The Extremes

'Hell, 1 guess it doesn't matter any more. Andy was a special agent, with the Bureau.'

'The FBI?'

'You got it.'

'And he was killed on duty?'

'You got it again. In Kingwood City, Texas. Little place no one ever heard of, even people in the USA. Even people in Texas, maybe. just like Bulverton. In fact exactly like Bulverton, except it couldn't have been more ditTerent. You ever hear the name Aronwitz, john Luther Aronwitz?'

'I'm not sure, I'

'Aronwitz lived in Kingwood City,' she went on, talking over him. 'No one knew him, he lived a quiet life. Stayed at home with his mother. People down the store saw him sometimes, but he had no friends anyone knew of He had a few minor felonies on his record. Starting to sound familiar? Well, this was Texas so he drove around in an old pickup, kept to himself, carried a couple of rifles in his gunrack. Nothing unusual for Texas. Real quiet guy, a bit like Gerry Grove? Last year he went berserk, for no reason anyone could ever understand. Picked up his guns and started shooting. Killed and killed and killed. Men, women and children. just like Grove. Didn't care who he shot, only that he shot them. Ended up holed up with a couple of hostages in some goddamned shopping mall, some halfempty place on the edge of town, out on Interstate 20. That's where Andy caught up with him and that's where Andy died. You got the picture, Nick?'

'Yes.'

'You ever hear of this, Nick? Because if you have, you're one of the few people in England who have.'

'I heard about it,' he said. 'The press tried to make something of it. 1 couldn't remember the name of the town. It's better known than-'

'Listen, OK, you're one of the few. Do you know when it happened?'

'Last year, you said. That's right ... the same date.'

'June third last year. That's the day Andy died, and all because a hairball called Aronwitz picked up a gun and lost his mind.'

'The third of June was when'

'Yeah, it was, wasn't it? That was when Gerry Grove flipped his lid. Same day, Nick. The same goddamned day. Quite a coincidence, right?'

Later, when Mrs Simons had tottered off to her room, Nick closed the bar, locked the doors and turned out all the lights. Upstairs, the hotel was silent. He let himself into the bedroom.

Amy was still awake, sitting up in bed and reading a magazine. Her mood had changed; yelling at him seemed to have vented some of the pressure.

CHAPTER 12

At the time of his death Andy Simons was fortytwo years old and working, as he had worked for the previous eighteen years, as a Special Agent with the FBI. He specialized in offender psychology, with particular reference to outburst events, spree killings and relocatory serial killers.

Andy saw himself as a good Bureau man, believing in its methods and dedicated to its causes.

He knew how to relax when away from the Bureau, but while he W as on duty he kept his mind closed to anything but the immediate demands his work made upon him. Although he was still an active enforcement agent, in recent years his work had to a large extent moved off the streets and into the laboratory.

In the Offender Psychology Division attached to the Fredericksburg field office he and thirteen other federal agents were slowly and painstakingly constructing computer models of the psychoneural maps of the known or suspected mentality of disturbed spree killers. Their data had been drawn from the Bureau's own National Crime Information Center, police and ranger records of every state in the country, as well as from many countries in Europe, Latin America and Australasia. The psychopathological profiles they mapped the basis of the computer models extended not only to those of the killers, but also to those of their victims.

The theory under investigation was that in cases of crime traditionally considered to be motiveless in which people became victims apparently only through the mischance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time there was in reality a psychoneural connection between Perpetrator and victim.

A psychological trigger appeared to be involved. lt was not yet entirely clear what that might be, but in effect it was the last straw, the last step, which converted the socially maladjusted or psychopathically unstable from misfit to murderer. The apparently innocent victim was increasingly thought to make a contribution to the release of the trigger.

There were also the more conventional links of cause and effect, which were known and had been studied for most of the century. Resentment at long jail sentences was often cited by captured serial killers as the last straw, turning them on release into murderous soclopaths.

However, the reliability of this was never absolute. It was obviously not the whole story, otherwise every released longterm prisoner would become a serial killer. Other more local or personal factors were thought relevant: a growing grievance against some institution, person or event, an increasing pattern of offending, which frequently included sexual offending, a reduction in socioeconomic status due to unemployment, relocation or domestic upheaval, and so on.

Andy Simons took a special interest in one case, which had become the starting point for the Division's research.

In 1968 an unemployed car worker in Detroit called Mack Stunner had shot and killed three of his former workmates during their lunch break. Stunner hid been sacked by the Ford Motor Company management two days before the incident, the reason being that he had for the last six weeks been persistently late or nonattending at work. On the day of the shooting he had managed to gain entry to the Ford plant during the lunch hour, where it was likely he knew offduty workers would be, even though, as the trial established, the actual victims were not known to him.

Stunner was not a native of Detroit, having been born on the opposite side of Lake Erie in Lorain, Ohio, moving

1

to Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1962, or not long afterwards. After a series of increasingly violent crimes, including several of sexual harassment or abuse, Stunner moved to Detroit, where he found employment. Although by this time he had a long police record, and had served several terms in the state penitentiary, Stunner was given a job by Ford and for the first few months at least was an acceptable worker. He lived alone in a rooming house in the Melvindale area of the city, and did not mix socially wit any of his workmates. At weekends he was a frequent visitor to bars and drinking clubs, where he sometimes bought favours from hostesses.

He was a collector of firearms, and at the time of his arrest was found to possess thirteen different pieces of varying sizes and power. The most formidable weapon he owned was the Iver Johnson M1 carbine he used on his victims, but he also possessed several handguns, one of which he also carried on the day of the crime.

lt was relevant to Stunner's case that the only thing he knew about his victims was that they too worked for Ford, because in this sense his victims were randomly selected. He shot seven of them; three died from their wounds, while the others eventually recovered after stays of different lengths in hospital. After the shooting Stunner was overpowered by Ford security staff, and handed over to the police. Under interrogation, he said that one of the men had repeatedly made a sniffing noise whenever they were on the same shift, this being done deliberately to aggravate him. lt was the only clue he ever gave about his motives.

Stunner's case history was the first one Andy Simons post-investigated in detail when he began working for the Division. Because at the time he first looked at the records most of the people involved were still alive, he was able to re-interview them with modern hindsight, and use the experimental techniques then being developed to map the psychoneural connections between all the participants in the shooting.

For example, the wife of one of the victims had made a deposition that she had frequently seen Stunner in a particular bar, where she happened to work as a waitress. This evidence was not admitted during the trial, because the District Attorney's office had not considered it relevant to the murders. There was no suggestion that Stunner knew the woman or had even noticed her, or, if he had, that he would have been able to identify her as the wife of someone on the same Ford shift as his. However, from the hindsight view taken by the Offender Psychology Division it provided a mappable link between Stunner and one of the men he had murdered.

From the same unfortunate woman, second and third links could be mapped to Stunner: she also happened to be known to the woman who owned the lodging house in Melvindale where Stunner lived.

Finally, she and her husband had, significantly, moved to Detroit within twelve months of the time that Stunner had also arrived in the city. Again, in traditional forensic investigations such a snippet of information would have no relevance to the eventual crime, but in psychoneural mapping terms it was of considerable importance. Relocation, by the perpetrator, the victims, or all of them, was a common circumstance in many spree killings.

In commonsense terms, a perpetrator would of course have dozens of links with people who did not ultimately become his victims. At first glance, these nonsignificant connections seemed to provide no clearer insight than any other forensic work. But Stunner's case was paradigmatic, in

the Division's terms: he had a past record of escalating

1

seriousness, he had made a significant area relocation prior to the incident, he lived and worked in proximity to his victims and there had been a culminating spree event.

Several years of work ensued, in parallel with Andy Simons' regular duties with the Bureau.

The Division's purpose was no less than to produce an integrated database of violent crime in the USA, the emphasis being on what appeared to most civilians to be unpremeditated outbreaks, 'random' attacks on harmless victims, driiveby shootings, chance encounters with serial killers, outbursts of spree attacks in which passersby were wounded or killed.

If patterns of violence emerged they did so unreliably, a fact that seemed constantly to undermine the Division's credibility within some other parts of the Bureau.

While no one involved with the work would ever accept that they were trying to predict such attacks, that was inevitably how it came to be seen. lt became a tiresome habit that agents from other field offices around the country would think it funny to call in to Fredenicksburg, with the news they had just cleared up one case and could they have directions to the next one? As with all predictable workplace jokes, the amusement content declined rapidly.

Agent Simons, part of whose job was to give briefings to authorized visitors to the Fredericksburg field office, described the ultimate purpose of the computer models as area anticipation'.

The Division would eventually be able to show trends, he said, based on geographical, economic and sociological data, in which the likelihood of an outbreak could be measured statistically. Many such results could already be determined from routine police and Bureau intelligence, which again tended to undermine the unique quality of their work, but the principal claim the Division made, using Bureauspeak, was that as data accreted so their anticipatory functions would be more sharply honed.

The reality, Andy had often admitted to Teresa, was that maybe within ten or fifteen years they would have a more accurate picture of the social and other conditions which gave rise to the phenomenon, but that no amount of computer modelling would ever be able to take into account the sheer unpredictability of human nature.

Events on a worldwide basis were also closely monitored by the Division, and where circumstances seemed relevant they made careful assessment of the evidence, followed by a first adumbration of psychoneural mapping. However, it was in the US, crime capital of the world, that most of their data was found.

lt was this kind of work, unexciting, detailed, technical, with no immediate end in view, that Andy Simons was engaged in when an area of Texas to the west of Fort Worth and to the north of Abilene slowly grew into what the Division called psychoneural significance.

This part of the Texas panhandle had traditionally been a farming and ranching area, with high incomes for some and low incomes for most. In the 1950s it had been designated ILI Industrial Low Intensity with no state or federal incentives available for corporations. There were few exploitable oil resources. At the beginning of the 1980s, though, a number of computer and microchip manufacturers moved into the region, attracted by low land prices and taxes. An influx of middleclass population soon followed, which swelled through the middle of the decade, while the oilpnice rise brought a new economic boom to what had always been a prosperous state.

From the Division's perspective, area relocation, the first step in creating the environment for outburst crime, had begun. Towards the end of the decade, when there was a slump in oil prices and the whole taxation and land macroeconomy shifted in emphasis, the newly prosperous silicon industries entered a phase of downsizing and restructuring, with a consequent creation of a large new underclass. The second stage in the process had been reached.

Soon this region of north Texas was suffering a crime wave: aggravated assaults, rapes, armed robberies and homicides. By the beginning of the 1990s, the area had moved in the Division's terms from statistically negligible to statistically acute.

Andy Simons and his team started making trips to the Abilene area, liaising with the Bureau field office and the police department there. Andy kept himself and the rest of his team updated with information about policing numbers, crime statistics and patterns, gun ownership, court sentencing practices, state parole policies.

lt was therefore not entirely a coincidence that Andy Simons should be in Abilene on June 3, a day when a man called john Luther Aronwitz decided to drive his pickup truck to church, with his collection of firearms stashed in the back, ready for use.

CHAPTER 13

Did you ever use a gun, Nick?'

'He had been balancing a spirit bottle on the glass server, the thing that dished out those incredibly small British servings, but when she asked the question she saw him freeze momentarily. Then he finished, and turned towards her. She was on the bar stool again, her arms stretched out across the surface of the counter, her hands surrounding the highball glass without touching it.

'No,' he said. 'Why do you ask?'

'Did you ever want to?'

'No.'

'What about now?'

'It's an academic question. Guns have been outlawed in this country.'

'They've tried banning them in some places in the US. Never worked. People go across the county line, get what they want anyway.'

'You can't do anything like that here. They're illegal right throughout the country.'

'You could go across to France, couldn't you?'

'Some people do.'

'Then why don't you?'

Nick said, testily, 'Look, I'm not interested in guns! lt would never occur to me to do that.'

'OK, calm down. I'm sorry.' She glanced around the room, which at this early hour of the evening was still empty. An early hour, but she had already drunk three large bourbons. She was bored with being in Bulverton, and in spite of all the work she had done she was beginning to feel she was wasting her time. 'I'm just making conversation.'

'Yes.' He picked up two empty beercrates. 'I have to bring some stuff up from the cellar.

Excuse me.'

He left the bar. She wished she had ordered another drink before he went, because her glass was nearly empty. She had come down to the bar this evening with only one thought in mind: to get wiped out as fast as she could, then fall into bed.

She was, though, still sober enough to realize how she must be sounding, and didn't like it.

What on earth had possessed her to start in on him about guns? She clenched her left fist, digging the nails into the palm of her hand. All her life she'd been saying the wrong thing; all her life she had been resolving to be more careful with what she said. Here, of all places! Are you into guns, Nick? Oh yeah, ever since that maniac blew away my parents, and everyone else. Bigmouth American's in town. She felt her neck and face prickling with embarrassment, and she sat rigid, praying that Nick wouldn't return until she was back in control of herself She need not have worried. For whatever reason, he was staying down in the cellar longer than she expected, so she had plenty of time to sweat away her mortification.

She remembered a control technique she had sometimes used: make a list in your mind, straighten your thoughts.

What had she done in the town so far? Local newspaper accounts: done. National newspapers: some done, but the Guardian and Independent computer archives had been down when she tried to access the websites. She'd try again later. Police interviews: completed, but why had so many officers moved away to other towns since the massacre? Did they jump or were they pushed? Video footage: a lot viewed and

a lot more on hand, but she found that most of it had already been shown on CNN and the other US networks.

Witnesses. Ellie Ripon's vagueness about where Steve could be found was explained: he was in Lewes Prison, remanded in custody on a charge of burglary. His lawyer had told Teresa she was hopeful she could get him out on bail when he was taken back to the magistrates the following week. Teresa hoped to interview him then. Her second attempt to talk to Ellie Ripon had been as unsuccessful as the first. She had interviewed Darren Naismith, Mark Edling and Keith Wilson; Grove had been drinking with them before the shooting began. Margaret Lee, the cashier at the Texaco filling station, would not agree to be interviewed, but Teresa had on video a long interview the young woman had given last year to a TV reporter, so that didn't matter too much. Tom and jennie Mercer, the parents of the grievously injured young girl Shelly, had agreed to meet her the following day. She had located and interviewed about a dozen eyewitnesses of the shootings; again, many of them had been reluctant to speak, but Teresa had managed to piece together a fairly good descriptive account of what had happened in the streets. She was still trying to locate Jamie Connors, the little boy who had been trapped in his parents' damaged car, and had watched the last stages of Grove's spree in Eastbourne Road.

Locale: Teresa had covered all the ground of Grove's tragic adventure, from the seafront area of the town to the picnic site in the woods near Ninfield, to the Texaco filling station, and back through the streets of Bulverton itself She had identified and timed every known incident.

There were anomalies she had yet to resolve: there was an unexplained gap in the timing, and an apparent overlap, but she knew that more investigation would probably resolve these.

Amy walked through the bar on some errand or other,

and gave Teresa a nod and a smile. It was the signal of being busy, or at least not wanting to be delayed. As Amy was about to pass out of sight Teresa called after her.

'Amy, may 1 have another drink?'

Without a word the other woman returned, went behind the counter and mixed her a bourbon highball.

'Will you be having a meal with us this evening?' Amy said.

'I haven't decided yet,' Teresa replied, swirling the glass between her fingers, and reflecting that in the Bureau some of the drinking men would say she was already halfway through the main course.

Amy wrote down the price of the drink on Teresa's account, then without saying anything continued with what she had been doing.

Teresa, left alone again, wondered what she had done to offend Amy. They both seemed to be avoiding her. She felt more and more like the loudmouth American, intruding, clumping around insensitively, offending everyone she spoke to. Maybe it was this kind of thing, the undercurrents of unsaid Britishness, that had made her leave England in the first place? No, it wasn't that. She was just a kid then. Wouldn't have known. She drank the whiskey, stopped when she was about halfway down the glass, and put it on the counter in front of her.

She wished she hadn't started drinking so early in the evening. She wished more customers would come into the bar. She wished she was somewhere else.

With the car fights slipping past the frosted panes in glistening blurs, the streaks of rain on the plain glass above highlighted by the streetlamps, and the bright central room light overhead, virtually unshaded, the bar felt bleak and lonely. Thinking that music might change things, she walked across to the jukebox and dropped in a coin, but nothing happened when she tried to make selections. She remembered Nick doing something to disable the instrument when he closed the bar at night, but when she peered behind the machine she could see no obvious switch.

The empty, silent bar was oppressing her, confusing her. She knew she had already drunk too much, and wondered if she should take this last drink to her room, and finish it there before sleeping everything off. Yet again. As she walked back to her seat, weaving between the chairs, she collided with one of the tables, knocking it to one side. She restored it to its position with careful, elaborate movements.

When she sat down she was startled by a sudden impression of brightness, flooding the room as if a stage light had been turned on. She twisted on her stool, and saw that the large windows all along the opposite wall were now lit up, as if by daylight. The impression was so vivid that for a moment Teresa wondered if she had passed out, slept uninterrupted for several hours, and woken up with no perceptible gap.

She put her weight on one leg, half sliding off the stool, ready to cross the room. A movement behind her startled her, and she became aware that a man must have come into the bar from the corridor behind, without her hearing. She turned sharply back towards him. He was tall, quite elderly, greyhaired, and had a face with fine bone structure. His blue eyes were staring past her towards one of the windows. He put down the cloth he was holding and stepped quickly sideways, along behind the counter, still looking anxiously towards the window.

He turned back, and she heard him shout through the door into the corridor: 'Mike! Are you there?'

There was apparently no answer. He lifted the bar flap and went through in a hurry, crossing the barroom. The flap banged back down into place. He walked quickly between the tables, heading for the door that led out to Eastbourne Road.

It was then Teresa realized that several other customers were in the bar. She could see four people, all men. One was sitting at a table, with his beer glass pressed to his lips, but the others were standing, looking and peering, trying to see past and above the frosted panes, into the street outside. The jukebox was playing an old track by Elton john.

There was a series of sharp bangs from outside. The elderly man, almost at the door, ducked down.

He looked back towards the counter.

'Mike!' he shouted. 'There's someone out there with a gun!'

But strangely he went to the door, pulled it open, stepped outside. All four of the other men were at the windows now, stretching up on their toes to see through the clear glass.

In great consternation, her hold on reality abruptly uncertain, Teresa stood away from the bar stool, clinging on to the polished wooden surface of the counter.

The door to the corridor opened, and an elderly but still upright and goodlooking woman came hurriedly into the bar area.

'Jim?' She looked directly at Teresa. 'Did Jim call me?'

'Is Jim the ?'

'He's outside!' one of the men yelled across the room from the window. 'There's some idiot out there with a gun!'

'Jim!'

The woman pushed her way through the bar flap at the same moment as one of the windows exploded into the room with a shattering crash, the glass flying in all directions. All four of the men fell back on to the floor, blood already flooding across the boards. The woman, obviously hit by flying glass, turned sharply away, buried her face in her hands and went down to a halfcrouch, but then she continued towards the street door. Blood was pouring through her fingers. She leaned weakly against the door, and Teresa thought she was going to fall, but she managed to hold on. Brilliant sunlight outlined her. A younger woman rushed into the bar from the road, thrusting her way past the drooping figure. just then there was another series of shots, and the elderly woman was thrown backwards into the room by the impact of the bullets.

As suddenly as it had appeared the impression of daylight vanished, and Teresa found herself alone in the bar again. The overhead lightbulb, the darkened glass of the windows, the dreary emptiness, all as before. How long? A glimpse, a fleeting memory, a few seconds, a few minutes? How long had that gone on?

She was standing where she had been when the window exploded inwards: just a foot or two away from the bar stool, her hand still stretching back to steady herself against the counter.

The jukebox was silent, the bar flap still raised, as the greyhaired woman had left it as she passed through. Had it been open earlier, when Nick was tending the bar? lt was normally closed.

She stared at her unfinished drink, trying not to think what it might be doing to her. And, now she thought about it, there was again that background sense of another migraine attack, looming somewhere, ready to swoop. The drink was her enemy: she couldn't take her tablets if she had been drinking. Not safely, anyway.

She sat down on the stool again, feeling drunk, feeling like a foolish drunk, a drunk who hallucinated, who was about to throw up.

But she held on, and was still sitting miserably at the counter when Nick returned. He was lugging two crates of

beer bottles, one on top of the other. He dumped them heavily on the floor behind the counter.

'Are you OK, Mrs Simons?' he said.

'Teresa, call me Teresa. Am 1 OK? No, 1 guess I'm not. Don't call me Mrs Simons.'

'Can 1 get you anything, Teresa?'

'Not another drink. Never drink on an empty stomach. Look what happens.' She waved a hand vaguely to describe herself

'I could make you a cup of coffee.'

'No, I'll be OK. Don't want any more whiskey. I'll finish this one.'

She didn't mean it though, and sat there staring at the glass while Nick went about stacking the bottles on the refrigerated shelves.

Presently, she said, 'That guy who comes in here sometimes, to help behind the bar?'

'You mean jack?'

'Do I? Is that his name?'

'Jack Masters. He comes in on Saturdays, and some Fridays.'

'Jack. You got anyone who works here called Mike?'

He shook his head. 'Not lately, not while I've been here.'

'A guy called Mike.'

'No.'

'What about an elderly couple? Do they ever work in here, behind the bar? One of them would be called Jim.'

He straightened, and moved the top crate to one side, now it was empty.

'Are you talking about my parents? They used to own this place.'

'I don't think so.'

'My mother's name was Michaela. Dad sometimes called her Mike.'

'Oh shit,' said Teresa. 'Mike. She came in, I saw her. I'm sorry, I'm so drunk. It won't happen again. I'll forget all this. I'm going upstairs.'

She made it somehow, lurching from side to side on the stairs. The nausea of the migraine was rising in her now, and she no longer fought it. She threw up in the toilet bowl, as tidily as possible but with horrible retching sounds that she was convinced would be heard all over the building. She didn't have the energy to be prissy, to care what anyone thought. Afterwards, she washed her face, drank some water, took a Migraleve, then lay on the bed and gave way to everything.

CHAPTER 14

Kingwood City, Texas, was little different from any of the other satellite towns that were growing up around Abilene. Until the coming of the computer companies it had been a small fanning town on the plains, but it had expanded rapidly through the 1980s. The original old centre of the town was now preserved and protected, and sometimes rented by the town council to TV or film companies. Craft shops and wholefood restaurants prospered there.

Alongside was a small but intensively developed downtown area of banks, insurance companies, hotels, finance houses, despatch agents, convention complexes, public relations offices.

To the north of the town, stretching away towards the Texas panhandle, was a strip some five miles in length, lined with shopping malls, plazas, automobile dealerships, drivethru hamburger bars, supermarkets and the mirrorglass industrial complexes that had brought the expansion to the town. In the same area were six newly constructed golf courses, an airfield for private planes and a manna built on the shore of Lake Hubbard. Extensive middleclass suburbs filled the rest, bulging east and west, and down towards Interstate 20 in a new grid pattern.

In winter, Kingwood City suffered under the chill of the northers, the icy winds from the mountains and plains, but during the long summers, from early May to the end otOctober, it sweltered night and day in the high 90s and low 100s, the outside air feeling as unbreathable as furnace fumes.

Andy was in Abilene on June 3, meeting with the section chief of the Bureau field office, Special Agent Dennis Barthel. This was a routine conference, one of many similar ones Andy held with section chiefs around the country, although in recent months the anticipatory demographics of the computer models had given his visits to Texas an extra edge.

While he was in Barthel.'s office, a message came through from the city police that there had been a holdup and shooting at the Baptist church on North Ramsay Street. The gunman had taken a hostage and had driven with her to North Cross shopping mall, where he had shot several more people before the place could be made secure. He was currently cornered in the service bay of the mall, holding two hostages.

The FBI cannot automatically be called in to every crime: its remit is in theory restricted to fewer than three hundred categories of federal violation, although the details of these constantly change as a result of legislation and the process of events. A shooting alone would not normally cause the Bureau to be brought in. There had to be extra features to the offence the involvement of organized crime, the market in narcotics, terrorism, foreign intelligence, or extreme violence and an interstate element to the perpetrator's relocation.

In this case, the gunman had been identified by witnesses at the church as john Luther Aronwitz, who was connected in some way with the church, perhaps as an attender or lay worker. The police computer meanwhile recorded that Aronwitz had gained a record of violent offences while he was living in the neighbouring state of Arkansas. Records of his crimes ceased when he moved to Texas, three years before.

Aronwitz was still at large when Andy Simons drove to

Kingwood City, that sweltering afternoon in June. He went alone. His partner, Danny Schnieder, who had been out of the field office when the call came through, was due to follow as soon as he could. Andy had not paused to call Teresa, apparently because all the signs were that the situation was already under control by the police.

The reality was different. Although Aronwitz was surrounded, the delivery area of the mall had large goods bays, connected at the rear by a long metal passageway, wide enough and high enough to take the forklift trucks that were now abandoned at a number of positions along its length. These, plus the steel doors that separated the bays, gave Aronwitz cover and several possible places of concealment.

When Andy arrived, the police SWAT team were trying to gain access to the delivery bays from inside the building, while Aronwitz was held down by other police staked out in the service area. Two of the police had been shot during the operation; one was killed. One of the hostages was also now dead, and her body lay in full view of the long lenses of the TV

cameras clustered behind the police lines. Aronwitz's score for the afternoon had already reached fourteen dead, and an as yet unknown number of injured.

Andy Simons was to become the fifteenth and last victim.

When his presence at the scene was known, the SWAT officer in charge briefed him on the situation. Andy pointed out that there was usually another way of gaining access to the delivery bay, from the service ducts below. After the feasibility of this had been established, a detachment of SWAT men went with a team from the mall administrator's department to get through to the delivery area that way. Shortly afterwards, Aronwitz was seen to open an inspection hatch behind one of the bays and drop down out of sight. Confident that this signalled an imminent end to the

operation, the SWAT forces moved forward to arrest or deny. Andy followed. A few moments later Aronwitz emerged from another part of the basement area and opened fire on the police.

He died as they returned fire, but not before Andy himself had been struck in the head by a bullet. He was dead within seconds.

CHAPTER 15

Teresa's first thought was, How do they get the cars looking so real? Do they have old cars?

And the city! She whirled round in amazement, staring up at the buildings. Where do they find them, how do they build them? Who are all these people? Are they actors? Do they get paid for doing this?

But there was an armed man further along the street. His name was Howard Unruh, and she had to disarm and apprehend him.

She was in Camden, New jersey, and it was midday on September 9, 1949. She was not in role: this was an ExEx training scenario where the subject brought his or her own identity into the simulation.

Teresa was distracted by the cars, the sound of traffic, the city noises. The street was filled with big saloons and sedans, mostly black or dark grey, some with a lot of chrome, some with running boards, all looking huge and cumbersome and slow. Trucks were upright and noisy.

People in baggy clothes and oldfashioned hats thronged the sidewalks.

It's a movie! she thought. That's how they do it! They hire one of those companies that work out in Hollywood, renting period cars to the studios. They bring in extras from somewhere!

She heard the crack of another shot, sounding closer, but Teresa was still new to extreme experience, and the sheer physical detail of the simulations was a shock to her. She wanted to run into the street, force the traffic to stop, then

lean down and talk to someone in one of the cars. Who are you? How much do you get paid for this? Do you have to give the car back at the end of the day? May 1 take a ride with you?

Where are you going? Can we leave the city? What's beyond? Can you drive me to New York?

She knew everything that happened to her in the scenario was being monitored and recorded, so she began to walk along the street, past large stores and downtown office buildings. It was like the first few minutes in a foreign country: everything looked, sounded and smelled different. Her senses tingled. She heard old-fashioned honking car horns, engines that sounded untuned and rickety, a bell ringing somewhere, crowds of people, voices with the unmistakable New jersey accent. The air smelled of coal smoke and engine oil and sweat.

Every detail was authentic, painstakingly exact. The longer she was there, the more she noticed: women's makeup looked false and overapplied; people's clothes looked shapeless and unsuitable; advertisemerits were painted on walls, or stuck up as paper posters; not much neon anywhere, no backlit logos; no creditcard signs on doors.

lt not only felt strange it felt unsafe, a place that existed on the edge of chaos. A reminder of this came with another outbreak of shooting.

Other people were noticing the gunfire. A crowd had gathered at the next intersection and were staring down the street. She wanted to stand with them, listen to what they said, hear their accents, find out what they knew.

Remembering at last why she was there, Teresa reached into the shoulder holster beneath her jacket and pulled her gun. She set off down the street, looking for Howard Unruh.

Twenty yards further along two cops drove by her, heading down the same way. One of them sat by the open

window, holding a rifle in both hands, the barrel pointing out at the street. He saw Teresa, said something, and the car braked sharply to a halt. Teresa turned towards them, but the cop with the rifle aimed at her chest and killed her with his first shot.

Dan Kazinsky, her instructor at the FBI Academy in Quantico, said, 'You don't pull your gun till you need it. You don't run down the street with a gun in your hand. You specially don't run down a street with a gun in your hand when there's someone up there at the end of it firing, and when there are other agencies at the scene of crime trained in summary termination of the situation. Soon as you see a cop, show him your ID. It's his city, not yours.

Keep your mind on your work, Agent Simons.'

'Yes, sir.'

'And quit rubbernecking.'

'Yes, sir.'

Teresa took it as calmly as she could. She replayed the video, made notes, put in more hours on the shooting range. She went again to the offender profile workshops from which she had already graduated. She wrote a paper on armed intercession. She tried again.

It's a movie! she thought. That's how they do it! They hire one of those companies that work out in Hollywood, renting period cars to the studios. They bring in extras from somewhere!

She was amazed by the amount of trouble they had gone to in the cause of making it authentic.

There was the crack of another shot, sounding closer. She moved quickly to the intersection, where a crowd had gathered, staring down the street. She was briefly amazed by the men's baggy clothes, the women's garish lipstick.

She slipped a hand under her jacket, checked the weapon

was ready for quick retrieval, then walked warily down the street towards the sound of the shooting. When another shot came, she realized Howard Unruh was positioned on the opposite side of the street, so she crossed quickly, darting between the bulky saloons and sedans, finding cover against the walls of the buildings.

A police patrol car went down the street. One of the cops sat by the open window, holding a rifle in both hands, the barrel pointing out at the street. He saw Teresa, said something to the driver, and the car braked sharply to a halt. Teresa pulled out her Bureau ID from its clip on her belt, held it aloft; the cops nodded their acknowledgement, and the car accelerated away.

Teresa saw the first body slumped against a garbage can at the street corner. One of the man's arms had hooked itself into the top of the can, holding him in place. His head lolled, and blood poured from wounds in his neck and back. A bullet flew past her, and Teresa threw herself on the ground behind the can. The shot had come from a window somewhere above her. The man's dead face looked blankly at her. She backed away in horror, scrambled back round the corner. She pulled her gun, cocked it, settled it comfortably in her hands, held it high in front of her.

She entered the building through the main doors, seeing more bodies lying in the lobby.

Some people were still alive, and they called out to her for help as she passed through, the gun seeking before her at every obstruction, every corner. She was in a bank, she thought. All this marble, the big windows, the long counters.

There were police outside, shouting up with bullhorns to where Unruh must be hidden.

Teresa paused. trying to remember the rule book. She could intercede, attempt the apprehension of the gunman alone or with any other members of the Bureau assigned to the incident. Or she

could put herself at the disposal of the police, until Bureau reinforcements were sent in. She thought hard. This was not real; this was training. Would they send her into this only for her to throw in her lot with the city police?

She knew the answer, and dashed across the rest of the long lobby, pushing quickly but cautiously through double swing doors, to where there was a cage elevator built in the well of the staircase.

She took the steps two at a time, the gun always questing before her. She paused, listening, thinking, aiming ahead, at every corner. At the next level there was another pair of swing doors; Teresa trained her gun on them in case Unruh came through.

Then he did, pushing through with his back towards her. He was crouching, moving with great caution.

FBI!' Teresa screamed. 'Freeze!'

Unruh turned in surprise towards her, holding his rifle. He worked the action without haste, but with deadly attention; she heard a mechanical process with loud clicks. Calmly he raised the weapon towards her, and squeezed the trigger.

'Oh shit,' Teresa said, and then his bullet struck her in the throat.

Agent Dan Kazinsky said, 'This is 1949. We don't shout "Freeze" to suspects.'

'I'm training for now, sir,' Teresa said.

'You got to be in role, Agent Simons,' said Kazinsky. 'None of this is made up. Howard Unruh was a real man, the event you're entering is a piece of Bureau history. Mr Unruh went through World War 11 in the US Army, in the Tank Corps. He came out 1946 with a stolen service rifle, and in 1949 he used it to kill thirteen innocent people in Camden, New jersey. He was apprehended by agents from

the Bureau, and because he was judged insane spent the rest of his life in a federal pen.'

'Yes, sir,' said Teresa, who had researched the Unruh case before going into the ExEx the first time. 'How do they get all those details of the city right? The cars and all?'

'Beats me. Aren't they something? That authentic detail is there to help you. Next time look at yourself in a shop window, or a mirror if you can find one. Familiarize yourself with the clothes you're in, the way your hair is done, how you look. Feel the part. Your task is to apprehend Mr Unruh, either alone or with other members of a Bureau team, depending on how you read the situation on the ground. Are you ready to go in again.

'I've got a medical note, sir,' said Teresa. 'I'm scheduled for another session next week, but I'm having trouble with the valve.'

She indicated the plastic seal on her neck, which was protected by a square of lint and some BandAids. The incision on her neck had gone septic after the latest entry to the Unruh ExEx, requiring it to be cleaned and the valve to be replaced, and delaying her training course by an extra three days.

She wasn't sure yet if she welcomed or resented the delay. More of this kind of training lay ahead, a great deal more, and so far it had not gone well. She was tom between trying to rush through it and get it over with, and backing off, preparing more thoroughly and getting it right. Andy had completed a similar course two years before her, and described it as a pushover. Maybe it had been a pushover for him, but Teresa knew that some of the other trainees were having as hard a time as she was. Not all, though. Harriet Lupi had also suffered a septic neck valve, but it had cleared up quickly and her training was already ahead of Teresa's.

The next day, the nursing sister in the medical wing told Teresa her neck infection was clearing up, and authorized her for ExEx duties again.

She was in a bank, she thought. All this marble, the big windows, the long counters. There were police outside, shouting up with bullhoms to where Unruh must be hidden. She dashed across the rest of the long lobby, pushing quickly but cautiously through double swing doors, to where there was a cage elevator built in the well of the staircase.

She took the steps two at a time, her gun always questing before her. She paused, listening, thinking, aiming ahead, at every corner. At the next level there was another pair of swing doors; Teresa trained her gun on them in case Unruh came through. She saw a shadow moving beyond, so she stepped across to them, kicked one of the doors open. Unruh was there, his rifle held ready. He turned towards her.

'Drop the gun!' Teresa shouted, but Unruh, with unhurried movements worked the action; she heard a mechanical process with loud clicks. Calmly he raised the weapon towards her, and she fired. Her bullet caught him in his arm. He spun round and away from her, and the rifle clattered to the floor. Half crouching, he pulled an automatic from his belt and tried to aim it at her. Teresa moved swiftly behind him, her gun trained on his head.

'Drop the gun, and he flat!' she yelled, and within a few moments Howard Unruh did exactly that.

'Harriet? It's Teresa.'

'Hi! How you doing?'

'I got him! 1 got Unruh!'

'You did? 1 never could. 1 managed to wound him, but 1 was out of ammunition. The city police came in and

dragged him away. Dan Kazinsky flunked me, and moved me on. How did you do it?'

Later in the phone call, Teresa said, 'Harriet, have you ever been to Camden, New Jersey?'

'No, I haven't. Have you?'

'I feel as if I have. How the hell do they do that? All those cars and buildings! They're so real!'

'Have you ever been to Texas on a hot day?'

'No.'

'Then you haven't done Whitman yet. That right?'

'Yes.'

'Whitman's next. It's real tough. And it'll make you sick.'

lt was noon on August 1, 1966, Austin, Texas. A former boy scout and Marine called Charles Joseph Whitman was on the observation deck of the University of Texas Tower, overlooking Guadalupe Street, 'the Drag'. In his possession was a 6mm Remington Magnum rifle with fourpower Leupold telescopic sight. He also had with him a rented handcart and a green duffel bag. In the bag, and spread around him, were packets of Planters Peanuts, sandwiches, cans of Spam and fruit cocktail, a box of raisins, two jerrycans, one containing water and the other three gallons of gasoline, rope, binoculars, canteens, a plastic bottle of Mennen spray deodorant, toilet paper, a machete, a Bowie knife, a hatchet, a .35calibre Remington rifle, a

.30calibre carbine, a .357 Magnum Smith & Wesson pistol, a 9mm Luger automatic, a 12gauge shotgun with sawnoff barrel and stock, a Galesi-Brescia handgun, some thirtyshot magazines, and over seven hundred rounds of ammunition.

During the previous night Whitman had murdered first his mother, then his wife. On his way into the UT Tower a few minutes earlier he had shot and killed a receptionist and a family of visitors. Now he was leaning on the parapet,

peering through the telescopic sight at the crowds on the Drag below.

In the heat and humidity of the Texan midsummer, Teresa Simons, unaware of the sniper at the top of the tower, was looking at the handmade sandals on one of the craft stalls. The humid air smelt of cedarwood, hot roadtar and the incense that several stallholders were burning. On one of the other stalls the Beatles' new single 'Paperback Writer' was playing loudly. Teresa smiled and listened to the words; the song reminded her of a boy she'd known for a while, twenty years ago.

She moved on down, looking at the goods displayed on another stall: brightly coloured posters, tasselled leather shoulderbags, embroidered muslin shirts and equipment for growing cannabis. She was Whitman's first victim, and died from a shot through her back.

The Austin Tower ExEx was one of the toughest assignments on the course, and Teresa was involved with the challenge it presented for most of a winter. But she got her man in the end.

CHAPTER 16

At lunchtime Teresa went to the hotel bar, where she knew she could order some sandwiches.

Amy brought them to her, looking and sounding more friendly than at their last encounter, but after that she left Teresa alone in the bar. Teresa drank a glass of chilled mineral water, feeling virtuous, and a small cup of coffee afterwards. The bar remained solidly normal. Nick and Amy appeared at intervals, going about their business, serving the handful of other customers who appeared.

Back in her room she again consulted her streetmap of Bulverton. She located Welton Road: it was in a small grid of streets close to the Ridge, the ring road that followed the fine of hills to the north of the town, forming an effective boundary with the countryside.

She drove up to Welton Road and found that it was part of a recently built industrial estate. A number of large, undistinguished buildings, constructed of prefabricated concrete with brick facing, lined the streets. Most of the businesses appeared to be light industry: she saw signs for computer software companies, packaging suppliers, manufacturers of electronic components, package couriers. In this environment the extreme experience building blended effortlessly. She drove past it twice before she located it. All it had was a discreet white sign next to the door announcing: GUNHO ExEx. The place had few windows, and only one entrance area; in front of the building there was a wide parking lot. Teresa drove in, but could find no spaces left

and had to move to a place on the side of the road a couple of hundred yards away.

She was locking the car when she became aware that someone was leaving the building. She instantly recognized him: it was the man she had seen talking aggressively to Amy in the Old Town market. Teresa moved at once to the rear of the car and opened the hatch door. Using the raised door as cover she looked up the road through the tilted glass of the window. The man walked briskly from the main entrance, strode through the parking lot and went to a car parked not far from her own. He did not appear to notice her, nor should there be any reason why he would.

She waited until he had driven away, not fully understanding why she felt the need to stay out of his sight. She closed and locked her car, then walked across to the building. A pair of double glass doors led into a conventional reception area, where a young woman sat behind a large desk.

There seemed to be people everywhere. Five people were sitting in a waiting area opposite the reception desk, and there were two others already in a fine in front of her at the desk. The young receptionist was speaking on the telephone, and writing on a pad of paper with her free hand. To one side of her desk there was a pile of wrapped packages, apparently awaiting collection or delivery.

Beyond the waiting area, on the side, there was a door with a glass panel, and as it appeared she was going to have to wait for several minutes Teresa sauntered across to it and peered through. Above the door was a large sign, the lettering drawn in a brilliant emulation of the kind of spraypaint graffiti you saw everywhere: CYBERVILLE UK. It was a long, windowless room, not brightly lit, equipped with at least a dozen PCs. Each computer was in use, with someone staring raptly at the screen. Teresa realized that the place was an internet cafe: website graphics were constantly loading and wiping, as the endless search for data went on. At the far end of the room were some arcade games machines, but these were not being used. Most of the computer users looked remarkably young.

She returned to the reception desk, and waited her turn. At last, the young woman, identified on her lapel badge as Paula Willson of Customer Services Dept., was free.

'May 1 help you?' she said.

1'd like to make use of the ExEx equipment here.'

'Yes, we have that facility. Are you a member?'

'No. Do 1 have to be?'

'Yes, unless you're already a member of one of our associate clubs.'

'I've used ExEx in the States,' Teresa said. 'But not on public equipment. lt was ... training equipment.'

Paula Willson passed her a form from a large pile on her desk.

'lf you would fill this in,' she said, 'we can enrol you straight away. Were you planning on using the equipment today?'

'Yes, 1 was. If that's possible.'

'We're always booked up, but there are a few slots free this afternoon. Weekdays are better than weekends.' She had turned the form round on the desk, and was indicating it with a finger. 'AH we need from you is some form of identification, and we do require a membership fee when you enrol. We accept all major credit cards.'

'When I've filled this out, 1 give it back to you?'

'Yes. May 1 help you?'

She had turned to the two people standing behind Teresa, who had come in from outside while they were talking. Teresa picked up the form and took it across to the waiting area. She found a space on one of the black leather sofas, and

leaned forward to lay the form on the glasstopped table in front of her. The page was headed GunHo Corporation Extreme Experience and Internet Access.

lt was a lowintensity form compared with some of the ones she had had to complete in the US; there were the usual questions concerning identity, status, finances and occupation, none of which bothered her. She hesitated over the questions about her job, wondering how she should describe it. There was no official Bureau policy on this, although when answering similar form questions in the US she and other agents usually named their employer in vague terms, such as 'US Government' or 'Dept. of justice', and their Job as 'civil servant' or 'federal employee'. For the time being she left this box blank, and turned over the page.

Here she found a list of questions about her intended use of the equipment, ranging from email, internet conferencing and access to website browsing, to use of extreme experience scenarios general and specific uses, with a long list of the latter and training modules. She glanced through the list, remarking to herself on the extent of what was on offer.

She confined herself to two choices: the general scenario option, because she was unclear about what was available and this seemed to open the way to the rest, and from the training modules 'Target Practice: Handgun'. A note to this one said that applicants were required to produce accreditation or licence, and a police or employer's reference also had to be produced.

She ringed it anyway, then returned to the front of the form. In the box enquiring about her employer, she wrote 'US Dept. of Justice FBI', she described herself as federal agent', and in the Number of Years Employed box she wrote '16'.

After another wait at the reception desk Teresa handed in her form, and waited while Paula Willson checked through it.

,Thank you,' she said after a moment. 'May I have some identification, Mrs Simons, and your credit card?'

Teresa handed over her Baltimore First National Visa, and her Bureau ID. The young woman ran the card through the electronic swipe, and while waiting for a response she glanced at the ID. She handed it back without comment, then typed a few entries on the keyboard in front of her.

Finally she said, 'I'm afraid I'm not able to assign handgun target-practice authorization myself. Would you mind waiting for a few minutes, and I'll ask our duty manager to see you?'

'No, of course not. You said there were some slots free this afternoon. Assuming 1 get the goahead, can 1 book one of them now?'

Paula Willson looked surprised, but she typed at the keyboard, and in a moment said, 'Well, we have target range software free at threethirty, in Just under an hour. And there's another slot at five. Or would you prefer to use the general scenarios?'

'I'll take the threethirty slot, for target practice.' The words came out quickly. Teresa was still apprehensive about the full scenarios, the extraordinary onslaught of physical sensations, the dislocation from reality. On the other hand, she knew what ExEx target ranges were like and they were regularly used by the Bureau. But she asked, 'What about the other scenarios?'

'We have nothing free today. There are a couple of hours available tomorrow.'

Teresa considered, not having expected there would be a delay. She had thought it would be something she could just walk into, as she had done at the Academy.

'Are you always as busy as this?' she said.

'Pretty much. ExEx has recently become much more popular than it was even a year ago.

The problem's worse at some of the bigger centres. There's a fourmonth waiting list for membership at our centre in Maidstone, for instance. In London and some of the other big cities you have to wait nearly a year. They're planning to close membership here soon. We're running at capacity, just about.'

'I hadn't realized ExEx had grown as big as this.'

'It's big.' The young woman's eyes flicked towards the screen. 'What shall 1 do? Book you in provisionally for the threethirty slot?'

'Yes. Thanks. After that, I'll book some other time ahead.'

A printer built into the body of the desk emitted a familiar muted screech, and a curl of paper came jerkily into view. Paula Willson ripped it off, and passed it to Teresa for her signature. lt was a creditcard charge slip.

' 1'd better let you have our current price list,' the receptionist said, and gave Teresa a folded brochure printed on glossy paper. 'We'll send the membership folder to you in due course.'

' You assume they're going to let me in,' Teresa said.

'I don't expect there'll be a problem,' said Paula Willson. 'I think you're the first FBI agent they've had in this centre.'

CHAPTER 17

May I speak with Ms Amy Colwyn, please?' lt was a determined American voice: male, making an effort to be polite.

'This is she,' Amy said, but then corrected herself. 'Speaking.'

'Ms Colwyn, this is to advise you that we win be checking in at your hotel this evening.'

'Who is that, please?'

'This is Ken Mitchell, of the GunHo Corporation. We have some reservations with you, made by our head office in Taiwan?' His voice rose, as if asking a question, but it was unmistakably a statement. 'Is this the White Dragon Hotel?'

'Yes, sir. We are expecting you this evening.'

'OK. We've just landed at London Heathrow and I've picked up a file copy of the reservation, and 1 want to advise you that our company always makes it a condition of reservation that in a small hotel like yours we expect to have sole occupation. 1 see you have not confirmed this in your letter, although you would have been advised of the condition when the reservation was made.'

' Sole occupation?' Amy said.

'Yeah, 1 know this would have been discussed. We like the place to ourselves.'

'I confirmed the reservation myself 1 don't remember this coming up. But all our rooms are completely private '

'I'm not getting this across to you, am I? No other people in the place. You got that?'

'Yes, Mr Mitchell.'

'OK, we'll be with you directly.'

'Do you know how to find the hotel, sir? 1 can arrange to have someone pick you up from the station'

'We don't go anywhere by train,' said Mr Ken Mitchell from Taiwan, and put down the phone.

A little later, Amy looked into the bar. Nick was sitting there alone, a newspaper propped up on his knee and spreading untidily across the counter.

'Have you seen Mrs Simons this afternoon?' she asked him.

'No.' He didn't look up. 'I think she went out somewhere. Not in her room?'

'I've had those American people from Taiwan on the phone. They say they don't want anyone else staying here at the same time as them.'

'That's bad luck.' He put down the newspaper, and took a sip from the glass at his side. 'Not much we can do about

'I didn't like the sound of it,' Amy said. 'He seemed pretty certain of what he wanted.'

'Maybe somewhere else could take them in.'

'Are you serious? Do you realize how much money these people could make us?'

'Well, maybe Mrs Simons would like to move to another hotel. You said she wasn't happy about something.'

'No, 1 did ask her,' Amy said. 'She told me she had no complaints, and wanted to stay.'

'Then what are you asking me?'

'It's your hotel, Nick! These people from Taiwan are deterrmined to have the place to themselves, or sounded like it. What's the law? Can they insist on us throwing out another guest?'

'The only person who can do that is me. And I'm not about to.'

His eyes kept straying towards the newspaper, and Amy felt herself getting irritated with him. She left him there, and went to be by herself in the tiny office.

She sat down behind the desk, staring blankly and distractedly at the mess of papers before noticing the bills that had come in during the last week. Nick had tossed them in a heap on the desk. She leafed through them, then looked around for their latest bank statement. She switched on the computer and after it had booted she put up on the screen the spreadsheet file where she kept the list of cheques they had paid. She looked over them, noted a few differences, and within a few minutes was contentedly occupied by the familiar drudgery of checking her own bookkeeping.

'I'm going upstairs for a bath,' Nick said from the doorway, and tossed in the newspaper. lt landed on the desk, dislodging pieces of paper she had only iust sorted out.

'Anyone in the bar?' she called after him.

'Not at the moment.'

She glared after him, then surrendered once again to the familiar sensation of being trapped in this hotel. She still hadn't completely worked out her feelings about Nick, or even about why she had moved back in with him. Running the hotel was displacement activity of a sort, a postponement of decisions about her own life.

A day never passed when she did not think to herself how easy it would be to leave. But inevitably there was another thought that always followed: leave, yes, but in which direction?

There was nowhere in Bulverton for her, nowhere in Eastbourne or any of the other resort towns along the coast. She had done all that when she was Younger, and she was uncomfortably aware of how long ago that now was. Everything had changed. jase dead, of course,

but all her old friends were married, or had left town. They wouldn't be a solution, anyway: the discontent was inside herself. If she really wanted to improve her life she would have to make a clean break, head away from Bulverton and Sussex. London, of course, was the obvious place, but that didn't appeal. Or somewhere abroad? Once again she dreamed of having the guts to take up Gwyneth's invitation, and give the life in Sydney a try.

But there, or wherever she went, in the end there would be another Nick Surtees.

Nothing appealed. There was only this: a list of cheques recorded in a computer, which she had just about made to agree with the bank statement. They were more broke than she had thought, or maybe remembered. The overdraft was appreciably larger, while takings were continuing to drift down. Only the prospect of guests staying in the hotel gave any hope: the income was erratic, but even when only one person was staying, like Teresa Simons, the place could operate profitably.

Did Nick know this? If he knew, did he care? She remembered his disagreeable expression when he went upstairs, and she listened to the knocking in the plumbing as he ran the water for his bath, as if it were a drumming refrain of why she now regretted her life.

What on earth had brought her back to him? By the time she had realized what she was letting herself in for, she was in for it. She knew you should never blow over old coals; she remembered her mother mystifying her with this saying when she was a child, but it had a meaning after all. lt reminded her of how many times her parents had split up after rows, then blown noisily over their own old coals as they tried to put everything right again. But now there was Nick. Their relationship hadn't worked properly when they were in their teens, and after the recent months with him

she knew it probably never would.

Even so, she was trapped by past events. AR this would continue.

She heard the outside door to the car park open and close, so she trundled her wheeled office chair back from the desk, and craned her neck so she could see along the corridor. Teresa was heading for the staircase, with a heavy shoulderbag weighing her down to one side.

'Mrs Simons! Teresa!'

The American paused, then walked down the corridor towards her.

'Hi,' she said, looking tired but cheerful.

'I was wondering if you planned to be in the hotel for dinner tonight?'

'I guess 1 don't know yet. Yeah, why not? What do you have in mind?'

'Anything you like.' Amy pulled down the menu from the top of the filing cabinet and passed it to her. 'We've got most of what's there in the freezer, but if you would like to decide now, or you want something else, I've still got time to buy it fresh for you.'

Teresa scanned the menu, but quickly, obviously with her mind on something else.

'Maybe I'll decide later,' she said in the end and passed the card back. 'I'm not hungry yet.'

Amy wished she hadn't brought up the subject. She had really intended to ask Teresa as gently as possible how she would feel about moving to another hotel, but when it came to it she hadn't been able to find the words. Or even the wish to find the words.

She stared up at Teresa, again putting off the evil moment and wishing Nick was there to do it instead. She wondered what time these Taiwanese with American names and accents were likely to arrive, but also she was wondering

how she could find out the law on hotel licensing. Could one guest, or one set of guests, really demand that they be the only people allowed in the building as guests? She supposed film stars, or visiting politicians, might do this sometimes, but she suspected that that would be better or more delicately organized. Anyway film stars would never stay in a place like the White Dragon, so it wouldn't arise. Maybe money was the way it was done: people who wanted solitude paid for every available room in the hotel and used only the ones they wanted. But what would they do about people who were already staying there?

Teresa said, 'I've got work I need to do upstairs. I'll be down for a drink a little later.'

'All right. 1 think Nick would like to talk to you about something.'

'Any idea what?' Teresa said. Amy shook her head, still evading an issue she saw increasingly as Nick's, not her own. 'OK, I'll see you later.'

She lifted and eased the heavy shoulderbag, then swung round. In a moment, Amy heard her footsteps as she went up the stairs.

Amy took down the bookings ledger, and found the thin file of faxes she had exchanged with Mr A. Li in Taiwan. She carefully checked through what had been written on every scrap of paper she had received. In essence this was that the GunHo Corporation of Taipei required separate rooms with double beds for four adult guests, two men, two women, surnames Kravitz, Mitchell, Wendell and Jensen. All expenses run up by the guests were to be allocated to the corporate account, and at the end of each week one of the four named guests would check and sign the account, after which it should be faxed to Mr Li in the Taipei office. A draft in US dollars or UK pounds, based on this amount,

would then be available from the Midland Bank in Bulverton, and would be paid to them on demand. The booking was confirmed initially for two weeks only, but there was an option to extend the arrangement indefinitely. All enquiries would be dealt with by Mr Li.

Amy could not see any mention anywhere of them requiring exclusive use of the hotel.

She glanced at her wristwatch and mentally calculated how long it would take to drive to Bulverton from Heathrow. She reckoned the earliest they could arrive would be within the next hour, but they would certainly be here by the evening. Still she had done nothing.

She went upstairs to find Nick. He was lying on the bed, naked, and smoking a cigarette.

'It's the middle of the day, and there's nothing doing,' he said. 'Want to come to bed for a while?'

Her first instinct was to turn round and walk out of the room. She still enjoyed all that with Nick, but these days he seemed to want to spend most afternoons in bed. instead, she decided to shrug it off.

'There's something I need to know,' she said. 'It's pretty urgent. Is that true what you said?

That you're the only one who can make a guest leave the hotel?'

'What's bothering you, Amy?'

'I was trying to tell you earlier.'

'Don't worry about it.'

She sat down on the edge of the bed, and in spite of herself she laid a hand on his chest. His skin felt clean and smooth and warm.

'I don't want us to lose the money,' she said. 'This booking could solve a lot of financial problems for us. Well, for you, but that means me too.'

'Leave it to me. I've brought in an extra double bed for them, and that'll keep them happy.

When are they arriving?'

'Any minute now. They called from Heathrow an hour or two ago, and said they were going to drive down.'

'It always takes longer than people think,' Nick said, rolling towards her. 'Come on, get your clothes off.'

'No, 1 want to stay downstairs in case they arrive.'

He said no more but began pulling determinedly at the buttons down the front of her dress.

In his haste he fumbled them, so she pulled away from him and slipped the dress off. She lay down next to him, enjoying the sensation, as always, of him slipping his hands beneath her undies and sliding them down her skin.

Later, they were still lying against each other when they heard the sound of a heavyengined vehicle pulling into the car park beneath their window. They could hear the gears clanging in and out, as the driver eased to and fro in the confined space.

'That's them!' Amy said. 'I know it'll be the Americans.'

She rolled away from Nick and he turned over on to his side in simulated disgust; in fact, Amy knew only too well that once they finished lovemaking during the afternoons he was usually quick to move away from her and either take a short nap or get back to reading his newspaper.

She hurried naked from the bed. Crouching down by the window she peeked into the yard and saw a long truck, painted an unobtrusive dark green, being manoeuvred into the parking bay next to Teresa Simons' rented car. lt had what appeared to be a collapsible satellite dish folded down into a special cavity built into the roof The number 14 was next to this, painted in a lighter shade of green. Amy wondered briefly why anyone should want to paint an identifying number on the roof of a van, where only a few people would ever be able to see it.

A young woman with short, palebrown hair climbed down from the passenger door, and went to the back of the

van to help guide the driver into the parking bay. She glanced up at Amy's window, and for a moment their eyes met.

Even though she knew only her head could be seen from the low angle from the yard, Amy backed away and rushed over to retrieve her clothes from the floor beside the bed.

'They're here!' Amy said to Nick. She wrapped her bra round her with the cups at the back, hooked it together beneath her breasts, then twisted it round and pulled the straps into place.

She stepped into her pants, and looked around for her dress. Nick had rolled on to his side and was either reading, or pretending to read, yesterday's copy of the newspaper. 'It's all right, Nick,' she said. 'I can manage downstairs on my own.'

'I knew you would.'

But he grinned affably at her, threw the newspaper on the floor by the side of the bed, and after a quick and furtive glance into the car park began to put on his clothes. She was finished before him, but he grabbed her and gave her a quick kiss.

11,11 cook dinner tonight, if you like,' he said. 'And do the bar.'

'You don't have to.'

'Maybe 1 do. It's been long enough.'

'Has something happened to you? Good news or something?'

'No ... but I'll cook the meals tonight anyway. I feel like it.'

She returned his kiss, then pushed him away with both hands flat against his chest.

'These people will want to check in,' she said.

Amy was downstairs in the reception area before any of the Americans appeared, and had time to compose herself,

making it look as if she had been busy with paperwork for some time. A few seconds later the door from the car park opened and Amy, without looking up, was aware of two figures entering.

'Good afternoon, ma'am,' said a polite American voice.

She stood up and turned to the counter. lt was a man in his middle thirties, and the young woman she had seen from the upstairs window.

'Good afternoon,' she said.

'We'd like to register, if we may?' The rising inflection again.

Amy pushed forward the pad of registration cards.

'If you would fill out four of those, please,' she said. 'And may 1 see your passports?'

'Of course.'

The formalities went ahead without a hitch. The remaining two people came in behind, and took their turn at filling out the cards.

'Your reservation was for four single rooms, each with a double bed?'

'Right. 1

'OK, but we don't have many rooms in the hotel, and so we have had to split you up. There are two rooms next to each other on the first floor, and two more on the floor above. That's what you call the second and third floor, 1 think. Anyway, the rooms are separated only by a staircase.'

They were nodding. Amy spread the electronically coded room keycards across the top of the counter, deliberately making a clattering noise with them. She wondered how the Americans would allocate the rooms: would the women take the two adjacent ones? The two on the top floor, tucked under the eaves of the old roof, were smaller than the others, but they had a distant view of the sea.

'I guess that'll be OK,' said the man who Amy now knew

from his registration card was called Dennis Kravitz. He glanced around at the others. They all nodded or shrugged. one of the women Acie Jensen, according to her card had taken down a handful of leaflets from the tourist noticeboard, and was looking through them.

'Listen, we have a van out there with some expensive equipment,' Kravitz said. 'I noticed you don't have a gate on your parking lot. Is there any way we can secure it at might?'

'There's an intruder light over the yard. If you wish we can put up a parking bar in front of the vehicle to stop someone trying to drive it away.'

Dennis Kravitz frowned.

'It's not the vehicle we're too concerned about,' he said, pronouncing it veehicle. 'But the equipment we've got inside. If the yard isn't gated, how can we be sure no one's going to take a look?'

'I'm sure it'll be all right,' Amy said. 'There isn't much crime in Bulverton.'

'That isn't what we heard,' said Acie Jensen from across the room, not looking up from a leaflet about Bodiam. Castle.

'Not that sort of crime,' Amy said stoutly.

'Suit yourself,' the woman said, losing interest. She crossed the room and spoke quietly to the others. They picked up their key-cards and all went towards the rooms without any further remarks. If they'd asked, Amy could have offered to arrange for Nick to help carry up some of their baggage, but they seemed uninterested in having assistance.

For a while the four Americans moved to and fro in the reception area, picking up suitcases and other baggage from the van in the yard and carrying it in, but before long the hotel had quietened down again.

True to his promise Nick came down not much later,

glanced through some of the paperwork on the desk in the office and then went to the kitchen. Amy stayed on in the reception area, listening to the sounds she could now hear in the building: footsteps on the ancient floors above her head, water moving through the almost equally old plumbing, Nick clattering around in the kitchen. Amy realized that this was the first time the hotel had had more than one or two overnight guests since the few days that followed the massacre. Maybe life in the end really was capable of returning to a semblance of normality.

Half an hour later Teresa Simons came in again from outside through the main door, gave Amy a friendly smile, then headed off upstairs to her room.

CHAPTER 18

Teresa returned to the ExEx building the following morning. She used the two hours of scenario time she had, after all, decided to book, after she had made her timid venture into the shallows of virtual target practice.

She was however still nervous of plunging fully into unknown worlds of virtuality, and once she was inside the simulations suite she asked the technician to help her.

'Are you a new user?' the young man said. His lapel badge identified him as Angus jackson, Customer Liaison.

'I've trained with ExEx in the US,' Teresa said. 'Interdiction scenarios.'

'Were those terminal, or nonterrminal?'

'They were both.' Believing that there was no longer any point blurring the truth about her job, Teresa described the kind of scenarios she had used.

'OK,' said Angus jackson. 'We have plenty of those. Now 1 assume you know how to abort a scenario?'

'Yeah. LIVER is What we use in the Bureau.'

'I don't know it.'

Teresa explained the acronym, and at once he nodded his understanding. They had a different mnemonic, but it had the same effect. He left her for a couple of minutes, then returned with the familiar scaled phial of nanochips.

'Let me explain what I've done,' he said. 'We do anthology packages for new users, and this one is a randomized selection of the kind of scenarios that many lawenforcement agencies are currently using. You will

possibly recognize some of them. It's a real mixture, drawn from a library of about nine hundred different situations. You've booked two hours, so either you can surf through the selection until your time's up, when you'll be pulled out automatically, or you can abort when you've had enough.'

'Are we talking terminal or nonterminal?' Teresa asked.

'These are all nonterminal. Is that OK?'

'I prefer that. Yes.'

Teresa roamed around the familiar world of outburst violence, tackling each problem as it was presented to her, using whatever weapons were supplied by the writers of the software.

In Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1995, there was a knife fight in a salsa club; this was tricky because of the darkness inside the club, but it took only a single disabling shot to bring the dispute to an end. LIVER. In Sydney, Australia, 1989, a young drug addict had run amok with a handgun; this had a fairly straightforward interdictandarrest resolution, but one which she found physically demanding. LIVER. In Kansas City, Missouri, 1967, and still out of breath from the last scenario, Teresa found herself in the McLaughlin siege, one on which she had trained with the Bureau. An excop called joe McLaughlin had barricaded himself in the house of the wife from whom he was separated, and was shooting at anyone who went near. Because of her familiarity with the scenario, and because she wanted to move on to the next, Teresa went impatiently to the side of the house, forced an entry into the basement and shot McLaughlin on the stairs. Had she been undergoing training Dan Kazinsky would have made her go back and get it right (McLaughlin had only to be arrested), but she wanted to try scenarios she hadn't used before. LIVER.

The next scenario was a more complex one, new to her,

and it absorbed her from the moment she entered it.

Sari Diego, California, 1950: William Cook was on the run from the police, having already abducted and murdered a family of five in Missouri, and with another man as a hostage had driven to San Diego in the car he had stolen from the family.

Teresa entered the ExEx scenario at the point when Cook's stolen Pontiac was spotted on Route 8; rather than try a dangerous interception on the road, the police and federal agents had decided to allow Cook to enter the outskirts of San Diego, and either stop him there or arrest him when he tried to leave the car. His progress was being monitored by unmarked police cars.

lt was another scenario in which the sheer quality of the detailed background, and the authenticating details, took the breath away. This was often a feature of the older incidents, Teresa had found. Dan Kazinsky said the explanation lay in the quality of memory. Moments of traumatic experience survive more completely and vividly in longterm memory. Teresa and the other trainees had noticed that ExEx scenarios about relatively recent events were sometimes blurred, as if parts of them had been mentally blocked by those recalling them.

She entered the Cook scenario on a blisteringly hot day, a sea wind bending the palm trees, making the dust fly at the street intersections, puffing the canopies of shops and swinging the overhead traffic signals precariously. The sky was cloudless, but there was grit from the sandy shore in the burning wind. Clothes pressed against bodies, and hair blew. Shiny, rounded cars moved in leisurely fashion through the streets. A DC3 of Pan American circled overhead, moving down towards the airfield; the brilliant sunshine glinted off the unpainted wings and engine cowlings. Men in Navy

uniforms loitered round a military truck parked in a lot beside an equipment office, where the Stars and Stripes was flying.

Teresa had no time to take in any more. The scenario was in progress.

She had a key in her hand, and as she entered the action she was hurrying towards a row of cars parked diagonally against the sidewalk. She was out of breath, and her back and legs were hurting. She reeled mentally, perhaps physically too, at the impact of the sensory overload from the collectively remembered scenario. She was too hot, the wind took her breath away, something in the air flew into her eye. She turned away, blinking hard, needing to concentrate instead on the unfolding of the scenario. She wanted to maintain her own individuality, her own reactions. With the grit out of her eye, she turned back quickly enough to see one of the buildings beside her some kind of motorspares or tool store flicker into solidity as her vision persisted in that direction. lt happened so quickly that she might have imagined it, but it was a breakdown in the extreme reality and she found it perversely comforting; even this dazzling technology was not yet one hundred per cent.

She was moving towards a silverandblue Chevrolet station wagon, but again she resisted the scenario and went instead to a green Ford saloon parked alongside. The driver's door was locked, and the key she was holding would not even slide in. Her hand burned on the sunhot metal of the door. She gave up and went to the Chevrolet instead. The door of this was unlocked, and after she had slid on to the bench seat, comfortably spreading her large body, she got the key into the ignition at the first try. She wound down the window on the driver's side.

A few moments later she was driving north along 30th Street, and at the intersection with University she moved

across into the turn lane and took a right.

it was the first time she had driven a car in an ExEx, and it was exhilarating. Two impressions predominated. The first was a feeling of complete safety: the car could not crash, she could not be hurt, because she could not act alone and could not make her own decisions. The scenario was laid out for her to follow. She had taken the right into University because that was the way she had to go; she shortly came to the large intersection with Wabash Boulevard, and here she took a left, driving on to the highway and accelerating to keep up with the rest of the traffic. The sun was shafting in through the driver's window, making her arm and face tingle. She wound up the window, and pulled the visor over to help shade herself This action, this decision, was part of the second and contradictory impression: that she could defy the scenario and act independently of it. She could put her foot down on the gas pedal and just drive, keep on going, head east or north out of the town, drive for ever across the great virtual America that lay out there, just beyond her immediate view of the simulation, letting it piece itself together, shaping seamlessly about her, unfolding endlessly for her.

Instead, she reached into the glove compartment and took out the automatic pistol that was there.

While she drove she checked it was loaded, then laid it on the seat beside her. She switched on the radio: the Duke Ellington Orchestra was playing an instrumental number called

'Newport Up'. How did she know that? She'd never listened closely to Duke Ellington in her life, and would hardly be able to identify the sound of the orchestra let alone any individual tracks.

She stretched back in the seat, drove with her arms straight and her head lying back on the rest, the radio on, the sun blazing in on her, and the wonderful rumbling slow traffic of 1950 gliding past and around her.

Moments later she saw diversion lights ahead, and a police roadblock. Most of the traffic was peeling off to the left, going around the diversion, but she slowed and signalled to the right, heading straight for the police line. She came to a halt, and pulled on the parking brake with long, solid vibration from the ratchet. An officer walked towards her, leaning down to see into the car.

Suddenly, she was no longer sure of what she was doing. Had she decided of her own will to drive up to the police line? Or was this what the woman driving the car would have done?

The police officer was just a few feet away from the car, a hand extended to indicate she should not drive off again.

Teresa made an instant judgement: that she had decided on her own initiative not to follow the diversion. She was in control. From long habit she fished into her pocket for her Bureau ID, but it was missing!

She looked down at herself, realizing for the first time that she was wearing some other woman's clothes. She was fat! She was wearing terrible clothes! She had runs in her stockings!

She grappled at her belt, where she kept her badge, but down there, under the copious folds of her overweight body, sagging down into her lap, there was just a thin plastic belt.

She glanced up into the rearview mirror, leaning across to see herself; an elderly black woman's face, full of mild concern, looked back at her.

'Ma'am, this is a restricted area,' said the cop, now leaning down by the window. Teresa noticed that it had reopened itself somehow, while she was driving, while she was distracted from the simulation. 'Would you reverse up, please, and rejoin the main flow of traffic.'

'I'm Federal Agent Simons, attached to Richmond

station,' Teresa said, but by now the cop had seen the automatic lying on the seat beside her.

He said, 'Ma'am, would you raise both your hands slowly and leave the car'

But then, maddeningly, the ExEx ended, and Teresa's mind's eye was filled with white crystalline light, and her ears roared with static.

Teresa returned to her own semblance of reality: a small, cool room, painted white, with an overhead strip light. She was lying on a narrow bench, on a creamcoloured paper sheet which rustled as she stirred. There was a distant mumiur of airconditioning, the voices of other people close by in another room or corridor. From the moment she left the scenario Teresa was aware of her surroundings and what she had been doing; this was a major improvement on the traumatic period of recovery that followed a terminal event in the FBI's training scenarios.

A technician was standing by the open door to the cubicle. As soon as she saw Teresa stirring, she came fully into the cubicle and stood next to her.

'How are you feeling, Mrs Simons?' she said, her gaze flicking professionally over her.

' I'm fine.'

'No problems, then?'

She helped Teresa sit up straight, and immediately attended to the nanochip valve on the back of her neck. Teresa, who had rarely been conscious for this procedure, tried to see what the woman was doing. The angle was wrong: she glimpsed a syringelike instrument being deployed, felt a significant pressure on her neck, a twinge of pain, then a slight and not unpleasant vibration. The technician's name badge was just about all she could see: her nan-le was Patricia Tarrant, Customer Liaison. As Ms

Tarrant removed the syringe, Teresa felt the valve move against a sore spot, somewhere there, under the skin or around the valve itself She put a hand up, and touched it gingerly.

Teresa watched as the contents of the syringe the nanochips suspended in a pale liquid were transferred to a glass tube, which Patricia Tarrant then placed inside a cabinet at the foot of the bench. She activated some mechanism, and warning lights briefly showed.

'Fine. When you're ready, if you'd like to come outside we can complete the paperwork.'

Teresa's mind was still swimming with the images of San Diego, the hot wind, the open road.

Before the technician could leave the cubicle she said to her, 'That Cook scenario. 1'd never come across it before.'

'Cook?'

'William Cook,' Teresa said, trying to remember. Images of extreme reality still dazzled her memory, tending to confuse false memory with real. '1950, San Diego. Something about a fugitive with a hostage.'

'I don't know it,' Patricia said. 'Were you on a randomaccess package?'

'Yeah, that's it. Random nonterminal. Anthology ' She f

scenarios. She followed Ms Tarrantt out of the cubicle, to a nearby work station with a large computer monitor and a huge number of ringbinder manuals. 'I wasn't sure what software you had available, and one of your colleagues suggested 1 use one of the packages. 1 was just trying it out.'

'I can look up the scenario for you,' Patricia Tarrant said, turning to her computer. She began tapping keys, watching the monitor.

While information began to scroll on the screen Teresa said, as if to help the technician pin down the scenario, 'I wasn't in there as myself, but 1 could remember who 1 was and what 1 was doing. I've only ever used FBI scenarios before '

,Yeah, here we are. William Cook, 1950. We've got quite a library of stuff on him. Do you know which scenario it was?'

'I was in the body of an elderly woman,' Teresa said. 'She was overweight, out of breath, had a silverblue station wagon. A Chevy.'

'It must be this one,' Patricia said, pointing at the screen. 'That's the only scenario that's been accessed this week. That would be you, just now. Elsa Jane Durdle was the witness; age sixtynine, lived at 2213 North Sea Road, San Diego. 1 wonder how they found her?'

'They?'

'The people who wrote the software. It's shareware. You don't often get witness scenarios from shareware producers. Maybe they happened to know her? No, she must be dead by now. I wonder how they did it?'

'She was a witness? But she had a gun.'

'She did? 1 suppose that's possible. 1 mean, in this sort of interdiction scenario you have to have a gun to use, isn't that right? The witness might have owned one anyway, and if she didn't the programmer could have put it in.'

Teresa sat back, surprised by all this. She fingered the sore place in her neck again. The pain was not wearing off.

'I didn't know you would be using shareware,' she said.

'We take stuff from all over. Someone here always checks it out. Or in our head office. If you didn't want shareware on the roll-through, you could have specified that before we started. 1

'It doesn't matter,' Teresa said. 'It was interesting. In fact, I'd never been in an ExEx that felt so convincing. I'd like to use it again.'

Patricia found some Postit notes, and wrote down the

reference number on the top slip. She peeled it off and gave it to Teresa.

'How long is it since you last used ExEx equipment?' she said.

'I was here yesterday. One of your colleagues supervised me. 1 can't remember who it was.'

Patricia nodded. 'I used the range for target practice, and was only in there for an hour. Apart from that, lt's been maybe a year or two. But back then 1 was using the Bureau's own ExEx equipment, so 1 always assumed the software was the best available. And the training was closely supervised. You can probably imagine how the Bureau operates. 1 had no idea there were all these other scenarios.'

Patricia indicated a pile of cartons stacked against one of the walls across the room.

'You should see some of the software that comes in these days,' she said. 'That lot arrived this week alone. The problem isn't getting hold of the programs, but selecting what we can safely use. A government organization like the FBI wouldn't have time to check everything that's released, so they'd just buy in the commercial programs. You're safe with those, but they aren't always the most interesting. The cutting edge has been deregulated.'

'So is there any difference in practice?' Teresa said. 'You mentioned safety. Is it dangerous to use shareware?'

'No, there's no physical risk, of course. But the commercial programs are always documented, and they have backup.'

'I don't follow.'

'Backup means their scenarios are based on witness statements, hypnotic regressions, character evaluations, historical documents. They use film or TV footage wherever it's available, and always go back to the scene of the original incident. As far as possible a commercial scenario is an actual

recreation of the event. Also, when the software arrives it conies with masses of hardcopy documentation: you can check just about everything. We do a lot of scenarios inhouse.

GunHo, the company that owns this building, started out as a software producer. With shareware, you have to take it on an asis basis. We do all the checking we can, and some of the shareware companies are well known to us, but there's no way you can check the authenticity of the scenarios. Some of them are brilliant: they come up with character evaluations or regressions that were completely missed by the big companies, and so they genuinely add something to what is already known.'

'I've used shareware on my PC,' Teresa said. 'There's usually something wrong with it. lt always feels a bit unfinished.'

'Yes, and that's the other problem. From our point of view as a provider, we can never take for granted how good the programining has been. You get a lot of sloppy stuff, mostly from kids: they patch in routines from other scenarios, or they use the publicdomain footage libraries, or they simply don't bother with backgrounds. Others go the other way: you see some scenarios that are almost fanatically detailed and realseeming. 1 sometimes wonder how they do it. 1

While she spoke, Patricia was scrolling idly through the database, and Teresa watched the screen. She noticed that the William Cook case had at least twenty diffierent scenarios attached to it.

'Can 1 try some of those others?' she said.

'lf You're interested in the Cook case, you probably should. We've got the FBI scenario here, as well as police ones. Those are the most historically accurate. The rest are probably all shareware.'

'I don't have a special interest in the case,' Teresa said.

'But maybe it would be interesting to study it from different angles.'

'Then you should talk to Mr Lacey. Have you met 1

him?'

'Was he the duty manager yesterday?'

'Yes.'

'I met him.'

'Ted Lacey runs the education modules here. We have an affiliation to the University of Sussex, and there's a whole range of study aids and courses. Do you want to sign up for one of those?'

'No,' Teresa said quickly. 'Not just yet. But 1 wouldn't mind using Elsa Durdle's scenario again.'

'No problem. You want to go back in now? We've had a couple of cancellations today, so there's machine time available.'

Teresa considered for a moment, feeling another twinge of pain from the valve in her neck. 'I don't think so. Not today. But would you Mind looking up a couple of other cases for me?'

'OK.'

'You got anything on Charles Joseph Whitman?'

'I think so,' Patricia said, starting to type. 'That was Texas, 1966, wasn't it?'

'That's right.'

'Yeah, we've got a huge number of them. Let's see . .

Teresa saw the name Whitman running down the left side of the screen, all the way through, as Patricia repeatedly touched one of the keys. Finally, she said, 'We have two hundred and twenty-seven main scenarios for Whitman. With hyperlinked associate software, you're talking about maybe twenty thousand access points. The Whitman case is one of the biggest we have. Not the actual largest, though.'

'Which one is that?'

'The Kennedy assassination, of course.'

'Of course,' Teresa said, wondering why she hadn't thought of that herself. 'Are the Whitman scenarios shareware?' she said.

'Many of them, but Whitman also generated a lot of commercial programs.' She pointed at the summary box which had appeared at the bottom of the screen. 'The FBI have sixty, but those aren't publicly available. You could probably get access to them, I imagine. The ones we can run for anyone are from Travis County Police Department, Austin City Police, Texas Rangers, University of Texas Humanities Research Center, Fox 2000, Paramount, MTV, the Playboy Channel, CNN CNN have a huge library on Whitman and our own inhouse compilations. You want to try a few?'

'Not right now. Would you look up Aronwitz for me?'

'How do you spell that?'

Teresa spelled it, hearing her voice unexpectedly slur.

'OK,' said Patricia, 'Kingwood City, Texas. Let's see. Texas Rangers again, Abilene City Police.

The FBI have fifteen scenarios, not publicly available, Kingwood County Police, we have three of our own. CNN again, Fox News Network, NBC, a few of the religious networks. The rest are all shareware. Not many of them, but most of the source names are ones I've seen before.

Pretty good material, 1 imagine. You want me to check them out for you, for next time?'

' I'm not sure yet,' Teresa said.

'Are you OK, Mrs Simons?' Patricia was looking at her, affecting concern.

'I guess so. Why?'

'Is the valve giving you trouble?'

lit's been a while since I used it. Maybe the connectors You use in this country are a different size or something.'

'Should be standard,' Patricia said. She had picked up her internal telephone. 'I'll get the nurse to check you over. lt won't take more than a couple of minutes. Hello?'

Teresa sat still, holding the valve against her neck, as if not to do so would allow it to rip away. She was drifting mentally in and out of the San Diego simulation, the shock of it, feeling that hot wind and the grit in her eye, remembering what it was to drive a 1940s model Chevy on a wide road, the smell of the leather seats, the soft, bouncing suspension, the gearshift sticking out from the side of the steeringwheel shaft, the parkingbrake handle prodding out from beneath the dash. The memories were like . . . memories. Her own memories, real memories, things that had happened to her.

Yet only this place was real: the commercial facility building with its computers and functional furniture, the cubicles, the piles of unopened software, the painful valve in her neck.

Patricia said, 'The nurse will be along in a moment. It's always as well to check these things.

You don't want it to get infected.'

'You're right.'

'While you're waiting, would you mind signing this?' She passed Teresa a plasticcovered clipboard with a sheaf of papers attached. On the top was a disclaimer form, and a printed invoice with a creditcard authorization on a tearoff slip below. Teresa signed woozily, and passed back the clipboard.

The woman checked the signatures, then tore off the top copies of everything and gave them to Teresa.

'How's the neck feeling now?' she said.

'Not too good.'

'The nurse won't be long.'

'Look, I'm grateful for everything you've done,' Teresa said.

'That's my job. I'm paid to help the customers.'

'No, 1 mean, telling me about the shareware, and all that.'

lit's OK.'

Teresa was feeling as if she was about to faint. She stared at the computer screen, which was still showing the list of Aronwitz's scenarios. She knew that somewhere in there, perhaps everywhere in there, would be living images of Andy. If she went into any of those scenarios she could see him again, talk with him again ...

The poignant longing overwhelmed her, and she closed her eyes, trying to control herself, She knew she could have seen him while she was still in the US. Her section chief had offered her free access to the Bureau files, when the ExEx scenarios started becoming available a few weeks after the actual shooting. She had turned down the offer then, and knew she would have to again. lt would be unbearable to be there, knowing he was about to die. All over again.

Waiting for the nurse, trying to distract herself, Teresa said, 'Do you have scenarios about Gerry Grove?'

'Not at present. We had shareware that's about to be replaced. It's not too good. They're working on a couple of new ones at the moment, and they should be here in a few days. One before, one after. You know.'

'No 1 don't,' Teresa said. 'What do you mean?'

Patricia picked up her phone again. 'Are you feeling OK, Mrs Simons?'

'Yeah, I'm fine. Before or after what?'

But her hold on the conversation was no longer so certain. In the last couple of minutes the nausea had increased unpleasantly, a huge distraction. She wanted to find out more from this efficient young woman, but at the same time she could no longer focus her eyes. She sat helplessly at the side of the desk, from where she had been watching the monitor, unable even to turn her head. Patricia was speaking on her phone again, but Teresa could not hear the words.

Presently, a tall, youngish man in a long blue nursing jacket appeared, introduced himself as the duty nurse, and apologized for the delay. He helped her stand up, then supported her as he took her along to the treatment room, at the far end of the building, well away from the ExEx equipment. Teresa managed to hold back until she was there, but threw up as he closed the door.

An hour later he drove her back to the hotel. She went straight to bed.

CHAPTER 19

There had been American voices around her at breakfast in the hotel, or at least they spoke so loudly that they had seemed to be all around her. They were the worst kind of Americans, Teresa thought unfairly: young, ambitious, crude, loudmouthed, superficial. She despised their expensive but tasteless clothes, their bland Midwest accents, the gaucheness of their responses to things British. They made her feel like a snob.

Why does any of that make them worse as Americans? Or as people? She didn't know, but she couldn't suppress the thoughts, and disliked the feelings they aroused in her.

Normally she liked most of the people she met, a trusting kind of liking, just in case. But being nice was the last thing she felt like at present. After two quiet days, spent mostly in private misery in her hotel room, the dressing on her neck was ready to be removed and the sickness had passed. She was still on antibiotics. She found a weighing machine in the public toilet next to the bar, and if the thing was registering accurately it looked as if she had lost five pounds since arriving in England. She liked that news: in the miserable months after Andy's death, she had given up caring about her figure and her clothes had started feeling tight. On the plane to England she had unbuttoned the top of her skirt, making the excuse that you always swelled up a little on a long flight, but knowing the truth was more prosaic. Now, though, things were definitely improving.

But she couldn't ignore the Americans who had moved

into the hotel. As soon as she was feeling better, and able to move around the hotel again, they seemed to be everywhere she went. They exerted a deadly fascination over her. They radiated insincerity and ambition, seemed to dislike or misunderstand everyone they met, even themselves, but suppressed their sourness unenthusiastically, keeping it deliberately unspoken, and thus underlining it.

She admired the calm way Amy had served them at their table, smiling and chatting with them, not letting her face or body-language reveal anything other than a cheery pleasure at seeing them there for breakfast. Yet she knew Amy must be feeling much as she did.

Teresa had spent the days dreaming of America, an older America, one where a hot wind blew and there was a sense of everunfolding space. She was stimulated by the ide exploration, of pushing at the edges of reality, of moving beyond the limits of the scenario.

She felt drawn by a

m'f 'rig kinship with the large, elderly form of Elsa

ysti yl 1

Durdle, the woman with the big car and the gun in the glove compartment, and her drive along the wide highways of southern California.

She had phoned the ExEx medical room the previous afternoon, and arranged to call in this morning to have her dressing removed. If the infection had cleared up she would start exploring the scenarios straight away. The extremes were an allure to her, like the ultimate narcotic.

When Teresa left her room a few minutes later, to go to her car, one of the young men she had seen at breakfast was waiting in the corridor. She glanced at him, then let the hint of a polite smile rest on her face and went to walk past him.

But he said, 'Excuse me, ma'am? 1'd like to say hello. I'm Ken Mitchell, and I'm visiting from the USA.'

'Hello.' Teresa tried to make the word sound as non-

American as possible, not wanting to be drawn into a conversation. She added, out of politeness, 'Good to know you. I'm Teresa Simons. 1

'I'm pleased to meet you, Ms Simons. May 1 ask if you are staying in this hotel?'

'Yes.'

'OK, that's what we thought.' He glanced towards the door of the room she had just left, as if having established a significant proof 'Are you here in England with your family, your partner?'

'No, I'm staying by myself'

Who the hell was he to ask? Why did she answer? She stepped forward. He sidestepped as if casually, but none the less temporarily blocked her way.

'Ms Simons, are you planning on checking out real soon?'

'No, I'm not.'

She said it with as much of a British accent as she could muster, but he was clearly uninterested in anything about her, other than the fact of her presence.

'Right, ma'am. We'll see to that.'

'Thank you.'

lt was the only thing she could think of saying, but however inappropriate it was it gave her an exit line.

She pushed past him, picking up a faint whiff of scented soap. His skin was so clear, healthy, repellent. She went down the stairs and through the hotel to the car park. She was bristling with irritation, a familiar kind. It seemed to her that she had known people like him all her life, though she hadn't expected to run into any of them here in England. Maybe they were everywhere, these Americans whom America had once kept to itself but was apparently now exporting. They promoted a distorted version of the American way of life, one of clean, groomed, highly paid, quietly spoken and superficially polite young men and women, narrowly pursuing their careers, completely selfabsorbed and uncaring of anything or anyone else around them.

Her rental car was virtually concealed behind the bulk of the huge van in which the young Americans had arrived. One of the women was sitting in the front passenger seat with the door open, looking at a road map of southeast England spread on her lap. If she looked up as Teresa went past the gesture went unnoticed, as Teresa was intent only on getting out of the hotel as soon as possible.

She started her car, and after squeezing narrowly out from behind the van she drove it from the parking lot with a minimum of delay. She turned on to the Eastbourne Road, heading west, and almost at once found herself held up in the slowmoving crawl of traffic that seemed permanently to clog the roads during the early part of the mornings. After half a mile she took a right at a traffic signal, and headed up towards the industrial estate overlooking the town. She parked in a space at the front of what she now knew as the GunHo building.

Half an hour later, with her neck dressing replaced by a simple BandAid, she was sitting in the driver's seat of the car and looking through the road map of Sussex. She had been told she should not use the ExEx simulations for another two days, until she had finished the antibiotics and the infection on the valve incision had cleared up. Once again she had time on her hands.

The road map she had found in the rental car intrigued her. English roads spread out illogically, following no discernible pattern. The map showed features you would never see on its equivalent in America: churches, abbeys, vineyards, even individual houses. Clergy House, Old Mint House, Ashburnam House did people still live in these places? Was the fact they were marked on the map an invitation to go visit?

There was for her something solid and real about the English landscape, unlike the sensuous glimpse she had had of the California of 1950 when she briefly took over Elsa Durdle's identity. Then she had been haunted by the sense of an infinite unfolding of virtuality: nothing existed beyond her immediate awareness, but she had only to turn her head, or drive towards it, for it to spring suddenly into existence.

This English map was another intriguing code, like a programming language, a series of symbols depicting a landscape that for her was mostly imaginary, mostly unseen. The codes would turn to reality as she went towards them, the ancient England of her dreams would be there to be discovered, an endlessly unfolding panorama.

She left Bulverton on the coast road, crossed the Pevensey Levels, and after driving through several tiny villages reached the main highway between Eastbourne and London. Here she turned north towards London and let the car build up speed. She closed her window and put on a CD by Oasis, one of several records she had found in the car. She had heard of the band, but had never listened to their music. She turned the volume up loud.

Driving had always helped her think, and all the decisions she remembered having taken were made in a car. Not all were the right decisions, of course, but they were none the less memorable for that.

She and Andy had decided to get married, one day in a car going through the flat countryside of southern New Jersey while they were looking for a motel for the night. She had not only decided to apply to join the Bureau one day while driving, but had also decided to take leave of absence, again in a car, although that particular car had been parked in the drive outside her empty house in Woodbdidge, where

the windows were dark and the memories were uselessly and frustratingly of Andy alive and living there with her.

Her eyes misted as she drove, while she remembered that day and the violent events which had led up to it. They had become the basis of everything, the rationale of all her actions, or so she had supposed. That dread feeling of blankness, spreading out and around her, swamping everything but replacing nothing.

Life became a series of cliches, some of them mouthed by the people around her who loved her, many more of them forming unbidden in her own mind. Bereavement turned out to be beset with comforting formulae for the bereaved, 'no doubt springing from the shared unconscious mind, used by every generation that had preceded her and who had lost someone close to them. As much as anything else, it was trying to escape from these easy platitudes that had helped her conceive the idea of the trip. Bulverton, East Sussex, England, a town so appallingly twinned with Kingwood City that it became an irresistible lure.

At that time the coincidence had beckoned her: she could not find what she needed at home, so maybe it would be there in the English seaside town few people in the US had ever heard of The vagueness of this attraction made one part of her suspicious, but the pull it exerted on the other half was undeniable. lt was not even the unfamiliar, alien quality of Bulverton, as she had imagined it before she got here, because Kingwood City had been just as much an unknown quantity for her before the massacre; if foreignness was the only characteristic pulling at her she might as well have been drawn to that soulless place on Interstate 20 near Abilene. lt would have been easier for her to get to, and cheaper too, but Bulverton was where she knew she had to be.

Now Bulverton's vagueness had become a specific: it was

just a dull, tired, unhappy seaside town, full of the wrong memories and with no conception of its future. The real Bulverton was undermining her resolve, making her think about Andy more than she wanted or needed. Being able to glimpse the losses some of the people had suffered did not help at all. She was not comforted by them, and the stark uselessness of everything that had happened, the pointless waste of lives, the tragic, unintelligent nihilism of the gunman, only underlined her personal tragedy.

Worse, being here was driving her back to the gun. The ExEx scenarios pandered to that fascination.

She could not stop thinking about Elsa Durdle. What she thought out loud, so to speak, was her reaction to the hyperreality of the shareware scenario: the wind, the heat, the lovely old car, the sense of an endless landscape. But deeper feelings, ones she had suppressed until now, were more visceral.

She kept remembering the moment when she opened Elsa Durdle's glove compartment, found the weapon and took it in her hand. The weight of it, the coldness, the feel of it there.

For a few moments she had been reminded of how it felt to be driving to an imminent spree event, with no idea of how it would resolve, but with a loaded gun at her side.

She drove past a sign that told her she was in Ashdown Forest, and on an impulse she turned into a narrow side road. lt led windingly through open, wellwooded countryside. She drove more slowly. The Oasis record was beginning to intrude on her thoughts, so she flicked it off.

She wound down the window, relishing the sweet smell of the woodland, the sound of the tyres on the road, the flow of cold air around her. She slowed the car to a crawl.

Something kept changing her mind about what she wanted to do, where she wanted to go: she told herself it was

the old familiar scents of a wetfloored English winter landscape, mild sunshine on grass and branches and pine needles, things rotting away, mould and fungus and moss.

Teresa saw a cleared space for cars at the side of the road, so she stopped and switched off the ignition. She climbed out and stood for a few minutes on the grassy verge.

Sometimes driving made her think even when she didn't want to.

She had been born into the world of guns: even before she was taken to the USA by her parents she was used to the sight and feel of weapons.

Her father was obsessive about guns; there was no other word for it. He collected guns as other people collected old coins or books. He talked guns, cleaned guns, disassembled and reassembled guns, fired guns, carried guns, subscribed to gun magazines, sent off for gun catalogues, made friends only with those who shared his obsession with guns. There was at least one loaded gun in every room of the house; more than that, probably. There were two in her parents' bedroom, both adapted with hair triggers, one on each side of the bed, ready for use the night the supposed intruder came. There were two more in the kitchen, one attached to the wall next to the door, in case someone tried to break in that way, one concealed in a drawer in case the intrusion came from somewhere else. (But who in their right mind would force an entry into a house where a gun fanatic lived?) There were even two loaded guns stored in a locked drawer in the closet of her own bedroom.

Down in the basement there were more weapons than she had ever been able to count, many of them in pieces, while her dad slowly restored them or cleaned them or customized them in some way. He never went anywhere without a gun either in the car or carried on his belt or under his shirt, ready for use. He belonged to gun clubs and training squads, and four times a year went up into the mountains with a group of his friends, armed to the teeth.

Teresa was target training by the age of ten, and was recognized as an aboveaverage shot by the time she was eleven. Her dad enrolled her into the Junior section of his club, made her show what she could do, entered her for every competition. She won and won; shooting came naturally to her. At fourteen she could outshoot her older cousins, most of the men at the training camps she went to during the summer vacations, and even her father. lt was the thing she did of which he was the proudest.

Her accuracy with a weapon thrilled her. She recognized as natural the weight of the weapon in her hand, the way it balanced there, and the jolt of adrenaline that flowed when the recoil kicked at her arm and shoulder, and because these were exciting to her, the condition of gun ownership and use was integral to her personality and identity. Every time she pulled the trigger she felt total power, fulfilment, certainty.

Standing there by the side of the woodland road, thinking of guns, feeling gorged with her family memories, Teresa was tempted for the first time since her arrival in England to pack her bags and go home. She had friends in Woodbdidge, a career in the Bureau, a house, the remains of a life, a certain place in a culture she understood. England was full of mysteries she didn't want to have to deal with right now. She had made the trip in an attempt to move forward, away from her old itinerant fatherdominated past, yet immersion in the quiet sorrows of Bulverton was stirring up too many memories of what she had wanted to leave.

She knew if Andy could have been there with her he would have gone into one of his sessions of criticizing her their marriage, though happy overall, had had its tensions and

brought

up a dozen similar incidents when she had dithered helplessly about which direction she should take. She deserved it, because making her mind up had always been hard.

She kicked loose pebbles against the wheel of the car, and she thought, This is silly. Why do guns still exert their fascination?

Her love of guns, the hold they had over her, had reversed in the instant she received the news of Andy's death. It was as if she had suddenly been able to see her life from a different direction: her fife was the same, but her view changed. From right to left, from looking down to looking up, whatever it was.

That skill she had with guns, the facility, the deadly accuracy, suddenly became a curse to her. In her hand was the object that ultimately had killed the person she loved most in all the world.

She hated the way her father's personality had changed when his gun friends were around, or when he was practising with his weapons: it was as if he grew several inches in all directions, taller, broader, rounder, thicker. His voice was louder, he moved with more energy. His physical stance became threatening or confrontational, became that of someone who could only cope with the complexities of the world by putting out a challenge to it. And she had hated the way her own skill converted to the dark side: a deadly efficiency, the side of her that gave pain, the unyielding side of her.

Also in the long moment of the news of Andy's dying she had thought, for the first time in many years, about Megan.

That shocking instant of childhood had been effectively camouflaged over the years. lt was so long ago she could barely remember it, and whenever she did try to remember it she could not find the truth. She had never really

disentangled what had actually happened from the lies and evasions her parents told her.

They said she had dreamed the whole thing; Megan was an imaginary friend; all little girls had imaginary friends. But surely she had been born a twin? said Teresa, prodding for the truth, knowing this at least was so. Yes, there had been a twin sister; yes, and her name was Megan. But Megan had died at birth, so frail, so small, such a tragedy. You wouldn't remember Megan, they said. What she thought she remembered was untrue, unreliable.

If it had happened the way she remembered, and not the way they told it, how could they have covered up such a death? A small child, killed by gunshot? Even if they had found a way, why had they done so? lt was surely an accident? But they never admitted anything.

What Teresa remembered as a shattering mirrorimage of herself, a dying friend, a gun whose recoil had twisted her arm so painfully it had hurt on and off for more than a year, was changed by them into a tragic delusion, a persisting error.

Then decades later Andy died, and in her moment of penetrating grief and understanding, Teresa had known at last what must be the truth about Megan's death.

Her father's house was full of guns, in every room in any place they lived. The guns were always loaded, always ready for this chimera of expert selfdefence. She, like any other child, explored and tested, and did what she was told she must not do. The greater the warnings of danger, the more attractive were the temptations of ignoring them.

From this, the greater truth: the more there were people who owned guns, who made themselves expert with guns, who prepared to defend themselves with guns, who went on hunting trips with guns, who mouthed slogans about freedom and rights being dependent on guns, the more those guns were likely to be abused and to fall into the wrong hands.

just once, that time when she was seven, her little hands had been the wrong ones.

SO, finally, Andy was dead, and that had been hard enough, but it was not entirely unexpected. The risks went with the FBI territory.

She grieved, she mourned, she was prescribed medication, she took a vacation to see friends in Oregon, she joined selfhelp groups, she underwent counselling. She was a widow, but life eventually began to cohere once more around her. What she was unready for, though, was the other consequence of Andy's death: the profound reversal of her trust in guns.

All her life until this point seemed to be a deceit. Everything she had grown up with, and all the work and training she had done as an adult, she now turned against.

During this period a word, a name, a place, kept circling somewhere on the fringe of her awareness. Bulverton, England.

What did it mean? Andy's death had swamped everything, and for weeks she had stayed away from newspapers and TV news. For a day or two she herself had been the news. Media celebrity distracts, no matter what the reason. Even so, the name of Bulverton crept into her consciousness, and although from the start she had known on some buried, unarticulated level what the link was, what the coincidence was, she could not take it in.

Denial, her bereavement counsellor told her. You are blocking everything to do with your husband's death.

Even this puzzled her: how was Bulverton linked with Andy's death? What am 1 supposed to be denying? What is being assumed that I am unaware of?

Finally, the grief and confusion lifted sufficiently for her to be able to think for herself once more, and soon

afterwards she began to ask her colleagues, she looked up Bulverton on the web, she searched the newspaper files for the story.

There the coincidence was laid before her: Bulverton, Kingwood City. Two massacres by outburst gunmen. Same day of the year, same time of the day.

The parallels were not exact: twentythree people died in Bulverton, only fifteen in Kingwood City. (Fifteen? Is that not enough, when one of them was Andy?) The general circumstances were different: Aronwitz was obsessed with God, while Grove was apparently not. (But Aronwitz's spree began in a church and ended in a shopping mall; Grove's began when he stole a car from outside a shop and ended inside a church.) Fiftyeight other people were wounded in Kingwood City, and fiftyeight were wounded in Bulverton. The same number of law-enforcement officers were killed or injured in both places.

The guns carried and used by the killers were the same make, although different models. The same number of cars were damaged, or so it was said; did they count and include the two police units that accidentally scraped bumpers on the way to North Cross mall? And more coincidences: someone with the surname Perkins was killed in both places; someone with the given name Francesca was killed in both places; both gunmen had previous convictions for robbery, but not for firearm abuse.

Coincidences make good headlines for newspapers, they feed the suspicious minds of conspiracy theorists, they open up debates for philosophers about time, perception, consciousness and reality. But to most ordinary people they are only remarked upon, thought about or discussed briefly, then forgotten.

There were superficial coincidences between the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy. Were they

significant? How could they be, except on some cosmic or metaphysical level of no concern to most people?

In a more general arena, cnminal lawyers are aware of the surprising coincidences that crop up regularly in even the most straightforward of cases: the two men destined to collaborate in a major crime who come together only by chance; the killer and his victim whose lives are almost exact parallels until the day they meet; the innocent bystanders and the guilty perpetrators who happen to look amazingly alike. None of these coincidences, nor hundreds of others like them, is significant in any way.

They signify only that coincidences occur all. the time in ordinary life, but only when one's attention is focused by something like a crime do they become apparent.

How could the series of coincidences between Kingwood City and Bulverton be explained away, or disregarded, once everyone had remarked upon them? To Teresa, they seemed to have been placed for her to find.

As the immediate loss of Andy began to recede, the need to make sense of what had happened became increasingly important.

The trail ultimately led to here, and to now, to this levelled space by the side of a minor road, the wintershorn trees of Ashdown Forest around her, the lightly drifting rain, the traffic rushing by in a flurry of tyre noise and road spray.

Teresa breathed the air, relished the chill. dampness of the woods, and spread her hands on the highly polished paintwork of the car, feeling the standing droplets of rain running out from beneath her fingers.

lt was impossible to accept the metaphysics of coincidence in an ordered universe, because only by believing that the emergence of killers like Aronwitz and Grove were random events could you ever come to terms with what they had done.

You could only accept their murders by believing in the harmony of chance, believing that the tragedies they inflicted were so to speak unique, unlikely to be repeated.

To think they were part of some pattern that could be understood and interpreted, and therefore predicted, made reality less real.

Yet that was what Andy had been trying to show, before Aronwitz ended everything for him.

Andy ultimately believed in predestiny, even if he had not put it that way himself, she had to overturn that belief to be able to get through the rest of her life.

CHAPTER 20

She arrived in San Diego on a blisteringly hot day, a sea wind bending the palm trees, making the dust fly at the street intersections, puffing the canopies of shops and swinging the overhead traffic signals precariously. Shiny, rounded cars moved in a leisurely fashion through the streets. A DC3 of Pan American circled overhead, moving down towards the airfield; the brilliant sunshine glinted off the unpainted wings and engine cowlings.

She had a key in her hand, and she was hurrying towards a row of cars parked diagonally against the sidewalk. She was out of breath, and her back and legs were hurting. She reeled mentally, perhaps physically too, at the impact of the sensory overload from the collectively remembered scenario. She was too hot, the wind took her breath away, something in the air flew into her eye. She wanted to maintain her own individuality, her own reactions, and turned back quickly enough to see one of the buildings beside her flicker into solidity as her vision persisted in that direction.

She was moving towards a silverandblue Chevrolet station wagon, but again she resisted and went instead to the green Ford saloon parked alongside. The driver's door was locked, and the key she was holding would not even slide in. She gave up and went to the Chevrolet instead.

The door of this was unlocked, and after she had slid on to the bench seat, comfortably spreading her large body, she got the key into the ignition at the first try.

A few moments later she was driving north along 30th

Street, and at the intersection with University she took a right. Shortly afterwards she came to the large intersection with Wabash Boulevard, and here she took a left, driving on to the highway and accelerating to keep up with the rest of the traffic. The sun was shafting in through the driver's window, making her arm and face tingle. She wound up the window, and pulled the visor over to help shade herself

She reached into the glove compartment and took out the automatic pistol that was there.

While she drove she checked it was loaded, then laid it on the seat beside her. She switched on the radio: the Duke Ellington Orchestra was playing 'Newport Up'.

She stretched back in the seat, drove with her arms straight and her head lying back on the rest, the radio on, the sun blazing in on her, and the wonderful rumbling slow traffic of 1950

gliding past and around her.

Moments later she saw diversion lights ahead, and a police roadblock. Most of the traffic was peeling off to the left, going around the diversion, but she slowed and signalled to the right, heading straight for the police line. Teresa resisted. She wrenched the steering wheel to the left and swerved across the traffic lanes and away from the roadblock. One of the cops, who had stepped towards her car as soon as she signalled right, raised his arm and shouted something after her.

Teresa accelerated away, seeing hills ahead, yellow and brown and dotted with dark trees, shimmering in the hot day. In moments, the police diversion was behind her. She kept her foot down, letting the large, quietengined car pick up speed at its own pace.

She looked down at herself, realizing that she was wearing some other woman's clothes. She was fat! She was wearing terrible clothes! She had runs in her stockings! She glanced up into the rearview mirror, leaning across to see

herself; an elderly black woman's face, full of mild concern, looked back at her.

'Hi, Elsa!' Teresa said aloud, smiling at her own reflection.

The road became straight. There were no buildings on either side of it, and flat, featureless ground, dotted with scrub, stretched away on both sides.

She drove for several minutes, peering ahead with interest to see how the landscape would develop, but now she was away from the edge of the city there was little to look at. There was no other traffic. On either side of the road the gravelly ground and the grey-green scrub sped by in a blur. In the distance she saw mountains and white clouds. The sun beat down on her, so high that it seemed to throw no shadows.

Eventually Teresa realized that there was no more landscape for her to find.

She swung the steering wheel to the right, trying to skid off the road, but the car merely moved a few feet to the side. It spun along as smoothly as ever, the tyres apparently moving across the rough ground without touching.

In her rearview mirror, Teresa could see the buildings of San Diego clustered against the shoreline. She remembered the meaning of the acronym LIVER.

She arrived in San Diego on a blisteringly hot day, and went to the silverandblue Chevrolet parked diagonally against the sidewalk. She got the key into the ignition at the first try.

A few moments later she was driving north along 30th Street, and at the intersection with University she took a left. The car had already moved into the rightturn lane, but Teresa swung it across the traffic, forcing it to go the other way. Horns blared around her. The sun was now in front of her, and she lowered the visor to reduce the dazzle in her eyes.

She reached into the glove compartment and took out the automatic pistol that was there.

While she drove she checked it was loaded, then laid it on the seat beside her. She switched on the radio: the Duke Ellington Orchestra was playing 'Newport Up'.

She glanced up into the rearview mirror, straining to see herself, an elderly black woman's face, full of mild concern, looked back at her.

'Hi, Elsa!' Teresa said aloud, smiling at her own reflection.

Apartment blocks had been built on both sides of the road, partially screened by rows of tall palm trees, and these flashed by uniformly. Ahead was the ocean, placidly shimmering. After several minutes of driving, in which the ocean came no closer, she remembered the acronym LIVER.

Teresa spent the rest of the day learning to use the computerized catalogue of available ExEx titles. The first useful information she gleaned was that the Elsa Durdle shareware had been written by an outfit called SplatterInc, based in a town called Raymond, Oregon. She asked Patricia if she knew anything about them.

'More likely to be one person than a business,' Patricia said. 'Some kid working out of a back room, perhaps, who downloaded the imaging software from the internet? Anyone can do it, if they're packing enough computer memory.

'And there's no way of telling where the scenario images came from?'

' Not from the information we have here. 1 suppose you could call them, or write to them. Is there an email address?'

'Just a Post Office box in Raymond.'

'Have you tried running a web search on them? They'll have a site.'

'Not yet.'

Teresa went back to the scenario database, and keyed in the search parameters. A moment later, SplatterInc's list of titles scrolled down the screen. Teresa read through it.

She located the Elsa Durdle scenario, and from this logged the group and category in which it was filed: Interactive/ Police/ Murder/ Guns /William Cook/ Elsa Jane Durdle.

Learning as she went, Teresa worked backwards through the hierarchy of subcategories.

Alternatives to Guns were Automobiles, Bombs, Clubs, Hands and Knives and from each of these there were hyperlinks, presumably to other software producers.

Alternatives to Murder were Arson, Hostage Taking, Mugging, Rape and Sniper. Again there were hyperlinks.

Police was in a long list of categories, which flooded the screen: the alternative offerings &om SplatterInc included Arts, Aviation, Movies, Sex, Space, Sport, Travel, War.

Idly she clicked on Sex, and was astonished at the number of options, all hyperlinked, that unfurled rapidly before her: Amateur, Anal, Astral, Audient, Backsides All, Backsides Big, Backsides Closeup, Backsides Small, Bestial, Bondage, Breasts All, Breasts Big ...

and so on, for dozens of screens.

She clicked it away, and glanced furtively across the room to see if Patricia was watching her.

She was working with another customer on the far side of the room.

Teresa moved up a level to Interactive, and here found the list of main options: Active, Collective, Interactive, Intruder, Nonactive, Observer, Passive, Perpetrator and Victim.

Teresa browsed through the various levels, quietly amazed at the extent of what was there to be found. All of

it the product of a single outfit called SplatterInc, from Raymond, Oregon. Where the hell was Raymond, Oregon, and what else went on in that small town?

She waited until Patricia looked over in her direction, then asked her to come and advise.

'You still with SplatterInc?' Patricia said, obviously amused.

'I'm trying to see what they've made available,' Teresa said. 'It's incredible how much there is.'

Patricia glanced at the screen.

'Yeah, they keep busy,' she said. 'But they're just a mediumsmall. You should see the catalogues put out by some of the coop groups in California or New York.'

'These headings are they just used by these people, or are they general?'

'Everyone uses them. You can download the complete index, if you want to see the extent of it.'

'And it's all shareware?'

'The SplatterInc programs are,' Patricia said. 'Are you specially interested in those people? Or are you interested in shareware generally?'

'I don't know,' Teresa said. 'I'm just browsing at the moment. Trying to find what you have.'

'It's a lot.'

'I'm learning.'

'You know, you might do better to stay away from shareware. lt gets expensive, because nearly all of what you pay us for is machine time. What most people do is buy into one of the commercial packages, then use shareware as a supplement. You know, what 1 was showing you the other day. One of the TV networks, or the big software companies, or our own modules, of course. Or do what you did the other day, choose a category then randomize on an anthology basis. We've got a whole catalogue of sampler scenarios.'

Teresa turned away from the screen. 'The truth is, 1 don't know where to begin. It's confusing.'

'Maybe you should take home some of our brochures? There's a pile of them out at the back there.'

'I'm wasting your time,' Teresa said. 'Is that what you're trying to tell me?'

'No ... but 1 only deal with what the customers select, and want to use, and make sure the equipment functions properly. I see a bit of what they are interested in, but 1 don't see the whole picture. You need Mr Lacey or one of his assistants to talk you through some of the sales packages we have on offer. Most people don't really know what they're looking for until they find it.'

'I'm beginning to see why.'

'I thought you were interested in guns. We get a lot of people who are.'

'Mine's a professional interest.'

'Then why don't you buy the comprehensive shooting course? That includes targetpractice use, interdiction and arrest scenarios, you can choose terminal or nonterrminal, and you get full access to the scenarios. That sort of use is our breadandbutter business.'

'And for that I would have to talk to Mr Lacey?'

Patricia said with a smile, 'I'll arrange it for you.'

'OK. Thanks.' Teresa looked back at the screen, with its almost obsessively detailed arrays of scenario subjects. 'Do you mind if 1 go on browsing?'

'Help yourself,

CHAPTER 21

Nick was serving behind the bar when Teresa came in 'halfway through the evening. She asked him for a club soda. He passed her a glass with ice cubes, and the syphon. She sloshed the water into the glass, then gave him a direct look. He wondered what was conning; when Amy looked at him like that he was usually in trouble. He thankfully noticed another customer approaching the counter, so moved adroitly away to serve him. Teresa obviously got the message, because by the time he finished she had taken her drink to one of the tables.

Sitting alone, she read the book she had been carrying.

The bar gradually emptied, and half an hour before closing time there was hardly anyone left. He collected glasses and empties, washed them, wiped the bar counter. Teresa saw this, and came back and settled on her stool. There was no avoiding her any more.

'Do you mind if 1 ask you something, Nick?' she said.

'Do 1 have a choice?'

'I guess not. Why don't you or anyone else ever talk about the Grove shootings?'

'What is there to say?'

'Not a whole lot, it seems. It's like it never happened. OK, 1 know.' She took a sip of her drink.

'I'm a brash American and I've no right to ask any questions at all, but most people here have nothing to say.'

'I'm another of them,' he said.

'But why, Nick?'

'In my case, I wasn't actually in town when it happened. 1 was'

'No, you told me that before. It's just an excuse, and you know it. You might not have been physically present in the town when it happened, but the fact you stayed on afterwards suggests that you're a part of it, just as much as if you'd been living here.'

'lf you say so.'

'No, dammit. If you think that, why don't you get out?'

Nick said, thinking how often he had gone through this in his own mind, as well as with Amy, 'Because this was my parents' business, and 1 owe it to them to keep it going, and this town was my home '

'And you dated Amy when you were kids, and she's here for the same reason, and you can't leave because something's holding you back.'

Nick stared at her, reluctant to admit that she might be getting close to it, and wondering how she knew.

'That's right, isn't it, Nick?' she said.

'Sort of'

& Look, just once, can 1 ask you some questions about what happened that day? As you know it.'

He said again, 'I wasn't here. I didn't see anything.'

'No one saw it all,' Teresa said. 'Many of the people who did were killed. Even those who survived, they only saw their bit of it. Everyone's got the same excuse: I didn't see much. A lot of the surviving witnesses have left town. But everyone who's still here knows exactly what happened.'

'There you go then.'

'No,' she said. 'I've got a reason for this. I'm trying to work something out, because there's a big inconsistency somewhere. I've analysed, timed and placed everything that Grove is supposed to have done, and it doesn't add up. Can I run it by you, compare it with what you know?'

'It sounds as if you already know more than anyone else.' 'I need to straighten this thing out.'

Nick could feel himself backing away from her in his mind. Why should that be? lt was true that for him the Grove shootings would always have a thirdhand quality, but that obviously wasn't everything. He had been profoundly shocked by the way his parents died, and the depth and extent of his tormented feelings had been a revelation to him. He had lived away in London long enough to start believing he might no longer feel close to his parents, but that had turned out not to be so.

And there was a darker psychological level, one he rarely touched. That was something to do with the collective trauma in the town, the sharing of a shock that made everyone bury the memories they could cope with least well.

He plunged around in his mind, trying to find the words.

,Amy's out this evening,' he said. 'I'm on my own in the bar.' He indicated the rest of the room vaguely with his hand.

Teresa glanced around; the only other customers were a couple sitting at one of the corner tables, and two young lads playing pool. She gave him another direct look.

'We can break off if you have to serve someone. Anyway, it's not going to take long.'

He moved to the beer pumps, and drew himself a pint of best. He made a production of filling it carefully to the brim, not spilling any, aware all the time that Teresa was watching him. He went back and placed it on the counter between them.

'I've established what Grove was doing that day before he started shooting,' Teresa said. 'In fact, I can trace his movements right up to midafternoon, when he drove away from the Texaco filling station. He left there at twentythree

nimutes to three. That's an exact time because I've been through the police log, and that was when the police received the emergency call from the cashier. 1 can also trace him from the moment he began shooting. According to the police, and one of the eyewitnesses, he fired the first shots in London Road at four minutes to five. So the first thing 1 want to know is, what was he doing for those two hours in between?'

'But you surely know where he was?'

'I know where he was for part of the time,' said Teresa. 'He went to the ExEx building in Welton Road. Is that where you meant?'

'Yes.'

'He was only there a few minutes They keep a record of everyone coming and going, and the police have a copy and I've seen it. Grove was in the ExEx building for less than fifteen minutes. Then he left and he walked down the hill into the Old Town. I've done the same walk myself. even going slowly, it took me less than half an hour. Grove was carrying his guns, but even if they were heavy, and he had to rest for a bit, it still wouldn't add up to two hours.'

Two customers came into the bar from the street, and Nick broke away to serve them. When he went back to her he refreshed her ice, and she put another long shot of soda water into her glass.

'I gather you've been up at the ExEx place yourself,' he said to her.

She nodded, but looked surprised. 'How do you know that?'

He said, 'Small town. People notice these things. Virtual reality is still a novelty. Someone visiting the town who uses it is worth gossiping about, 1 assume.' In fact, Amy's brotherinlaw Dave Hartland had mentioned the other day that he had seen Teresa there, but Nick had no reason to

suppose that she would know the man. '

'It's not that much of a novelty any more, is it? There are ExEx facilities in most cities in America. One of the bookstore chains over there was starting to sell franchises when I left.

And they're opening all over the place in this country.'

'Maybe, but ExEx is still new,' Nick said. 'Most people don't appear to understand what it's used for. I'm not even completely sure myself You presumably are?' Teresa's expression gave nothing away. 'Since the branch here has become associated with Grove, some of the locals say it should be closed down.'

'lf he'd been renting Xrated videos they'd say the same.'

'I know.'

'OK,' Teresa said. 'Let's get back to Gerry Grove. Do you know what the police were doing during this time?'

'Presumably looking for the killer of Mrs Williams and her little boy, and the man who shot up the filling station.'

'That's the second thing 1 don't understand. The police say they reacted promptly and efficiently, taking all the problems into account. 1 interviewed the station superintendent last week, and he maintained the police operation had been cleared by the enquiry. That's broadly true, and I've read the enquiry report. But 1 think they really screwed up. They weren't anywhere around. They had more than two hours to figure out there was a gunman on the loose, and yet when Grove started shooting it took them completely by surprise. A patrol car had gone out to the Texaco station but until emergency calls came through from the town there were no extra police on duty. just the local force, and most of them were on normal duties around the town. Since last June most of the officers involved in the shooting have transferred to other divisions. For a body that's been given a clear, they're sure acting like they want to cover something up.'

'A lot of people have left town since last year,' Nick said. 'Yes, but the police are different. Or should be.'

'The police in this county are moved around all the time. Some would have applied to go to another division, others would have been due for a transfer anyway. Do 1 have to explain that?'

'No, I'm sorry. What 1 want to do is talk. 1 keep going over this in my mind, and 1 want to hear myself saying the words.'

'And I'm handy for it.'

'Yeah ... but you also know a lot about what went on.'

'Less than you may think,' Nick said.

'Even so. Let me finish this, because there's a third thing 1 don't understand. Grove only possessed two guns, the ones he used that day. This has been established beyond doubt. The girl he knew, Debbie'

'Debra,' Nick said.

'Right. Debra. See what I mean about you knowing things? OK, Debra says Grove only ever had those two guns, and he was obsessed with them, always cleaning them and oiling them.

But they were the only ones he had.

'No one's ever disputed that.'

'Listen, because someone's about to. As far as I can tell he had four guns, not two. There were the two he used in the streets, and two more were found in the luggage compartment of the car he stole.'

' Is this relevant?'

'I don't know about relevant, but it mystifies me. The guns he used were a handgun and a semiautomatic rifle. The handgun was called a Colt AllAmerican: it's well known in the US.

The rifle was an M16 carbine, the great American rifle. Set aside the problem of how he got hold of them in this country in the first place 1 guess there are ways if you want them bad enough. Why should he have two of each?'

'But did he?'

'The police found an M16 and a Colt in the back of the stolen car; they found an M16 and a Colt with his body.'

'Exactly the same?'

'Same makes, yes. Same models, probably. 1 can't get it any more exact than that.'

'I'm sorry, 1 don't think it's much of a mystery,' Nick said. 'They're probably the same ones, and somebody made a mistake.'

'Grove's car was found in Welton Road, about a hundred yards from the GunHo building. lt was unlocked. Grove's fingerprints were all over it. They found the rifle and the handgun inside, and his prints were on them too. I've seen the sceneofcrime officer's report. There's no mistake on this. Anyway, the forensic and ballistic reports prove that the handgun was the one used on Mrs Williams and her boy, and the M1 6 was the rifle he fired at the cashier in the filling station. Right, so far so good. But the problem is, identical weapons were found at the end of the massacre.'

'With the same forensic evidence?'

'Yes.'

'So did he have four guns or two?'

'The police say he had four.'

'Have you looked at them yourself?'

'They're not in town any more. The police said they'd try to find out for me where they are now, but they didn't sound too interested.'

'So what's your point? Surely the only thing that matters is that he had guns from somewhere?'

' OK,' Teresa said. 'Let me ask you something else. Did you know Gerry Grove?'

'No, 1 never met him, even when 1 lived here.'

'Do you know anyone who did know him?'

'Yes, a lot of people. Some of them come in here.' Nick

nodded towards the pool table, where the two young men were still playing. 'Those lads were at school with Grove. Amy also knew him, 1 think. He was one of the locals. Most people only knew him by sight, though. He didn't have many friends. After the massacre, when it was known who had done it, there was a feeling of shock. You don't expect someone you've seen around town for half your life to go mad with a gun in his hand.'

'So you think no one could have predicted what happened?' Teresa said.

'How could they? Grove was typical of a lot of young people who come off the estate up there on the hill: he was unemployed, he was often in trouble with the police, but never anything really serious, he did drugs when he had a bit of spare cash, he liked a drink or two. But he was quiet. Afterwards, everyone said how quiet he was. He was an only child, he stayed at home a lot, always looked a bit lonely and distracted when you saw him, never had much to say for himself A bit of an obsessive, someone said. Always collecting things and making lists.

When the police searched his house they found a pile of notebooks, full of numbers he had written down. He never threw away magazines, and the house was full of them.'

Nick paused, staring down at his glass of beer.

'That's not a lot,' Teresa said. 'What it amounts to is it basically lets the police off the hook.

They got away with a crappy investigation.'

'What do you mean?'

'Isn't it obvious? For starters, which guns did Grove actually use while he was killing people?

Which guns did he pick up from his house, which ones did he leave in the car when he went into the ExEx building, and which ones did he use afterwards in the town? Was the rifle he used at the filling station the same one he used here? And the handgun, in the woods, was that the same one he used later? If not, where did he get them from? Which ones did he leave in the car? How can two sets of guns give identical ballistic test results? Then you've got the lousy police response to explain. When there was a shooting at the filling station, why didn't they put up roadblocks and haul him in straight away? When he started shooting in the town, why didn't they have armed marksmen out on the streets within five or ten minutes?'

'We don't do that sort of thing over here, 1 suppose,' Nick said, hearing the primness in his voice even as he spoke. 'Not straight away, at least.'

'Right, and so Gerry Grove gets away with it because you're a bunch of tightassed Brits.'

Nick said, defensively, 'People get away with it in America too.'

'Sometimes.

At last he realized what he had been getting at, if only subconsciously. He said, 'That's how your husband was killed, wasn't it?'

She turned away, looked across the almost empty bar to where the kids were playing pool.

'Yes,' she said. 'You're right.'

'I'm sorry,' Nick said. 'I didn't think. I'd forgotten that, for a moment.'

'I deserved it.'

There was a long silence between them, while the jukebox played and the pool balls clacked intermittently. Nick was ashamed, not just of what he had said, but of having said it in the dowdy bar in the old hotel he ran, where people came for a couple of hours to be less bored than they were at home, but still bored. Ashamed of being still here in Bulverton. Of doing what he did, of the drinks he got through, of holding on to Amy, of being frightened of the future.

Finally, Teresa said, 'May I have that bourbon now?' 'OK.' 'No, 1 don't want it.' Then she pushed her glass across to him. 'Yes, 1 do, but only one.'

CHAPTER 2 2

It was a blisteringly hot day, and the Duke Ellington Orchestra was on the radio playing

'Newport Up'. Teresa backed the car away from the sidewalk, did a Uturn, and drove south along 30th Street. She eased herself more comfortably on the wide bench seat, and glanced up into the rearview mirror, straining to see herself; an elderly black woman's face, full of mild concern, looked back at her.

'Hi, Elsa!' Teresa said aloud, smiling at her own reflection. 'Let's go to Mexico!'

She followed signs across town towards the Montgomery Freeway, Highway 5, and turned south again. The sea was on her right, glimpsed through palm trees and apartment blocks. A new track came on: Artie Shaw playing 'I'm Coming Virginia'. The Mexican border was not far ahead. She drove until the rest of the traffic had disappeared, and the buildings of San Diego were static in her rearview mirror.

The sea remained out of reach, far away, glistening out to the horizon, still and tranquil.

When she was sure she could go no further, Teresa returned the gun to the glove compartment. She waited until the Artie Shaw record ended.

LIVER.

Teresa was a man, sweating in the heat, jacket off, cap on, dark glasses on her eyes, gun on her belt, gum in her mouth, itch in her crotch. Her name was Officer joe Cordle, San Diego City Police. Officer Rico Patresse stood beside her, his pistol resting on the whitepainted hood of the car. They were on duty at a roadblock across Route 8, three miles east of downtown San Diego. Another police unit was parked at a similar angle on the opposite side of the highway. Two officers stood at the ready there. In case there was an attempted getaway, backup units were parked at other strategic points on the road, most of them hidden from view.

Traffic moving towards San Diego was being monitored by a team of four other armed officers standing at the roadside. They gave each vehicle a quick lookover before waving it through. The car they were interested in was a dark blue '47 Pontiac being driven by a single white male: William Cook. A second man, Cook's hostage, identity still unknown, was tied up and lying on the rear seat. The Pontiac had been identified earlier, heading in the direction of San Diego. lt had been decided to carry out the intercept well away from the builtup area of the city, but close enough to city limits to allow rapid access to hospital if that became necessary.

A radio message came through that Cook's car had been spotted in the vicinity and was still approaching. lt was expected to reach the roadblock in the next few minutes. Teresa removed the safety catch, and placed her gun next to Patresse's on the hot paintwork of the police car.

She wiped her brow with the back of a sleeve, and they both spat into the dust at the side of the road.

Teresa stepped back from the car. She gazed at the surrounding scenery: the low hills, the small trees, the sagebrush, the telegraph poles alongside the highway, the buildings of San Diego behind, and a distant glimpse of the sea. Teresa knew that this was a finality, that there was nothing beyond or behind what she could see, but that everything within sight and touch was flawless, seamless, a self-enclosed reality.

She stretched her hands and arms down behind her back, linking the fingers, then tensing them until the knuckles popped. Her barrel chest and protruding belly swelled out before her.

She brought her hands back, and flexed the fingers in the sunlight, turning her hands to and fro. There was a tattoo of a blue heart inscribed with the name 'Tammy' visible beneath the forest of black hairs on her right hand. Her palms were sweating, so she wiped them on the seat of her pants. She picked up her gun, crouched down, rested her left forearm along the hot metal of the car, and sighted the weapon towards one of the cars currently slowing down to pass through the roadblock.

Beside her, Rico Patresse was doing the same. He was talking football: the Aztecs game upcoming at the weekend was going to be a tough one, so long as they fielded the same side from last week. What they needed to do

A blue Pontiac appeared at the corner, following two other cars. Teresa and Rico hunched down, trigger fingers relaxed but ready to fire.

'You wanna bet he won't stop?' said Patresse.

'Nah, he'll stop,' Teresa said, and recoiled mentally from the sound of her own voice, redolent of too much old beer and stale smoke. 'They always haveter stop in the end.'

They both laughed. She shifted the gum to her cheek and wadded it behind her teeth, so as to concentrate on her aim.

She heard a car approaching from behind their position, and broke her concentration long enough to glance quickly over her shoulder. A silverandblue Chevrolet station wagon was driving slowly towards the roadblock. An overweight, elderly black woman was at the wheel, peering anxiously ahead.

'Who let that goddamn car through?' Teresa shouted,

even as she realized who the driver must be.

'Get back, lady!' Officer Patresse shouted, without shifting his position. He and Teresa both waved their arms. The station wagon kept on coming. lt steered between the two police cars, and drove uncertainly on. For a few seconds the car was in their line of fire, blocking most of their view.

Beyond it, Just in sight around it, Teresa could see the Pontiac, still driving towards them.

Finally, the Chevrolet lumbered out of the way, and in the same instant the driver of the blue car must have seen the roadblock. The Pontiac's nose suddenly dipped down and the rear end skidded round. There was the sound of tyres, and a cloud of dust rose in the air.

The driver's door opened, and a figure half fell, half scrambled out. He pulled open the rear passenger door, and dragged out a man with his hands tied behind his back. The hostage collapsed on the surface of the highway. The driver crouched down beside him, and pulled a rifle out of the car. He moved swiftly, and handled the weapon with appalling skill and exactness of motion.

The Chevrolet was alongside him at this moment, and Teresa could see the woman driver looking in horror at what was happening beside her. She braked suddenly, throwing up more dust. It was getting difficult to see clearly.

'Take him out, joe!' said Patresse.

Teresa fired, and a spurt of dust flew up beneath the trunk of Cook's car. The man immediately swung the rifle towards her, and fired twice in quick succession. The first bullet buried itself somewhere in the body of the police car, the second screeched along the metal hood and snatched at Teresa's nonfiring arm. Pain flashed through her.

'Shit!' she yelled in her barroom voice, turned hoarse with agony.

' You hit bad, joe?'

Her hand was still working, her alm was steady. She dashed to one side, crouching low, and threw herself on the rocky ground behind the police car. She had a clear line of fire. She took alm on Cook, but things had changed again.

The driver of the Chevy had climbed out of her car and was holding a gun, levelling it at Cook.

'Hey, joe!' Rico shouted. 'The witness has a handgun! You want me to shoot her?'

'Hell, no! Leave it to me!'

She still had a clear line to Cook, so she fired. Then again, and again. Her third bullet struck him and he was thrown to the ground. Beside him, the hostage was struggling to get away.

Cook sat upright slowly, got hold of his rifle, took aim at her, fired. He fell back.

Gravel and grit flew up in front of Teresa's face, spitting into her mouth, eyes and hair. She ducked down, waiting for the next shot, but after a few seconds of silence she chanced another look.

Her last bullet must have struck him decisively. Cook was again lying on his back in the road. He was still gripping the rifle, which was standing on its stock, pointing at the sky. As Teresa watched him his grip relaxed, and the rifle clattered to the ground.

She got to her feet, and with her gun aimed steadily at Cook's body she returned to the shelter of the police car.

'What you think, Rico?' she said to Patresse, and discovered she could hardly speak, so short of breath was she.

'He's dead. You got him. You gonna be all right, joe?'

'Yeah.'

They moved forward cautiously, levelling their guns, ready to fire at the first movement. The other cops were moving in too. A dozen pointing gun muzzles staked the man's body. The driver of the Chevrolet threw her gun down on the ground, and covered her face with her hands.

Teresa could hear her wailing with fright and misery.

They all advanced slowly, but William Cook was not going anywhere. His head was tilted back at a horrible angle, and a rictus of pain distorted his face. His eyes stared into inverted distance. Teresa kicked his rifle away from him, just in case, and it skittered across the dusty road.

Her arm was bleeding badly.

'I guess that's it,' said Patresse. 'You wanna get that arm looked at, joe?'

'In a while,' she snarled, and kicked the body of William Cook in the gut, with just enough force to be finally sure he was dead. 'You OK there, ma'am?' she growled at the witness.

'Sure, honey.'

'You carryin' a licence for that gun, ma'am?'

Then Teresa stood back and looked around again at the static scenery, glowing in the windless heat of the day.

She Located, Identified, Verified, Envisioned, Removed.

LIVER.

Copyright (0 GunHo Corporation in all territories

The words stayed visible for a few seconds, then faded slowly and smoothly. There was no music.

CHAPTER 23

Teresa ate alone in the hotel dining room that evening. She used her elbow to hold open the paperback beside her, while she forked in the food with one hand. She was glad there was no one else around. Amy served her, coming and going with the dishes, not saying anything unnecessary, but nevertheless seeming friendly. There was no sign of the four young Americans, and when Amy brought coffee Teresa asked if they had checked out.

'No. They said they wanted to eat out this evening. 1 think they went to Eastbourne.'

'Do you think they're going to find the sort of food they like in Eastbourne?'

'You know about the food, do you?'

'Nick has dropped a few hints. 1 gather they're picky.'

Amy said nothing, but smiled and moved away from her table.

Teresa dawdled over her meal, because a long unoccupied evening loomed ahead, and she wanted to resist the easy temptation of the bar as long as possible. She had a few practical matters to attend to; notably, she needed to sort out her credit-card accounts. Every use of the ExEx equipment ran up a large bill. Although in theory the bills would be comfortably within her credit limits, the accounts, she had belatedly realized, would be sent for settlement to her home address. As there was no one there to forward mail nothing would be paid until after she went home. She had noticed 24hour emergency phone numbers printed on the backs of the cards, and she was planning to call them this evening to try to straighten out the problem.

She was tired after her long and physically demanding sessions on the ExEx equipment, and in similar circumstances at home she would have killed the evening mindlessly: watching TV, catching up with letters or housework, calling friends. None of these appealed or was possible while she was stuck in her hotel room, and the thought of running up more transatlantic phone charges from a hotel line was discouraging. The time differences anyway meant most of her friends would still be at work.

So she continued to read the paperback while she sipped her coffee at the table. When she realized Amy was waiting for her to finish up, she reluctantly closed the book and went upstairs, thinking vaguely about what to say to the creditcard company, and how to say it in the shortest way.

As she walked down the short hallway towards her room, card-key ready in her hand, she became aware that someone was standing in the shadows at the far end. A disagreeable sensation of fear passed through her. The man stepped forward. He went as far as the door to her room, then halted. He stood there, waiting for her.

She recognized him immediately as Ken Mitchell, the young man who had spoken to her before, and the fear dissolved into irritation. She recalled that the last time they had met he had also been in wait for her outside her room.

'Hi there, ma'am,' he said, with his falsely friendly smile.

'Good evening.'

She raised the keycard, and looked ahead to the door lock, trying to disregard him. He stood right beside her door, in such a way that if she wanted to go ahead and open it she would have to press past him. She could smell something expensively and subtly aromatic: a tonic lotion, a hair dressing, a body oil. He was wearing a suit, but it was cut in a casual style and made of lightcoloured fabric, for informal wear. His tie was straight, knotted neatly, and with a restrained pattern. His hair was short and tidy. He had white, regular teeth, and his body looked fit. He made her crave to ruin him violently in some way.

'I've been trying to find you, Mrs Simons. We need to speak together.'

'Excuse me, I'm tired.'

'We know who you are, Agent Simons.'

'So what?'

'So we have to make you a proposition. We find your presence here in the hotel disruptive.

We've made enquiries with your section chief in DC and have established that you are not here on official business.'

'I'm on vacation,' Teresa said, instantly wondering what had been said between these people and her office. 'Would you please let me pass through into my room?'

'Yeah, but you're not really on vacation, because you're kind of running a private investigation into the Gerry Grove case. The FBI say they know nothing about it, and haven't authorized you in any way. You're outside your jurisdiction, ma'am. Isn't that so?'

'It's none of your goddamn business, and it's none of the Bureau's business either. I'm on leave of absence.'

'As 1 understand the situation, the Bureau remains interested in whatever you do so long as you carry the badge. Anyway, we consider it to be our business. We checked into this hotel on the basis that the place would be otherwise vacant'

'That's between you and the hotel,' Teresa said, already grappling with a feeling of paranoia about what this young man or his associates might have been saying to her office. The last thing she needed right now was trouble at work. 'It's nothing to do with me.'

'I think you'll find we have ways to get you out of here.'

'Go ahead,' said Teresa, with some private amusement. 'Not many Americans feel like messing with the FBI.'

'What makes you think I'm a US citizen?'

'Sorry, my rmistake,' said Teresa. 'Now would you excuse me?'

'We need this hotel to ourselves,' said Ken Mitchell again. 'For that reason we have arranged an alternative room for you at the Grand Hotel in Eastbourne. Our company is prepared to pay the costs of relocation, and we request you to vacate your room by tomorrow. We also require you to quit making use of our corporate facilities in Welton Road.'

'What Is it with you?' Teresa said. 'Don't you ever listen, or what?'

'I listen, sure enough. But do you? We want you out, lady.'

'Tell me why and 1 might even consider it.'

'In this case we require the hotel for our sole use. We have a contract with the management'

'Not as far as they are concerned.'

'They are in error, which will turn out expensive for them if they are in breach of contract. In the meantime, either you leave of your own accord or we will take out a removal injunction against you. It's your choice.'

He hadn't shifted his position, looming unpleasantly close to her door. She was deeply reluctant to make physical contact with him, which she would have to do to open her door, but she reached forward with her keycard to see if he would budge. Apparently, he would not. She withdrew, and stood again a few feet from him, disliking and fearing him in almost equal measure.

'There are other ExEx providers,' she said. 'There's a place in Brighton. You can't stop me going there.'

'Suit yourself We're only concerned with our own corporate facility.'

'Why do you want me out?'

'You're disrupting our plans. We operate under a software creation licence drawn up within the draft Valencia Treaty, the European agreement to regulate freedom of electronic access. In the US we'd be operating under federal licence: the McStephens Act. You know what that is?'

'Yes, of course.' Something clicked in memory then; a training session last year; a subject she hadn't followed too well; areas designated sanitaire for software development; the right to serve notice to quit.

Mitchell said, 'US federal laws have no effect here, so we work under the European equivalent. The Valencia protocols don't have the same legislative muscle, but applied with full force they amount to the same.'

'Can 1 see your licence?'

It snapped into his fingers as if by sleight of hand. She bent forward to read it, and he held it still for her to do so.

'AH right,' she said. 'Why didn't you say that at first?'

'Why didn't you say you were a fed?'

'What about the hotel staff?' Teresa said. 'Are you getting them to move out too?'

'No, we need them.'

'Why them and not me?'

'Because they were here on the day of the Grove shootings, and you were not. They have memories of what happened, and you don't. We're interested in what they remember, and we're not interested in your theories.'

'I don't have theories.'

'Sure you do. Theories are what you're into. That's what we don't want. Your presence is disruptive.'

Teresa gestured in exasperation.

'You can't empty hotels any place you want to stay,' she

said. 'Just because you feel like it.'

'You want to bet on that, Agent Simons?'

'All right, but under McStephens you've got to serve notice. Seven days. What's it with Valencia?'

'You're sharp, aren't you? The same. Eight days, in actual fact.'

He was putting away the licence, more slowly than he had produced it. Teresa watched the precise way in which he folded it, before slipping the slim leather wallet into his rear pocket.

He reminded her of an agent she had known in Richmond, a friend of Andy's. Calvin Devore, his name was. Cal. Amusing guy was Cal, with a big face and big hands, but astonishingly dainty movements. What had become of Cal? Nice guy.

'OK, then,' she said. 'I'll work the eight days' notice. Back off me, you hear?'

But she was looking past Mitchell towards the light at the end of the corridor, thinking maybe she would call up Cal when she was home.

'Give me a break, Mrs Simons,' Mitchell said. 'Eight days'

'I might leave before, anyway. just lay off me until then. OK?'

'All right.' He glanced away with an irritated expression, but Teresa knew she had scored the point.

'What's the big deal?' she said. 'Why does it matter so much?'

'We don't need to use exclusion powers every place we go, but crossover doesn't occur in most places. You've got an interest in the Grove scenario that conflicts with ours. You're into reactional crossover, and we're into provemential integrity and linear coherence. The bottom line is, we're licensed to be here and you're not.'

'What's reactional crossover?' Teresa said, having re

focused on what he was saying, but struggling to keep up with his flow of jargon.

'It's the way you trained. What the Bureau uses ExEx for. They operate interdiction training scenarios. You go in there repeatedly, entering the scenarios from different points of view, and that introduces neural crossover. Successive experiences of the scenario alter your perception next time you go in. To us that means crossover, and if it happens while we're programming it screws the code. What people like you do after we've compiled doesn't matter a damn to us, because that's what ExEx is all about, but while we're coding the regressions and memorative accounts we don't want crossover. lt corrupts linear coherence.'

'What was the other thing you said you were into?'

'Provemential integrity. Provenience is'

'I know. Or I thought 1 did.'

'OK, but when we first build the parameters of a scenario, what we seek is a recreation of the integral whole. We're talking iterative purity here. We want the past event as it really was, or as it is remembered by the main players. It's the same thing, in algorithmic terms, as your basic whatthehell symbolic adumbration. We can fasttrack the code from either point, but until then we keep the provenience integral, and at the waterline. You got that? We don't want false memory syndromics, we don't want anecdotal reportage, we don't want post hoc invention or narration, and we sure as hell don't want people like you coming in and trying to put an interpretive spin on the events.'

'You're incredible,' Teresa said. 'You know that?'

'Yeah,' Mitchell said. 'I'm paid for incredible.'

'Did that actually mean something to you? What you just said?'

' It's the thing we do.'

He had barely shifted position while they spoke, and he

still bore the same expression of neutral stubbornness, but his undercurrent of menace was dispersing. Teresa thought how young he looked, and tried to estimate his age: he could be what? twenty or more years younger than she was? Is this what young people do now? she wondered. In her day if you got an education you left college and went into business, or law, or you Joined a government agency, but now you learnt to speak code-babble, relocated to Taiwan, changed your nationality and wrote software for virtualreality providers. What would she think of him if she were twenty years younger?

'All right,' she said. 'But 1 don't see how my staying in the same place as you'

'Have you been talking to the manager while you've been here? Or that woman who works for him?'

'Amy? Yes, of course.'

'And you've been asking them about Grove.'

'I don't see what's wrong with that,' Teresa said. 'It's what people think about in this town, because they lived it.'

'That's what you talk about in this town, Mrs Simons. And it's why we don't want you here.

We know you ' ve been talking with Steve Ripon's mother, the police, the newspapers, the Mercer family, and God knows who else. Also, you've been up at our facility running shareware. To build this scenario we need these people's memories of what happened, and we want them uncontaminated. And everyone else's too. What you're doing is all fastlane crossover, lady, and we don't want you in town even, until we've finished.'

'You've made a contract with the town? You going to sue them as well if 1 don't leave?'

He stared at her with his unchanged level expression, but moments later he actually smiled, though briefly. His face was transformed when he smiled. She wondered what he would do if she asked to see his licence a second time; she

wanted to see his hands work that way again.

She said, 'Let me ask you something. 1 was up at the ExEx building the other day, and 1

asked if there were any Grove scenarios. It was like 1'd blundered into something. The technician said something about before or after. Then she clammed up.'

'That's right.' He was cold and incredible again.

'What do you mean, that's right?'

'That's right she wouldn't tell you. Who was she?'

'No way. You'll make trouble for her.'

'Sounds like you've already done it. 1 can work out who she was.'

'I'll bet you can. Look, just tell me what she meant. Before or after what?'

'She was asking you, do you want to see the scenario of Grove before he started shooting, or the one after he started shooting?'

'Why should there be two?'

'We're working on it right now. This technician was speaking out of turn.'

'Why should there be two?' Teresa said again.

'Because halfway through his outburst event Grove went to our facility and ran an ExEx scenario. It was aberrant behaviour, coherencewise, but we've got to patch that in to the new scenario. lt makes linearity fade like yesterday. lt has mega-potential for looping. For the first time ever we've got a scenario where someone runs a scenario. You think of the coding that win have to go into that!'

'Where was Grove before he started shooting, and after he left the ExEx building?'

'That was the original question, wasn't it?' said Mitchell. 'Before or after? You're carrying a lot of theories, and they're fastlane crossover. We don't want to hear them.'

Teresa waved her arm in exasperation.

'You never give up, do you?' she said.

'Not until I've got what 1 want.'

'Well, what 1 want, and what I'm going to do, is to go into my room,' she said.

Mitchell made no move; she was still barred from her room unless she pushed past him. Since he showed no sign of getting out of the way, she decided that pushing past him was what she would have to do.

She moved forward, stretching out her hand and turning .her wrist at an angle, to slip the card into the swipelock. Mitchell stayed put, leaning against the upright jamb of the door. His face was only inches away from hers; once again she smelt his lotion. lt summoned an image of him standing before a mirror, moving an aerosol spray across his torso, staring into a condensationblurred mirror.

lt stirred something in her.

His face moved closer.

'What do you do in this hotel, Mrs Simons, all on your own?' he said softly, almost directly into her ear.

Teresa felt the quiet words impacting on her, as if they had coned on to a patch of her skin, somewhere beneath her ear, across her neck, a gentle tactile intrusion with almost musical rhythm. The nerveends across her shoulders prickled, and she felt her face burning. She turned her head to look at him, and his face was right there. Nine inches away, twelve, staring steadily at her. He was so young; it was years since She concentrated again on the lock, not wanting him to judge her as someone who couldn't cope with modem electronic technology. She knew the card had to go in at exactly the right angle, otherwise it relocked the door and she had to start over.

Mitchell spoke again, this time barely breathing the words.

'What's the story, lady?' he said. 'How do you like it done to you?'

She gave up with the key, took a step back and faced Mitchell again.

'What did you say?' she said, flustered.

'Why are you here on your own, Agent Simons? You want it, you can have it with me.'

She said nothing.

A long silence followed, while he continued to stare at her and she had to look away. All she was aware of was his lean, masculine shape, his clean and wellfitting clothes, his neat hair, his firm body, his distracting smell of expensive lotion, his quiet voice, his grey eyes, his smoothly shaved chin, his precise hands, his youth, his slender height, his closeness and his total unwillingness to back down. He held up one hand, palm outwards, at the same level as her mouth.

'You know what I can do with this?' he whispered.

She replied, quietly, 'Will you come in for a while?'

At last he stepped aside to allow her to operate the lock, and she swiped the keycard efficiently, getting it right with the first try, glad not to have to redo it while he was watching, not to have to delay and give herself time to think about what she was doing.

The door opened to a room in semidarkness, light from the streetlamps coming in through the opened curtains, and she went inside with Mitchell. following close behind her. He kicked the door closed. She threw aside her bag, the paperback book, the keycard and its plastic case, heard them all scatter on the floor. Already she was turning towards him, yearning for him, eager for his body. In their haste their faces collided, cheekbones knocked, lips crushed against each other, teeth grated momentarily. She thrust her tongue greedily into his mouth: he tasted sweet, cool and clean, as if he had just eaten an apple. She tore open the front of her blouse, and pulled his hard young body against her breasts, grappling her hands possessively across his straight

back, his narrow waist, his small tight buttocks.

The fingers of one of his hands rested on the tiny valve in the back of her neck, teasing at it with a precise, dainty lightness of touch. The other hand settled on her breast, as gentle as the mist of an aerosol spray.

Mitchell left her an hour later. She remained on her bed with the scattered sheets, her clothes, the pillows and covers, heaped around her. She lay on her side, still naked, her hand stretched out and resting lazily where his body had lain just a few minutes before. She thought contentedly of what they had done together, how it had felt, what it had been, the shocking flood of relief it had brought her. She was wide awake, physically rested.

His maddening masculine fragrance lingered around her: on her skin, on the sheets, on her lips, under her nails, in her hair.