Toy sensed the raw edge in Marty's voice; so did Somervale. For the first time since Toy had entered the arena the officer began to show some interest in the exchange. He wants to watch me talk my way out of a job, Marty thought; he could see the anticipation written all over Somervale's face. Well, damn him, he wasn't going to have the satisfaction.

"It's not a problem-" Marty said flatly. "Or if it is, it's mine. I'm still getting used to the fact that she won't be there when I get out. That's all it is, really."

Toy was smiling now, an amiable smile.

"Really, Marty-" he said, "-I don't want to pry. I'm only concerned that we understand the full facts of the situation. Were you to be employed by Mr. Whitehead, you would be required to live on his estate with him, and it would be a necessary condition of your employment that you could not leave without the express permission of either Mr. Whitehead or myself. In other words you would not be stepping into unconditional freedom. Far from it. You might wish to consider the estate as a sort of open prison. It's important for me to know of any ties you have that might make such constraints temptingly easy to break."

"Yes, I see."

"Furthermore, if for any reason your relationship with Mr. Whitehead was not satisfactory; if you or he felt that the job was not suitable, then I'm afraid-"

"-I'd be back here to finish my sentence."

"Yes."

There was an awkward pause, in which Toy sighed quietly. It took him only a moment to recover his equilibrium, then he took off in a new direction.

"There's just a few more questions I'd like to ask. You've done some boxing, am I right?"

"Some. A while back-"

Toy looked disappointed. "You gave it up?"

"Yes," Marty replied. "I kept on with the weight training for a while."

"Do you have any self-defense training of any kind? Judo? Karate?"

Marty contemplated lying, but what would be the use of that? All Toy had to do was consult the screws at Wandsworth. "No," he said.

"Pity."

Marty's belly shrank. "I'm healthy though," he said. "And strong. I can learn." He was aware that an unwelcome tremor had slipped into his voice from somewhere.

"We don't want a learner, I'm afraid," Somervale pointed out, barely able to suppress the triumph in his tone.

Marty leaned forward across the table, trying to blot out Somervale's leechlike presence.

"I can do this job, Mr. Toy," he insisted, "I know I can do this job. Just give me a chance-"

The tremor was growing; his belly was an acrobat. Better stop now, before he said or did something he regretted. But the words and the feelings just kept on coming.

"Give me an opportunity to prove I can do it. That's not much to ask, is it? And if I fuck it up it's my fault, see? Just a chance, that's all I'm asking."

Toy looked up at him with something like condolence in his face. Was it all over then? Had he made up his mind already-one wrong answer and the whole thing goes sour-was he already mentally packing up his briefcase and returning the Strauss, M. file into Somervale's clammy hands to be slotted back between one forgotten con and another?

Marty bit his tongue, and sat back in the uncomfortable chair, fixing his gaze on his trembling hands. He couldn't bear to look at the bruised elegance of Toy's face, not now that he'd opened himself up so wide. Toy would see in oh yes, to all the hurt and the wanting, and he couldn't bear that.

"At your trial..." Toy said.

What now? Why was he prolonging the agony? All Marty wanted was to go to his cell, where Feaver would be sitting on the bunk and playing with his dolls, where there was a familiar dullness that he could take refuge 'n. But Toy wasn't finished; he wanted the truth, the whole truth and nothing but.

"At your trial you testified that your prime motivation for involvement in the robbery was to pay off substantial gambling debts. Am I correct?"

Marty had moved his attention from his hands to his shoes. The laces were undone, and though they were long enough to be double-knotted he never had the patience to work at complicated knots. He liked a simple bow. When you needed to untie a bow you pulled and behold-like magic-it was gone.

"Is that right?" Toy asked again.

"Yes; that's right," Marty told him. He'd got so far; why not finish the story? "There were four of us. And two guns. We tried to take a security van. Things got out of hand." He glanced up from his shoes; Toy was watching intently. "The driver was shot in the stomach. He died later. It's all in the file, isn't it?" Toy nodded. "And about the van? Is that in the file too?" Toy didn't reply. "It was empty," Marty said. "We had it wrong from the beginning. The fucking thing was empty."

"And the debts?"

"Huh?"

"Your debts to Macnamara. They're still outstanding?"

The man was really beginning to get on Marty's nerves. What did Toy care if he owed a few grand here and there? This was just sympathetic camouflage, so that he could make a dignified exit.

"Answer Mr. Toy, Strauss," Somervale said.

"What's it to you?"

"Interest," said Toy, frankly.

"I see."

Sod his interest, Marty thought, he could choke on it. They'd had as much of a confessional as they were going to get.

"Can I go now?" he said.

He looked up. Not at Toy but at Somervale, who was smirking behind his cigarette smoke, well satisfied that the interview had been a disaster.

"I think so, Strauss," he said. "As long as Mr. Toy doesn't have any more questions."

"No," said Toy, the voice dead. "No; I'm well satisfied."

Marty stood up, still avoiding Toy's eyes. The small room was full of ugly sounds. The chair's heels scraping on the floor, the rasp of Somervale's smoker's cough. Toy was shunting away his notes. It was all over.

Somervale said: "You can go."

"I've enjoyed meeting you, Mr. Strauss," Toy said to Marty's back as he reached the door, and Marty turned around without thinking to see the other man smiling at him, his hand extended to be shaken. I've enjoyed meeting you, Mr. Strauss.

Marty nodded and shook hands.

"Thank you for your time," Toy said.

Marty closed the door behind him and made his way back to his cell, escorted by Priestley, the landing officer. They said nothing.

Marty watched the birds swooping in the roof of the building, alighting on the landing rails for tidbits. They came and they went when it suited them, finding niches to nest in, taking their sovereignty for granted. He envied them nothing. Or if he did, now wasn't the time to admit to it.

Thirteen days passed, and there was no further word from either Toy or Somervale. Not that Marty was truly expecting any. The chance had been lost; he'd almost stage-managed its final moments with his refusal to talk about Macnamara. That way he had expected to nip any trial by hope in the bud. In that, he'd failed. No matter how he tried to forget the interview with Toy, he couldn't. The encounter had thrown him badly off-balance, and his instability was as distressing as its cause. He thought he had learned the art of indifference by now, the same way that children learned that hot water scalds: by painful experience.

He'd had plenty of that. During the first twelve months of his sentence he'd fought against everything and everyone he'd encountered. He'd made no friends that year, nor the least impression on the system; all he'd earned for his troubles were bruises and bad times. In the second year, chastened by defeat, he'd gone underground with his private war; he'd taken up weight training and boxing, and concentrated on the challenge of building and maintaining a body that would serve him when the time for retribution came round. But in the middle of the third year, loneliness had intervened: an ache that no amount of self-inflicted punishment (muscles driven to the pain threshold and beyond, day after day) could disguise. He made a truce that year, with himself and his incarceration. It was an uneasy peace, but things began to improve from then on. He even began to feel at home in the echoing corridors, and in his cell, and in the shrinking enclave of his head, where most pleasurable experience was now a distant memory.