was proud of the fact that he had three times voted for the best government the country had had in his lifetime. There was a picture of him shaking hands with Margaret Thatcher at a Young Entrepreneur of the Year dinner on his desk next to his Sinclair micro. He really admired her for the way she had opened up the economy to individual enterprise. He was a practised and popular after dinner speaker at local affairs, and his favourite address was entitled 'The Strength of a Nation Lies in its Human Resources.' For him, the Business was a business, not an amusement or an adjunct to a personal need. The drug trade was a consumer-led market, and he had got into it at the right time, meeting an increased demand and offering a better service than his competitors. The '80s had been a growth period, but he knew that bull markets always eventually swelled and burst. He could foresee the point when he would get out of drugs - at the right time, of course - and step up the pyramid.

  Although the very nature of the Business brought him into contact with a load of moaning minnies and smackhead losers, he had started to employ only men who had proved themselves possessed of a decent amount of backbone. The Sergeant Major had been in Northern Ireland for a couple of years before they sent him to Pentonville, and he had brought some good new lads into the operation. One or two of the carriers had served in the Falklands. Clive did not employ users, and the Sergeant Major had standing orders to pay off with broken bones any of his lads caught with their fingers in the supply. Clive wanted long-term people who could be useful when he branched out.

  Now, Clive telephoned the Sergeant Major. He would have been up since dawn, handling a couple of little things. He picked up the phone at the fourth ring.

  'Sergeant Major.'

  'Mr Broome?'

  'How did things go?'

  'Very nicely, sir. I've been to the bank, and I talked to the man you wanted seen to. There won't be any more trouble in Deptford, I don't think.'

  Clive imagined the crack of fingerbones.

  'That's excellent. I'd appreciate it if you'd drop by later.'

  'Very good, sir.'

  'Yes, we have another disposal job to do. A lot like the last one. No trouble at all.'

  'Fine, sir.'

  'Right. See you later. Take care.'

  Clive thought for a moment about the other girl, Coral. And about Judi.

  In his front room, Clive had a framed print of the Battle of Waterloo, a collection
of imported pornographic magazines, a CD player and a VHS recorder and video tapes of all Torvill and Dean's greatest performances. In his kitchen, he had a case of expensive wine, a robot-chef and a microwave oven. In his lavatory, he had copies of The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, The Naff Sex Guide and How to Be a Wally. In his work-room, he had a licenced handgun, five thousand pounds in small notes and a fax machine.

  In his basement, he had a dead prostitute with her arm cut off.

  TEN

  AS NEAR DEATH as he had ever been, he tried to slither over the beaten earth of the alley. His face hung off his skull in lumpy rags. One of the cuts had been high up and at the back of his head, and a torn curtain of skin and scalp had flapped forwards over his face. It hung over his eyes and nose like a wet scarf. Since his own pain had long since ceased to mean anything to him, he felt almost at peace in the red darkness.

  The irony of it was that the men who had done this to him knew nothing about his real nature. They had killed him simply because they were paid to. He would kill them, but without true malice, or even true relish. If people habitually treated each other like this, who could blame the Kind for the way they treated the human race? Of course, it was really his own fault. He knew that he should never have got mixed up in politics.

  He had tried to change when they assaulted him, but there had been eight or ten of them and they were very skilled in their profession. Using iron bars and sharp knives instead of crosses and cats' cradles, they had caught him efficiently before he could make himself more dangerous and ripped him apart. They had broken his arms and one leg, and his pelvis was twisted out of shape. Consequently, he could not roll himself over and had to try crawling face up. He grew horny talons, curving them into the hard ground. His hands clawed at the ground like scuttling crabs and pulled the heavy bulk of the rest of his body towards the mouth of the alley, assisted only by the occasional inchworm push of his good leg.