First he felt nothing but shock; then quickly a sense of amonstrous error.

And a great fear. Because Fabian understood immediately that itwould be easy for them to believe that Saul had killed his father.And, as immediately, he knew without any equivocation or doubt thatSaul had not. But he was terribly afraid, because only he knew that,because he knew Saul. And there was nothing he could tell others tohelp them understand.

He wanted to see Saul; he did not understand why the officer’svoice changed when he demanded this. He was told it would be sometime before he could speak to Saul, Saul was deep in conversation,his attention wholly grabbed, and Fabian would just have to wait.There was something the man was not telling him, Fabian knew, and hewas scared. He left his phone number, was reassured that he would becontacted as soon as Saul was free to speak.

Fabian sped along Acre Lane. On his left he passed anextraordinary white building, a mass of grubby turrets and shabby ArtDeco windows. It looked long deserted. On the step sat two boys,dwarfed by jackets declaring allegiance to American Football teamsneither had ever seen play. They were oblivious to the faded grandeurof their bench. One had his eyes closed, was leaning back against thedoor like Mexican cannon-fodder in a spaghetti Western. His friendspoke animatedly into his hand, his tiny mobile phone hidden withinthe voluminous folds of his sleeve, Fabian felt the thrill ofmaterialist envy, but battened it down. This was one impulse heresisted.

Not me, he thought, as he always did. I’ll hold out a bitlonger. I won’t be another black man with a mobile, anothertroublemaker with ‘Drug Dealer’ written on his forehead in scriptonly the police can read.

He stood up out of his seat, kicked down and sped off towardsClapham.

Fabian knew Saul hated his father’s disappointment. Fabian knewSaul and his father could not speak together. Fabian had been theonly one of Saul’s friends who had seen him turn that volume by Leninover and over in his hands, open it and close it, read theinscription again and again. His father’s writing was tight andcontrolled, as if trying not to break the pen. Saul had put the bookin Fabian’s lap, had waited while his friend read.

To Saul, This always made sense to me. Love from the OldLeftie.

Fabian remembered looking up into Saul’s face. His mouth wassealed, his eyes looked tired. He took the book off Fabian’s lap andclosed it, stroked the cover, put it on his shelf. Fabian knew Saulhad not killed his father.

He crossed Clapham High Street, a concourse of restaurants andcharity shops, and slid into the back streets, wiggling through theparked cars to emerge on Silverthorne Road. He started down the longincline towards the river.

He knew that Natasha would be working. He knew he would turn intoBassett Road and hear the faint boom of Drum and Bass. She would behunched over her keyboard, twiddling dials and pressing keys with theconcentration of an alchemist, juggling long sequences of zeros andones and transforming them into music. Listening and creating. Thatwas what Natasha spent all her time doing. When she was notconcentrating on source material behind the till of friends’ recordshops, serving customers in an efficient autopilot mode, she wasreconstituting it into the tracks she christened with spiky one-wordtitles: Arrival; Rebellion; Maelstrom.

Fabian believed it was Natasha’s concentration which made her soasexual to him. She was attractive in a fierce way, and was nevershort of offers, especially at clubs, especially when word got aroundthat the music playing was hers; but Fabian had never known her seemvery interested, even when she took someone home. He felt blasphemouseven thinking of her in a sexual context. Fabian was alone in hisopinion, he was assured by his friend Kay, a cheerful dope-raddledclown who drooled lasciviously after Natasha whenever he saw her. Themusic was the thing, Kay said, and the intensity was the thing, andthe carelessness was the thing. Just like a nun, it was the promiseof what was under the habit.

But Fabian could only grin sheepishly at Kay, absurdlyembarrassed. Amateur psychologists around London, Saul included, hadwasted no time deciding he was in love with Natasha; but Fabian didnot think that was the case. She infuriated him with her stylefascism and her solipsism, but he supposed he loved her. Just not inthe way Saul meant it.

He twisted under the filthy railway bridge on Queenstown Road now,fast approaching Battersea Park. He was riding an incline, racingtowards Chelsea Bridge. He took the roundabout with casual arrogance,put his head down and climbed towards the river. On Fabian’s right,the four chimneys of Battersea Power Station loomed into view. Itsroof was long gone, it looked like a bombed-out relic, a blitzsurvivor. It was a great upturned plug straining to suck voltage outof the clouds, a monument to energy.

Fabian burst free of South London. He slowed and looked into theThames, past the towers and railings of steel that surrounded him,keeping him snug on Chelsea Bridge. The river sent shards of coldsunlight in all directions.

He scudded over the face of the water like a pond skater, dwarfedby the girders and bolts ostentatiously holding the bridge together.He hung poised for a moment between the South Bank and the NorthBank, his head high to see over the sides into the water, to see theblack barges that never moved, waiting to ferry cargo long forgotten,his legs still, freewheeling his way towards Ladbroke Grove.

The route to Natasha’s house took Fabian past the Albert Hall andthrough Kensington, which he hated. It was a soulless place, apurgatory filled only with rich transients drifting pointlesslythrough Nicole Farhi and Red or Dead. He sped up Kensington ChurchStreet towards Netting Hill and on through to Portobello Road.

It was a market day, the second in the week, designed to wrestmoney from tourists. Merchandise that had cost five pounds on Fridaywas now offered for ten. The air was thick with garish cagoules andbackpacks and French and Italian. Fabian cussed quietly and inchedthrough the throng. He ducked left down Elgin Crescent and thenright, bearing down on the Bassett Road flat.

A gust of wind stained the air brown with leaves. Fabian swunginto the street. The leaves boiled around him, stuck to his jacket.Pared-down trees lined the tarmac. Fabian dismounted while still inmotion, walked towards Natasha’s flat.

He could hear her working. The faint thumping of Drum and Bass wasaudible from the end of the street. As he walked, wheeling his bikebeside him, Fabian heard the sound of wings. Natasha’s house teemedwith pigeons. Every protuberance and ledge was grey with plump,stirring bodies. A few were in the air, hovering nervously around thewindows and gables, settling, dislodging their peers. They shiftedand shat a little as Fabian stopped at the door directly belowthem.

Natasha’s rhythm was loud now, and Fabian could hear somethingunusual, a clear sound like pipes, a recorder or a flute, burstingwith energy and exuberance, shadowing the bass. He stood still andlistened. The quality of this sound was different from that ofsamples, and it was not trapped in any loops. Fabian suspected it wasbeing played live. And by something of a virtuoso.

He rang the bell. The electronic boom of the bass stopped cold.The flute faltered on for a second or two. As silence fell, thecompany of pigeons rose en masse into the air with the abruptness ofpanic, circled once like a school of fish and disappeared into thenorth. Fabian heard footsteps on the stairs.

Natasha opened the door to him and smiled.

‘Alright, Fabe,’ she said, reaching up to touch her clenched rightfist to his. He did so, at the same time bending down to put an armaround her and kiss her cheek. She responded, though her surprise wasevident.