A piece of charred paper floated slowly down from the sky like a soiled snowflake. Mr Hussain picked it up and read out loud, 'He felt the heart still fluttering beneath the bark.'

'Sounds like Ovid,' Reggie said. 'I was worried you were in there,' Mr Hussain said. 'Come into the shop, I'll make you a cup of tea.'

'No, really, I'm OK. Thanks anyway, Mr Hussain.'

'Sure?'

'Sweartogod.'

A fireman who looked as if he was in charge came out of the building and said to a policeman, 'All clear in there.' Firemen began to coil up the fat hosepipe from out of the close. Reggie saw the goodlooking Asian policeman who gave a twitch of recognition at the sight of her, as ifhe knew her but couldn't place her. She turned away before he remembered who she was.

She turned up her collar and hunched herself into her jacket and walked away briskly, Sadie at her heels. She had no idea where she was going, she was just walking, away from the flat, away from Gorgie. It took her a moment to realize that she was being followed by a white van, which was kerb-crawling along behind her in a really creepy way. She picked up the pace, so did the van. She started running, Sadie lolloping along excitedly as if it was a game. The van accelerated too and cut her off at the next crossroad. Blondie and Ginger climbed out. They both walked with a bow-legged swagger, like apes.

They stood intimidatingly close to her, she could smell Ginger's breath, meaty, like a dog's. Close up, Blondie's skin was even worse, pitted and pocked like a barren moon.

'Are you Reggie Chase's sister, Billy?' Blondie demanded.

'VVhose sister?' Reggie asked, frowning innocently. As if she didn't know, as ifshe wasn't poor Reggie Chase, sister of the Artful Dodger. (As if she wasn't all the poor unwanted girls, the Florences, the Esthers, the Cecilia Jupes.)

'That wee shite Reggie Chase's sister,' Ginger said impatiently. Sadie growled at his tone ofvoice and the two men seemed to notice the dog for the first time, which was pretty slow of them considering how big she was but then they didn't look like they were at the front of the queue when brains were being handed out.

Ginger took a step back. 'She's a trained attack dog,' Reggie said hopefully. Sadie growled agam.

Blondie took a step back.

'Give your brother a message,' Ginger said. 'Tell the wee cunt that if he doesn't come up with the goods, if he doesn't give back what isn't his then-' he made a slashing motion across his throat. The pair of them really did like miming weapons.

Sadie started to bark in a way that even Reggie found quite alarming and both Blondie and Ginger retreated into the van. Ginger rolled down the passenger window and said, 'Give him this,' and threw something at her. Another Loeb, a red one this time, the Aeneid, Volume One. It flew through the air, its pages fluttering, and hit Reggie square on her cheekbone before dropping and spreadeagling on its spine on the pavement.

She picked it up. Same neat hole cut into its centre. She ran a finger around the sides of the little paper coffin. Was someone hiding secrets inside Ms MacDonald's Loeb classics? All of them? Or only the ones that she needed for her A Level? The cut-out hole was the work of someone who was good with his hands. Someone who might have had a future as a joiner but instead became a street-dealer hanging around on corners, pale and shifty. He was higher up the pyramid now but Billy was someone with no sense of loyalty. Someone who would take from the hand that fed him, and hide what he took in secret little boxes.

Reggie didn't mean to cry but she was so tired and so small and her face hurt where the book had hit it and the world was so full of big men telling people they were dead. Sweet little w~fe, pretty little baby.

Where did a person go when they had no one to turn to and nowhere left to run?

Jackson Leaves the Building THERE WERE SOME METAL STAPLES IN HIS FOREHEAD THAT GAVE HIM a passing resemblance to Frankenstein's monster. His bandaged left arm was strapped to his chest in a sling that kept his hand pledged on his heart all the time, which was one way ofmaking sure that you were alive. He had a recurrent vision of the artery inside his arm rupturing and spilling his blood again. But he was no longer fettered to a hospital bed. He was free. A little groggy, very sore -some ofhis bruises could have won competitions -but basically on the road to being a fully functioning human again.

He had to get out. Jackson hated hospitals. He had spent more time in them than most people. He had watched his mother take an eternity to die in one and as a police constable he had spent nearly every Saturday night taking statements in A and E. Birth, death (the one as traumatic as the other), injury, disease -hospitals weren't healthy places to hang around in. Too many sick people. Jackson wasn't sick, he was repaired, and he wanted to go home, or at least to the place he called home now, which was the tiny but exquisite flat in Covent Garden containing the priceless jewel that was his wife, or would contain her when she stepped off the plane at Heathrow on Monday morning. Not his real home, his real home, the one he never named any more, was the dark and sooty chamber in his heart that contained his sister and his brother and, because it was an accommodating kind of space, the entire filthy history of the industrial revolution. It was amazing how much dark matter you could crush inside the black hole of the heart.

WheneverJackson started to get fanciful he knew it must be time to go. 'I'm better now,' he said to Dr Foster.

'They all say that.'

'No, really. I am.'

'The clue is in the word "patient".'

'I don't need to be in hospital.'

'Yesterday you were going on about how you died and today you're ready to walk? Roll away the stone? Just like that?'

'Yes.'

'No.'

'I'm OK to leave now,' Jackson said to the boy-wizard doctor.

'Really?'

'Yes, really.'

'No, no, no, you missed the sarcastic inflexion. Listen agam Really?'

Pumped-up little Potter pillock.

'I'm A-OK,'Jackson said to Australian Mike. 'I need to get out ofthis place, it's doing my head in.'

'No worries,' the Flying Doctor said.

'Does that mean I can go?'

'Knock yourself out, mate. Discharge yourself. What's stopping you?'

'I haven't got any money. Or a driving licence.' (The latter seemed more important than the former.) 'Bummer.' 'I haven't even got any clothes.'

'They're your size,' Reggie said, indicating a large Topman bag at her feet. 'I went to Topman because I've got a store card. It might not really be your style. I bought you one of everything.' She looked embarrassed. 'And three pairs of underpants.' She looked even more embarrassed. 'Boxers. I took the size from your old clothes, the nurse gave them to me. They were ruined, they had to cut them off you and anyway they were covered in blood. I've got them in a black plastic bag, you probably want to throw them away.'

'Why did they give you my clothes?' Jackson puzzled when she paused for breath.

'I said I was your daughter.'

'My daughter?'

'Sorry.'

'And you're doing this because you're responsible for me?'

'Well, actually ...' Reggie said, 'it's more of a two-way thing.'

'I knew there had to be a catch,' Jackson said. There was always a catch. Since Adam turned to Eve (or more likely the other way round) and said, 'Oh, by the way, I wondered if ...' She had another fresh bruise, on her cheek this time. What did she do when she wasn't visiting him? Karate?

'You used to be a private detective. Right?' she said.

'Amongst other things.'

'So you used to find people?'

'Sometimes. I also lost people.'

'I want to hire you.'

'No.'

'Please.'

'No. I don't do that any more.'