“Keys?” Reeve asked. Cavendish handed them over. Reeve unlocked the car and looked inside, checking under the seats and in the glove compartment. He came up with chewing gum, parking tickets, and a book of matches from the same Indian restaurant where he’d eaten lunch.

“The boot?” Fliss suggested. Reeve was unwilling; this would be it, the very last option, their last chance to move any further forward. He turned the key and felt the trunk spring open. Cavendish shone the flashlight in. There was something nestling there, covered with a tartan traveling rug. Reeve pulled off the rug, revealing a large cardboard box advertising its contents to be twelve one-liter bottles of dishwashing liquid. It was the kind of box you picked up from supermarkets and corner shops. He opened its flaps. There were papers inside, maybe half a boxful. He pulled out the top sheet and angled it into the failing flashlight.

“Bingo,” he said.

He lifted the box out, and Fliss locked the trunk. The box was awkward rather than heavy.

“Can we call for a cab from your phone?” Reeve asked Cavendish.

“Yeah, sure.” They left the garage, and Cavendish locked it tight. “Just one thing,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“What’s going to happen to the car?”

Reeve thought about it for all of two seconds. “It’s yours,” he told Cavendish. “Jim would have wanted it that way.”

January 13

I suppose if this turns into a story, I’ll have to credit Marco with the genesis-though he’d probably stress he’s more of a Pink Floyd fan. He wears a T-shirt which must date back to Dark Side of the Moon. It’s black with the prism logo on it-only he says it’s a pyramid. Sure, but light doesn’t enter a pyramid white and come out the seven colors of the rainbow. It only does that with prisms, so it must be a prism. He says I’m missing the point, maaann. The point is, the album’s a concept album and the concept is everyday madness. Pure white light into a myriad of colors. The everyday gone mad.

But then why is it a damned pyramid? Why not a teacup or a toaster or even a typewriter? Marco laughs, remembering that party of his and how I looked at a poster on his wall and thought it was sailing boats on a rippling blue sea, pictured near sunset with some heavy filtering.

And it wasn’t. It was pyramids. It was the poster that came with Dark Side of the Moon and I was sober when I mistook it. Sober as a judge. Later, I was drunk as a lord and trying to get my hand up Marco’s girlfriend’s kilt until she reminded me, her mouth shiveringly close to my ear, that Marco had done a bit of judo in his time and part of his left ear was missing. So, fair enough, I retracted my hand. You do, don’t you?

Where the fuck was I? The story. The story.

It’s about madness, too: that’s why I used the Pink Floyd reference. I could use it as a lead into the story proper. “Tales of Everyday Madness.” Was that a book or a film? Did someone give me that at charades one time? Absolutely impossible. Yes, charades, at Marco’s party. And Marco’s team was making half its titles up. The bastard even dumped in some that were in Italian.

Marco is Italian, and that is also relevant to the story. This is a story he told me last night in the Stoat and Whistle. I said to him, why haven’t you told me this before? Know what he said? He said, this is the first serious (not to mention intelligible) conversation we’ve ever had. And when I thought about it, he was probably right. What’s more, he only got round to telling his story because we’d run out of Tottenham jokes. Here’s the last one we told. What’s the difference between a man with no knob and a Spurs player? A man with no knob’s got more chance of scoring.

See, we were desperate.

“Anything?” Fliss asked. She had her own sheaf of paper in front of her, as well as a second mug of coffee.

“I think he was drunk when he typed this.”

“Full of spelling mistakes?”

“No, just full of shit.”

They were back in the Crouch End flat. They’d brought a carry-out back with them-Chinese this time, with some lagers and Cokes bought from the corner shop. The tin trays of food sat half-uneaten on the living room’s coffee table.

“What about you?” Reeve asked.

“Photocopies mostly. Articles from medical and scientific journals. Looks like he was calling up anything he could find on mad cow disease. Plus on genetic patents. There’s an interesting article about the company that owns the patent on all genetically engineered cotton. Might not be relevant.” She gnawed on a plastic chopstick. The chopsticks had been fifty pence a pair extra. Reeve rubbed his jaw, feeling the need for a shave. And a bath. And some sleep. He tried not to think about what time his body made it; tried to dismiss the eight hours he’d wound his watch forward, and the sleep he hadn’t taken on the plane.

He started reading again.

Marco is a journalist. He’s over here for a year, more if they like his reports, as London correspondent for some glossy Milan rag. They keep faxing him to say they want more royal family, more champagne balls, more Wimbledon and Ascot. He’s tried telling them Wimbledon and Ascot come once a year, but they just keep sending the faxes to their London office. Marco’s thinking of chucking it. He used to be a “serious” journalist, real hard copy, until he sniffed more money in the air. Moved from daily to weekly, newspaper to magazine. He said at the time he was just sick of journalism; he wanted easy money and a break from Italy. Italian politics depressed him. The corruption depressed him. He’d had a colleague, a good friend, blown up by a parcel bomb when he tried to zero in on some minister with Mafia connections. Ba-boom, and up and away to the great leader column in the sky. Or maybe the elevator down to the basement, glowing fires and typing up the classifieds.

Marco told me about some of the scandals, and I was matching him conspiracy for conspiracy, chicanery for chicanery, payoff for payoff. Then he told me he covered the Spanish cooking oil tragedy. I recalled it only vaguely. 1981, hundreds died. Contaminated oil-yes?

And Marco said, “Maybe.”

So then he told his side of it, which didn’t quite tally with the official line at the time or since. Because according to Marco, some of the people who died hadn’t touched the oil (rapeseed oil it was-memo to self, get clippings out of library). They hadn’t bought it, hadn’t used it-simple as that. So what caused the deaths? Marco’s idea-and it wasn’t original, he got it from other researchers into the area-was that these things called-hold on, I wrote it down-Jesus, it’s taken me ten minutes to track it down. Should’ve known to look first on my fag packet. OPs, that what it says. OPs were to blame. He did tell me what they are, but I’ve forgotten. Better look into it tomorrow.

“OPs,” Reeve said.

“What?”

“Any mention of them in the stuff you’re reading?”

She smiled. “Sorry, I stopped reading a while back. I’m not taking it in anymore.” She yawned, stretching her arms up, hands clenched. The fabric of her sweater tightened, raising the profile of her breasts.

“Shit,” said Reeve, suddenly realizing. “I’ve got to get a room.”

“What?”

“A hotel room. I wasn’t planning on being here this late.”

She paused before answering. “You can sleep where you are. That sofa’s plenty comfy enough; I’ve fallen asleep on it a few times myself. I’ll just check out Newsnight if that’s all right, see what I’ve missed today and what I can expect to read tomorrow, and then I’ll leave you to it.”

He stared at her.

“It’s all right, really it is,” she said. “You’re perfectly safe with me.”

She had blue eyes. He’d noticed them before, but they seemed bluer now. And she didn’t smell of perfume, just soap.