Dead Men Singing

As we enter the Third Millennium, Death, Famine, Pestilence and War have been joined by a fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse who is every bit as worrying as the rest of the posse, and his name is Digital Technology.

- Ian R. Goodall ‘Giant Steps’

His wristwatch read 1300, so it was seven o’clock in the morning, still Thursday; he’d been awake since three, worrying, and his stomach thought it was lunchtime.

The bathroom mirror told him his weight, blood-pressure, heart-rate and stress-level (as measured by the electrical conductivity of his toes). All of them were too high. It also brought him a choice of three breakfast shows, two pink couches, one blue. He croaked ‘TV off’ loudly enough for them to disappear.

He had eight unread e-mails; he switched to voice-op, balanced his pad above the wash basin, and scanned them while he shaved. Five were routine: news prospects, transmission schedules, audience figures, press-cuttings and an agenda for tomorrow’s conference call. Martin Briers had made contact from Atlanta and passed on a mildly subversive poem about the Board of Management. His wife wanted him to get in touch and attached a couple of scans of Michael’s latest nursery finger-paintings. Someone called Harriet Ainsley had sent him the bumph for next month’s Production Seminar at Penshough, a landscape document full of graphs, flow-charts and bullet-points. He noticed that the bullet points came in salvoes of five, so it was probably a McKinsey job.

Over a breakfast of coffee and beignets on the wrought-iron balcony overlooking Royal Street, where the buskers were already at work – three black kids, with bottle-tops jammed into their battered trainers, tap-dancing while an older guy, perhaps their father, played Careless Love on a five-string banjo - he tackled the only one that needed a reply.

Susan,

Thanks for the e-mail. I didn’t arrive til late last night – in fact we almost missed the connection at Washington, partly because about five hundred Germans with ruck-sacks pushed in front of us at Immigration, and partly because the biometric scanners were crap.

I travelled with Brinsley Shiller (H.Ent) who was horribly sick when the plane bounced around a bit, plus his bright-eyed, bushy-tailed sidekick Jeremy, who has apparently been on some six-month Ivy League management course that’s so hi-powered they make your wife (or husband, I suppose) attend for the final month. They brought in the rule after they found lots of course members were going home and getting divorced because they’d been changed so radically by the whole experience that their spouses didn’t know what they were on about. Would this have helped in our case? I could have brought you down to White City for a month of sitting in meetings with Laurie thumping the table and yelling ‘Just fucking do it!’ I somehow doubt it. Laurie arrives for his session on Saturday, by the way. I hope he shows a little more civility on the public platform than he shows in departmentals.

New Orleans is nice, thanks, and yes, if it had been Houston or Atlanta I probably wouldn’t have bothered, but it is a legit trip, I do have a couple of good reasons to be here, and I honestly wouldn’t have come all this way just to drink Sazerac and eat alligator etouffée when you can get both at Tesco these days. One thing they have come up with since my last visit – a Cajun channel on Freeview. The ‘Late-nite Zydeco Show’ had some good footage of old Clifton Chenier gigs.

Look, Susan, I’m sorry if starting my e-mails ‘Susan’ rather than ‘Dear Susan,’ ‘Dear sweet darling Susan’ or whatever upsets or irritates you. I should have known it would piss you off, remembering how much significance you attach to these runic indications. You must have spent hours last Christmas analysing the significance of three Xs on that card from whoever it was (I can’t even remember - oh, all right, I can, it was Hilary from the NHU) that I brought home. You seemed to think it was equivalent to my coming back from the office party with lipstick on my cock. Then after New Year we had 237 ‘How’s Hilary?’ digs. For the record, my one and only exchange with bloody Hilary since Christmas went (in full):

‘Did you have a nice break?’

‘Oh not so bad, ate and drank too much as usual ha ha.’

In short, if Hilary was yearning for my sperm, she didn’t let on.

Sorry, I wasn’t going to start, but you’re wrong to read anything into the baldness of the salutation. All BBC e-mails start with an unadorned Christian name. The point is, it would be presumptuous of me, in the circs, to call you ‘my (anything) Susan,’ since you’ve made a point of not being. And before you start pointing out (do you ‘just point out’ as much to Dennis as you did to me?) that it’s my fault I lost the right to call you ‘my darling Susan,’ I’ll sign off with a ‘miss you’ and a ‘wish you were here’.

Yr affec. ex(?)-husb.

Robert

PS Lots of love to Michael. Tell him the pictures you scanned through are great, esp. the plane on fire (which I presume was his idea, not yours).

PPS You can e- or voicemail me on this number or bleep if it’s urgent. Apparently we have to keep our phones switched off during sessions.

He clicked send. The error-message was instant:

Your message has been rejected

Reason for non-delivery: BlueScan© has detected the following unacceptable phrases:

fucking do it

lipstick on my cock

yearning for my sperm

Edit? Cancel?

Some cocksucker had put a three-foot scratch on the side of the Ferrari. It had to be some dipstick shitbrain who reckoned nobody who wasn’t them should own a good-looking automobile, or worse, some wall-eyed redneck white-trash cross-burning sister-fucking rebel-yell shitbrain moron who didn’t mind white folks having Ferraris, but figured black folks should still be picking cotton and singing about dem ole boll-weevils. Beemore wasn’t about to risk the retro-style Cadillac roadster in the parking lot at Cosmo’s, so he took the pick-up.

The drive from Lakeshore down St Bernard Avenue to the studio on North Rampart and Dumaine took him fifteen minutes, and he used the time to play back last night’s rough mix of Take Me To The River. He heard it twice through, then told the player to ident two-minutes-forty through three-ten, and listened to that section seven times. The voice was Otis, no sweat, but the horns were not quite the Bar-kays, too clean, nothing he couldn’t tweak. By the time he shouldered through the door into reception, Beemore knew how he was going to do it.

Jasmine was already pouring his coffee.

‘There’s two cops want to talk to you,’ she told him before he’d even tasted it.

‘I gotta tell you about timing, Jazz. Ask me what’s the most important thing in comedy.’

‘What’s the most important thing…’

‘Timing!’

‘…in comedy?’

Beemore liked that gag; Milton Berle had worked it on him over the phone when Beemore was a kid dee-jay on WHER in Hattiesburg. The coffee was fine, he could fix the horns, he could get a respray on the Ferrari, Jasmine was laughing nervously. Life was good.

‘What do they want?’

‘They wouldn’t say.’

‘Parking violation?’

‘They wouldn’t say.’

‘They smile?’

‘Uh-uh.’

Life was not so good.

’Gimme five minutes and send ’em in.’

He cleared three pizza cartons off his desk, sat down and logged on. Coffee, schedule, e-mails and check the share-prices, that was the routine, and he wasn’t about to… They were in, looming.

‘Shit, I said five minutes!’ yelling, then ‘Good morning officers, do take a seat, I’ll be right with you, just as soon as…’

‘Beemore Franklin?’

He nodded. What the hell, get them out of the way. Beefy dude in a suit, redhead chick in a tight frock, pale skin, green eyes, freckles, tasty but OD the sexism. Play the fool and take the white man’s money. He smiled, innocent, as Eddie Murphy as he could get, which was plenty.

‘Sir, we’re kinda sorry to drop by without an appointment an’ all. Allow me to introduce Detective Elaine Renton. I’m Sergeant Joe Pardoe, NOPD…’

Heavy-handed cracker politesse from the big guy, but hey, better than a split lip.

‘…but we have to ask you a coupla questions. You know a Miss Emmylou Ducroy?’

They were watching his face. Why were they watching his face?

‘Sure. Yeah. Singer. Sweet young thing. She…’ No, save it. Just smile.

‘Sir, you wanna tell us about your relationship with Miss Ducroy?’ The woman this time, very de haut en bas, a fuck definitely out of the question.

’I wouldn’t call it a ree-lay-tionship,’ cautious. ’We work together, have worked together. She makes a good enough doo-wah for some of the retro-Tamla we do, but she’s a bit, hey y’understand, white for the down-home end.’

Watermelon grin. No offence, officers.

‘Sir, you wanna tell us if you were with Miss Ducroy at your home Tuesday night?’

Oh boy. OK. Here we go.

‘Sure. Sure, yeah. I had a few folks over, a little barbecue, a little dancin’ an’ romancin’, singalong time, you know the shtick.’

Would they know a word like shtick? Did it fucking matter, they thought he was a Yiddish nigger? Beemore was losing it; he clicked the aircon zapper down to fifty-five, wiped his neck, refocused.

‘And afterwards?’

‘Well, yeah, we partied…’

‘After the party?’ The suit was either winding him up or he was as shitbrain as he looked, and that couldn’t be right.

‘We had carnal knowledge of each other. We engaged in hobbadagee. We fucked.’ Looking into the redhead’s eyes. ‘Five times. Maybe six.’ Cheap shot, instantly regretted. Officer Crewcut was on his case.

‘She says you raped her.’

He knew how to be.

‘OK. That’s it. Outta here.’ He jumped up, pulled the door open. ‘That is an out-fuckin-rageous statement. I have to ask you good folks to leave at this point. I’m serious, guys. No way. Uh-uh…’

‘She says you raped her, and then your friends raped her. She says – sit down Mr Franklin sir – she says she was gang-raped anally and orally…’

‘How the fuck you gonna rape someone orally? They bite the damn thing clean off, you try a fool trick like that…’

‘…after she was unconscious.’

‘Ah. That’s different… Wait a minute! Hold on a click here! She’s unconscious, how she gonna know? Huh? How she gonna know she being raped orally, anally or up her fuckin’ nose?’’

‘Mr Franklin, sir, we’re gonna have to ask you to come with us…’

‘Yeah yeah yeah.’

On the way out the door: ‘Jasmine, tell Monty Ray he can start on the Otis thing, but I gotta do some more on the horns, and call Jimbo Wilson, that’s the lawyer, tell him we need a defence attorney, tell him to get the best, tell him to get down to… where we goin’ here?’

‘Eighth District, Royal and Conti. We’re working out of the Quarter right now, it’s handy for the trade. Tell the lawyer to ask for the Sex Crimes Unit, and tell him we’re looking at an 18 USC Section 2242.’

‘He’ll know what that means? That’s boffing a not-very-good singer? ’

‘Quote by threatening or placing her in fear unquote. Yes sir,’ said the woman. ‘The maximum sentence is twenty years. Sir.’

Robert was in snooze-mode. Three things kept him awake: first, the chill of the air conditioning inside the New Orleans Convention Centre; second, the hardness of the chair on which he was wedged in among 250 other delegates listening to somebody called Skip in a session entitled ‘Surfing Your Future: Be a Winner Not a Wipe-out’; third, his self-imposed task of counting platitudes. He wrote down the best ones: ‘The future is just change that hasn’t manifested yet… Today’s trends are tomorrow’s opportunities… You need to determine your comfort-zone before you embark on your database mission…’

The seminar had started memorably, with the line ‘This morning’s session will have a couple of thrusts’, and the promise that we would ‘open up the hood and see how this thing works’, but now the delegate on his left (who wore a short-sleeved shirt and a tie covered in little Christian fishes, and who kept muttering ’Aw-right!’) was getting on Robert’s nerves. He wished he had chosen a different session, maybe ‘Focus on Getting the Revenue Share You Deserve!’ with Randy Westheimer, or ‘Mental Weaponry Strategies For the Media War’ with somebody called Todd. He wondered how Brin and Jeremy were getting on with ‘Top Talent and Big Bucks: The Drive to Syndication’. He needed a cigarette.

The only place to smoke was out front by the cab rank, where it was ninety degrees and the light dazzled. Brin was already there, puffing gratefully. He stood close, his free hand splayed on his ample chest, and told Robert about the mirror at the hotel that monitored his blood pressure. Brin made it sound funny, and once Robert had laughed it would have seemed rude to mention that he too had a magic mirror in his hotel bathroom. Brin went on to tell him about the ‘Top Talent’ session:

’They’d got some in for the occasion. Oh yes, some top talent, big network star, major syndicated show, five days a week. Doctor Wendy. Who? Exactly. That’s what I thought. She’s absolutely huge at three in the afternoon, apparently. I’ve got the blurb. Get a loada this: “She is energetic, witty, humorous and compassionate, with a courageously outspoken perspective on honor, responsibility, commitment, character and happiness.” The strange thing is, everybody who writes in – they still write letters over here, weird – everybody who writes in, and she gets a ton of letters, they all start off “Gee”, as in “Gee, Doctor Wendy, you were so personally and individuationally psyche-oriented with what you were saying about unwanted nasal hair. I’ve always been a snipper, but now I’m gonna be a plucker, an’ I will always use tweezers and never my fingers! Doctor Wendy, you have changed my life!”’

‘So what’s next?’ Robert asked, genuinely seeking guidance from the Head of Entertainment. If he could spin a stand-up routine out of a session on programme syndication, Shiller was clearly the man to follow.

‘Well now, let’s see,’ said the little man, rubbing his sunburned pate, flipping open the Expo programme and squinting through the smoke that trickled upwards from the Marlboro in the corner of his mouth. ‘Let’s have a strategy prioritisation interface here. There are about fifty hospitality suites. We could get a beer in each of those, but you have to listen to a lot of teckytalk. We’ve got “Branding versus Benchmarking: Battling for the Consumer’s Mind”. We’ve got “How to Make Your News Viewer-Friendly”; “Copyright Protection - Encryption or the Digital Fingerprint?” Digital fingerprint - there’s a tautology for you. Aha! “Geodemographics!” That’s probably counting how many fan-letters begin with the word “Gee”. Or we could attend the presentation of the Alexander M. Poniatoff Gold Medal Award for Technical Excellence… I suggest we adjourn to the bar.’

They found Jeremy in the Interactivity Pavilion; he was with a fellow-Brit, an intense young woman from Oceania called Kirsty, who was asking him what sort of penetration he expected in the short to medium term. Brin caught Robert’s eye and grinned lasciviously, while Jeremy told her that satellite distribution in the U.S. would never get much beyond twenty percent, because cable had seventy percent already, whereas for the rest of the world satellite was the primary distributor and could get as much as sixty, maybe sixty-five percent. She thanked him and moved on.

‘And that,’ said Brin, leading the way to the bar, ’is not what I call interactivity.’

‘She knew nothing,’ said Jeremy defensively, managing to imply that he would have taken Kirsty back to his hotel and screwed her senseless if only she’d known how many gigaherz make a teraherz. ‘In any case, she didn’t light up my badge.’

He pointed to a button he was wearing clipped to his shirt pocket. ‘Light Me Up’ it said in aggressive purple letters above a tiny LED screen.

‘What’s supposed to happen,’ he explained, like a boy telling his grandfather about Robotrooper Five, ‘the idea is, you wear one of these and it records the digital signature codes for all the media you’ve consumed during the past week. Then when you meet someone else who’s wearing one, they talk to one another, the badges communicate – infra-red I suppose - but anyway, if they get a match they light up and you can read on the display here what it is you’ve got in common… in terms of media consumption.’

‘But Jeremy,’ Robert said patiently, ‘You’ve only just bought it. And Kirsty’s only just bought hers. So it doesn’t know yet, does it? It can’t guess what you’ve been watching… can it? You’ll have to wait a week and try again.’

‘That’s no good,’ Jeremy grumbled. ‘She’ll be back with her husband by then.’

‘Tell me Jeremy,’ Robert asked. ‘What’s your job-title? I know you work with Brin, but what do you do?’

‘Manager Strategy and Development. M.S.D.(Ent). It’s a consultancy thing really. You don’t have the equivalent in Docs.’

‘In Current Affairs Documentaries we don’t believe in strategy,’ Robert told him, only half-joking. ‘And we’re not developing, we’re shrinking. I’m part of a tiny Ruritanian kingdom surrounded by three mighty empires, News, Culture and Entertainment. We survive by keeping a low profile, ducking and diving, making and breaking alliances. Tactics, not strategy.’

‘Did I ever tell you…’ Brin asked, as he flicked his e-card across the vendor’s till-pad and took out three Buds, ‘about Brian Redhead crossing the border from Canada into New York State? Thing he told me many moons ago when I was a humble trainee, even younger than this lad here? He was in a car with a film-crew, director, producer, researcher, the whole shebang, and the Immigration feller says: “You guys from the BBC?” and Brian says “That’s right” and the guy says “Which one of you is Jeremy?” and one of the team in the back of the car leans out and says “That’s me. Why? Is there a message?” and the guy says “Nah. It’s just whenever the BBC comes through, there’s always a Jeremy…”’

Brin Shiller slapped his paunch and laughed.

‘Brian always said that was what he was going to call his autobiography, he ever got round to writing it. “There’s always a Jeremy!”’

‘Emmylou is eighteen, which is young but not that young. This is not stat rape here, we are talking a serious case of the real thing plus you wanna aim to find a few bolt-ons to jack up the max and help us on the plea-dicker. You might look at sodomy, look at the drug element, look at conspiracy even, assuming Beemore is going to cop a plea which he might not, on account of the forensic evidence got lost in the wash and on account of Emmylou is all we have and she’s a mite hysterical right now so we don’t know how she’s gonna play. What’s on his sheet?’

Renton could have told Pardoe not to be so damn patronising, but she gave him a straight answer:

‘Zilch, you leave aside vehiculars. He was pulled in five years ago, punched out some guy in a bar-fight, no charges. Nope, he’s as clean as they come.’

‘So, look, it’s now coming up thirty-six hours since the magic moment, we need to go for a take. You wanna do this one?’

She smiled and nodded, glad now that she hadn’t been too femmy with the guy. He obviously trusted her, which was gratifying, although she’d better not gush either. She walked through into the interview room while Pardoe went back to his desk, clicked his monitor to ‘Interview Room 1’, tilted his chair and sipped coffee. Several other detectives in the room tuned in to the show.

‘Hi, Emmylou, how ya doin’?’

The solid-state AV recorder blinked on. The only thing that would stop it now was five minutes’ continuous silence. In the meantime everything that was said or done in the room would be admissable. This would be the take.

Detective Elaine Renton sat down and looked across the table at her witness. Not promising. On the wall behind Emmylou the biofeedback readout, driven by the sensors in the girl’s Velcro wrist-band, was 54 on the scale – agitated, jumpy, some anger. It should go down when she started talking, unless she was lying, in which case it would stay high, maybe even hit the sixties.

‘Did you arrest his ass yet, the black bastard?’

‘He’s co-operating.’

’What’s that mean? What the fuck’s that mean, co-operating? My daddy hear ‘bout this, that boy be co-operating on the end of a rope, y’hear?’

57 and climbing. Too high. The voice trembling, whining.

‘It’s OK, Emmylou. It’s OK. Take it easy. What we’re gonna do now, we’re gonna do a formal Q and A. I’m gonna ask you some questions and you just tell me the truth, about what happened. You’re being recorded, we’re both being recorded here, and we got a camera going and it’s all for the record, for if – when – this thing gets to court, OK?’

Elaine wondered what the camera would make of that foxy face, dirt-pretty, good enough bones for the short-cropped blonde hair, no make-up. The blouse was severe, not too tight, thank the Lord. If Elaine were a juror…? Never mind, get on with it.

‘OK. Your name and address for the record?’

‘Emmylou Ducroy, 34B Clarke Avenue, Metairie. That’s where I’m staying right now. It’s a rental.’

‘That’s fine. I’m Detective Elaine Renton. Now tell me about Tuesday night, that’s October 13.’

’Well, we work til round seven over at the studio, rehearsing, just getting the arrangement down, we supposed to sound like Aretha’s backing singers, doing that old Eagles song, Desperado, y’know? Doo-doo – that’s Doo-doo Garry - does a fantastic Aretha, but the harmonies are kinda weird. Then Beemore says we should go back to his place, get sump’n t’eat, an’ we can sleep over, drive back to the studio together in the morning. So we did…’

‘Who else was there, at Mr Franklin’s house?’

‘Pops Garry, Doo-Doo Garry, Sticks Johnson, Carmichael – I don’t know his last name – he’s an engineer. Six of us. Pops and Doo-doo left about ten, ten-thirty…’

‘So there’s you, Mr Franklin, Mr Johnson and somebody called Carmichael something, yeah? So what happened?’

‘They was playin’ music, records… and me and Beemore was dancing, OK a bit close, but respectable, then he kinda… sticks his hands inside my dress… and I tell him to stop, and he…’

‘What were the words you used, when you told him to stop?’

‘I said “Stop it, Beemore. No!”’

‘Uh huh. Go on.’

‘Well, he don’t stop. He kinda unzips my dress down the back, I’m wriggling about tryin’ to stop him but he’s kinda holding me under one arm and he pulls the dress clean offa me, and he says “Hey Sticks, take a look at this sweet thing.” I’m like naked here, just pants, an’ he pulls ‘em off and says “The bedroom’s thataway”, pointing up the stairs, and I run outside into the garden there, and he’s chasin’ me and laughin’ like it’s some big joke, and he knocks me down on the grass and he… he made me… you know? Have sexual intercourse? Right there in the garden? Them other guys watchin’ and laughin’?

‘Then he says “You all want some of this?” and they come across and Beemore holds my mouth open and one of them, Sticks I think, puts his filthy cock in my mouth…’

The tears were real but the readout was still high-fifties.

‘And he just about chokes me, and the other guy’s humping me, and that goes on for a while, then they roll me over and hold me down and they take it in turns with putting their cocks in my back passage…’

‘Your anus?’

‘That’s right. My… anus, uh-huh. And I’m just about unconscious by this time, me, I tellya.’

‘Did you struggle, tell them to stop?’

’Ma’am I sure did. I struggle and I tell ‘em to stop. They don’t listen. So then they lets me up and I say “You didn’t use no condoms, you stupid-ass coons” and Beemore hits me across the face, and he says “Get out, bitch” and I get my dress and I run out.’

Elaine waited for a count of ten; she wanted it to register. Then, very gently:

‘What happened next?’

‘Well, I’m walking down the road, Lakeshore Drive, OK? – and Beemore drives up alongside and says to get in, he’s about to run me home. So I get in the car and he drives me home. I get in, take a bath, then in the morning I’m talking with my agent and he says I definitely oughta report their asses and so I call 911 and that’s when you-all come to see me.’

‘Thank you Emmylou. Just wait here for a while. There may be some more questions.’

The girl let out a long breath. The readout was dropping as Renton re-entered the squadroom. Pardoe mimed applause.

‘What you think?’

‘I think we have enough to bring in the other two, Johnson and this Carmichael boy. We also have enough for a warrant on Beemore’s house. See if he’ll give you the keys, save us breaking the locks. Oh, and the warrant needs to cover his car.’

‘Can we get enough for a conviction?’

‘Not in a million years. But we may have enough for a confession.’

By four o’clock Robert’s notebook was full of percentages:

’Multimedia hardware sales growing at 40% per year. Is that U.S. or global? Who cares?

’Niche music categories (gospel, jazz, folk, foreign-language) account for 26% of recorded music sales.’ Was that low or high? Either way, the speaker clearly thought it remarkable, so Robert added three exclamation marks.

’Critical mass for a big-city channel can be as low as a 1% audience share… if it’s the right 1%!’ Robert suspected that the audience for his own programmes was the wrong one per cent; he imagined that they were vicars’ wives, English teachers, beekeepers and redundant middle-managers quieting their ulcers with sips of cocoa as they watched. Would that add up to one per cent? He didn’t think he liked his audience very much.

’Only 15% of broadcast media consumption in the U.S. is pre-programmed, and only 10% is time-shifted for viewer or listener convenience.’ ‘I guess folks are just plumb lazy,’ the speaker had commented happily and drawn a round of applause. Robert noted it down as further evidence that folks plumb don’t give a shit what they watch, and resolved for the fiftieth time that day to find himself a more useful career.

The jet-lag, the chest-poking Midwestern voices and the lunchtime Buds multiplied to deliver a 99% need to go back to his hotel and lie on the vibrating bed with its heating, lighting, music, video and room-perfume controls. He looked around idly for Kirsty, half-promising himself he’d try a pick-up if he bumped into her and half-hoping he wouldn’t, but the quest was in any case hopeless. The exhibition hall was a crowded maze and there were a dozen seminars in progress upstairs.

Robert mooched towards the exit, dodging the techno-evangelists who thrust leaflets and brochures at him as he shuffled past the displays of digital hardware. State-of-the-art appeared to be the 60-inch wall-mounted flatscreen TV with a keyboard ‘telepad’ zapper, linked to a surround-sound hi-fi, full-colour laser printer, computer console and wristwatch phone-pager. He would also need a cashcard-scanner, of course, if only to download enough credit to pay for a virtual reality helmet-and-glove kit.

The biggest stands celebrated the ‘gateway’ companies - Oceania, IMG and Campomare - the Lords of the Digital Jungle. They owned the satellites and the cable-net multiplexes, gathered in the nanopayments, bought and sold the channels and the online services.

The loudest and most garish displays were pushing product: syndicated movies, soaps, comedy, entertainment, documentaries, 24-hour news in a range of formats differentiated by geography, preoccupations or presentation-styles, music in a hundred pre-programmed varieties, and sport; there was an awful lot of sport.

Then there were the ‘interactive’ services, of which the main ones were shopping and gambling. You could pop your e-card in the slot and buy anything from a pizza to a Porsche; visit a virtual casino with fruit machines, roulette, blackjack and poker, or bet on the outcome of a Peruvian football game, a Korean cock-fight or a computerised re-run of the Battle of Waterloo in which you got to be Napoleon.

One of the audio jukebox companies was running a ‘Beat the Database’ challenge. If Robert could name a record - any record ever released by any performer on any label - that was not available on-line at the touch of a button, he could win a hundred hours of free downloads. He asked for the most obscure record he could think of: Stormy Weather by the Five Sharps, released on the Jubilee label in the early 1950s. The computer didn’t even blink. Instantly, the song was there, thumping through the hubbub, sounding disappointingly ordinary.

Robert passed through the Games Arcade where simple-minded nerds sat playing Peacekeeper while complex-minded nerds wrestled with three-dimensional chess. He ambled down Education Alley where a headmasterly gentleman invited him to sign on for a degree course in any subject of his choice, explaining that, as a student in the Online University, Robert would be able to attend all the necessary lectures and tutorials, write his papers and pass his exams without getting out of bed. Robert said it sounded just like Oxford.

In the Adults Only pavilion, complicated choices faced the connoisseur. Softcore or hardcore? Gay, straight, lesbian or bi? Duo, group, gang-bang or orgy? Barely-legal, teen, babe, milf or mature? Asian, Latina, black, blonde, redhead, big-tits, small-tits or no tits at all? Interracial, amateur or celebrity? Oral, anal, facial, muffdive, double-penetration, triple-penetration, golden shower, bondage, domination, correction, fetish-wear, lesbian, voyeur, toys, animals, tattoos, close-ups or weird? If you fancied a video of a pregnant teenager with a cucumber up her bottom getting her nipples pierced by a tattooed transsexual Indonesian midget, they’d just say ‘Which format?’ There were banking, insurance and investment services, most of them advertising off-planet satellite accounts, beyond the reach of the taxman.

There were consumer advice, medical advice, personal counselling, religion (traditional or New Age), yellow pages, legal advice and services, travel planning and booking, ‘what’s on’ guides (also with booking facilities), video-conferencing, dating and chatlines, ‘sideband’ services and niche-interest-group channels. Robert was squawked at in swift succession by Gaytime, Moslem World, the Antiques Channel, Green Planet, Medical Center, the Single Parents’ Channel, Sunseekers, Fem TV and Management Plus.

‘YOU NEED NEVER MAKE ANOTHER VIEWING DECISION,’ shouted the day-glo screen above the Oceania Pavilion. So this was the sell they’d chosen for Psi-TV. Robert jostled his way to the front of the crowd and watched the presentation. He’d heard of Psi, it was the talk of the Conference, but had only the vaguest idea of what it was and how it worked.

‘The key to Psi-TV is the bio-zapper,’ smiled a fifteen-foot-high, three-dimensional glamourpuss, showing them her fancy wrist-watch. ’It remembers all your favourite programmes. It also remembers the shows you liked and those you didn’t like, without having to be told, and it lines up lots more of the kinda programmes you’re gonna love, all ready for you to watch whenever you’re ready to watch ‘em…’

Robert had seen enough to depress him for the rest of the day. It was so bloody blatant.

‘Just give the punters what they want!’ It was a familiar slogan, but it had never amounted to more than blather; it was the simple-minded mantra of marketing wonks who understood nothing of production. And it had been easy enough to deride.

‘How are we supposed to find out what they want? We have to offer them the best we can produce and see whether they like it.’ That had usually been the end of the argument. But now? Now there was a system, a fully-automated reality, a way to know. He supposed it had been bound to happen.

Robert stepped outside the building, lit a cigarette, climbed into a cab, was told to put out the cigarette, climbed out of the cab and walked back to his hotel.

Sticks Johnson had seen-it-done-it-been-it; he wanted a lawyer and he was saying zip; but the lanky young creole, Carmichael, grinned and shook hands and hoped to please. Elaine Renton clicked on the AV, rattled through the caution and got down to business.

‘So you were round Beemore’s place Tuesday night. What happened?’

‘What happened? Nothin’. We just hangin’ out on the terrace by the pool., havin’ a smoke, havin’ a drink, havin’ a laugh. Beemore and Emmylou, they’re in the den, smooching along to some old Jerry Butler compilation. One o’clock we’re ready to quit, lookin’ around, they already gone, obviously hit the sack, so we lock up and crash. OK, around four, wake up, big panic, Beemore’s racing around the house in his bath-robe, wanting to know where the fuck’s that Emmylou.’

’What did he say?

’He say “Listen, you better check your motherfucking watches and wallets.” So we check ‘em and they still there, then Beemore haul his pants on, slam out the front door and take off in the Ferrari. So then we go back to sleep.’

‘And in the morning?’

‘OK, we surface around nine. Beemore just say the girl musta gotten spookified in the middle of the night and run off, so he chase after her, he find her walking down the road and he drive her home.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘What else you wanna know?’

He was dragged awake by a lilting female voice cooing ‘Mr Carver! Excuse me sir, you have a telephone call! Say yes to take the call, no to save a message.’

‘Hold on a minute, I’m asleep here.’

The synthetic voice appeared to understand.

‘Holding your call, sir. Just say yes when you’re ready.’

‘OK, yes.’

‘Wotcher cock.’ Brin’s booming voice filled the room, then dropped to a bearable level as the limiter kicked in. ‘Are we having fun yet? as it says on my baseball cap.’

’I’ve not had so much fun since Glastonbury ’98’.

‘Remind me to ask you about it.’

‘It rained.’

‘Listen, are you up for a little expedition? Jeremy’s been reading the fucking guide-book. He wants us to have a Cajun Experience. Fair enough?’

‘Sure, fine, yeah, absolutely.’

‘See you in the bar at seven. They eat early in these parts. Dress-code, by the way, if Jeremy is anything to go by, appears to be knee-length pink shorts.’

There was no click. The Shiller chuckle simply faded to silence.

It was OK to use e-mail, they had told their agent, recruit, creature, whatever. In fact it was just about the safest way to report in or get instructions, so long as you remembered the rules:

Register under different names with six or more service-providers, and use them in rotation (but, to avoid confusion, use the same cryptonym for all your messages).

Use a standard commercial encryption programme, most people do, nothing too state-of-the-art; it will give you a billion-plus one-time ciphers and it won’t look so unusual that anyone would want to pluck it out of the ether for a closer look.

Don’t report on a regular schedule or from a regular location.

Don’t compose, encrypt or decrypt unless you are alone, you are sure you will not be interrupted and you are absolutely positive that you are not subject to physical or electronic surveillance. Ensure that your machine is in standalone mode and physically disconnected from any network or intranet; clear any cookies and run an up-to-date virus-check before you start.

Don’t use operational code-names unless it’s absolutely necessary; never use the real names of people or places; don’t use jargon, especially intelligence jargon; don’t use numbers, for example when talking about money; don’t mention dates, times or weather conditions; avoid proper nouns. Type in lower-case throughout, without punctuation or formatting.

Don’t mention or allude to weapons, narcotics or any political or criminal organisation or operation which could conceivably be the target of keyword surveillance by any intelligence agency, especially NSA.

Never use the ‘Return’ or ‘Forward’ facilities - each message should be sent separately; don’t type in the ‘Cc’ or ‘Subject’ boxes; don’t begin ‘Dear So-and-so’ or finish ‘Yours whatever’; don’t put any kind of name at the end; deselect ‘delivery-check’ and ‘read-receipt’ options; if you need to send audio or video attachments make sure they’re scrambled; don’t include hyperlinks.

Don’t save anything to disk, and remember that includes your destination e-mail address (common mistake!); after sending or reading, delete without saving; after deleting, empty your Recycle Bin, clear your Clipboard and check that nothing has autosaved to ‘Recent’, ‘Journal’, ‘Outbox’, ‘Sent’, ‘Temp’, ‘History’ or ‘Archive’.

Don’t (and this is No-no Numero Uno!) write anything down, print anything out or make notes.

Judiciously composed and edited according to these instructions, the daily report was ready to send.

From: whizzkid

To: bigbrother

Cc: <none>

Subject: <none>

arrived safely with you know who

Beemore would have walked right out of there, cabbed back to Cosmo’s and carried on remixing Take me To The River until the cops were ready to shit or get off the pot, but as his lawyer pointed out, they would put together some kind of cockamamie case, bleepmail the media and come for him with dogs and teargas and reporters in miniskirts, while the Governor of Louisiana made speeches about stamping out sexcrime. His lawyer was a Southern gentleman in a cream suit who looked as though he belonged on the label of a sauce-bottle, but he knew whereof he spake, so Beemore sat at the coffee-stained table in Interview Room 2 and worked out a head arrangement for a Sam Cooke version of Honky-Tonk Women. He was wondering whether to use a piano or a mandolin for the ‘dink-de-dah, de-doodle-oodle-oodle-oodle’ riff when Pardoe hefted himself into the chair opposite.

‘OK, Beemore. I do apologise for keeping you waiting, but we’re about ready to record your statement here. I want you to wear the wrist-band, so we can take a look at whether we’re putting you under stress at any point, and we’re gonna be talking on the record, audio-visual recording. I guess I don’t need to explain what that means, you being in the business an’ all.’

’I fake ‘em for a living,’ Franklin said without smiling. He strapped on the sensors; the read-out wobbled around and settled at 43. Iceman.

Pardoe recited the interviewee’s name and address, informed him of his rights, identified himself as interviewing officer and began.

‘Tell me, Beemore. Why did Emmylou run away?’

‘Who told you she ran away?’

Pardoe shifted his buttocks and spoke quietly:

‘I don’t want questions from you, Beemore. I want answers. I got a deposition on file here from a Mr Michael Winterson, aka Carmichael, aka Candy-flake…’

‘He likes cars.’

‘And he’s tellin’ me this story about how Emmylou took off down the road, and you jumped in your big shiny Ferrari and went lookin’ for her. I just wanna know why she ran.’

Beemore Franklin spread his hands and shrugged. The read-out was steady on 44.

’OK, Beemore, why do you think she ran away?’

’….and I wonder,’ Beemore sang in a passable imitation of Del Shannon, ’where she will stay-ay, my little runaway, run-run-run-run-runaway….’

Cecilia didn’t mind her looks; her mid-brown hair fell to her shoulder-blades, her dark blue eyes needed very little shadow or mascara, and her wide smile required only a touch of lip-gloss. But she hated her walk; her feet were too splayed, her back was too straight, her habitual gaze too front and centre; she felt that it made her look haughty. Nor was she comfortable with the waitress tricks they’d made her learn, such as crouching at the table to take the order (‘They mustn’t feel you’re looming over them’) and popping back every five minutes with a crinkly smile and a ‘How y’all doin’ here? Same again? Okey-dokey’, when back home in Boston she would have said ‘Can I get you anything else?’

She was even self-conscious about the dancing, which was odd, since that was why they’d hired her. She had to remember to move her shoulders too much and tilt her pelvis too far forward. She disliked having to drag the shy ones onto the parquet dance-floor and having to incite their more extrovert friends to embarrass them if they wouldn’t join in.

It was going to be particularly difficult with the table in the corner. For one thing they were English, which tended to mean reserved and formal if not downright supercilious. For another thing, they were an awkward mix of three men and one woman. Cecilia thought she might grab one of the men and she might even get the woman at the table to dance with one of the other two, but that would leave one of them sitting on his own, and Paul had told her - he’d insisted - that she shouldn’t leave anyone alone at a table.

It solved itself immediately, of course. The fat man jumped up, grabbed Cecilia and whirled her into a creditable Louisiana Two-step, while the other three, clearly relieved at the prospect of a break from their companion’s unceasing flow of anecdotes, bent their heads closer together and launched into some kind of shop-talk.

You’re not supposed to talk much during Cajun dancing; the occasional ‘Eee-hah!’ or ‘Et toi!’ is all the vocal expression that’s expected. Cecilia’s partner, as a foreigner, could not be expected to know this. He kept up a rattle of conversation in his hard-to-follow accent, raising his voice to a bellow when they were required to spin off to opposite sides of the dance-floor, and dropping it to a tabasco-scented murmur when they linked arms to promenade.

‘Robert’s crazy about you… not the tall one with the droopy drawers and the pudding-basin haircut, that’s Jeremy, looks like Mo out of the Three Stooges. You’re too young to remember the Three Stooges, bless you, you’re too young to remember Iggy Pop and the bleeding Stooges come to that, but anyway, not him, he’s spoken for… The other one. Don’t stare, he’ll think you fancy him.’

Robert looked up at this last shouted remark. Cecilia thought what the hell and flashed a smile at the Englishman in the linen suit.

’You’re a ballet-dancer, right? Trained from the age of four if not younger. I can always spot ‘em. Walk like a duck, dance like an angel. Bet you could kick the ceiling if you wanted to. Not suggesting you try it right this minute…’

He linked arms with a sprightly matron (who came, she yelled, from Texas), spun her round, minced back into line and carried on his shouted disquisition:

‘Listen, when you finish here… What time do you finish? Midnight? … When you finish, don’t worry we’ll carry on boozing to the bitter end… When you finish, why don’t you come and join us, we’ll go on to a subsequent venue….’

‘I’d love to, but there could be kind of a problem…’

‘Don’t give us a yes or no right now. Come and have a drink, see if we all get on. I’m Brin, short for Brinsley. And you are?’

‘Cecilia.’

‘What’s that short for? Only joking. You dance divinely, my dear, but I’m out of puff. What would you like to drink?’ Brin’s hand clasped her naked arm. He tugged her across to the corner. ‘This is Jeremy, he’s going to be very rich one day. Robert, clever sod, needs watching. And – remind me? – Kirsty? This is Kirsty. She’s with the opposition. Not one of us, but very nice considering. Pull up a chair, and let’s all have a Cajun experience. Don’t you get sick to death of accordions?’

The cops had looked around Beemore’s house – a twinkly-white pastiche of an ante-bellum mansion, but this one post-Katrina and not so much Tara as ‘Taran-tara!’ The cleaner had been at work; the beds had been changed, the sheets washed, the kitchen tidied, the barbecue raked and the pool terrace swept. The lawn out back, where the rape had allegedly happened, was cropped and green. The Ferrari and the Cadillac roadster crouched in the double garage smelling of wax and leather. There had seemed little to be gleaned by a scene-team, but they turned off the lawn-sprinklers and sealed the wrought-iron gates, just in case they might later decide to order up the full tweezers-and-spectrograph bit.

The yellow crime-scene tape had alerted Beemore’s neighbours, the Greeleys, who’d never liked the guy a whole lot anyhow. They had used their telepad to call in a Hot Poop Scoop to EasyNews Interactive (‘Drop the dime and pick up the dollars!’).

By seven there was a camera team at Cosmo’s and by seven-thirty a reporter with a self-op camkit and very white teeth was at the Eighth District HQ asking for a statement.

The lawyer sat in the corner nodding sleepily; easiest two thousand bucks he ever made. Beemore wasn’t going to crack and he wasn’t going to babble. Beemore was going to sit there for as long as it took, cool as a mint julep, and play his game of answering every question with a line from a song that Pardoe had never heard.

‘You’re a wealthy guy, Beemore. Nice wheels you do have.’

’Now lookee here, I did not say I was a millionaire,’ replied Beemore, quoting the Howlin’ Wolf version of Goin’ Down Slow. ’But I said I have spent mo’ money than a millionaire. An’ if I’d ’a kept all the money I spent, I’d ‘a been a millionaire a long time ago. And women? Wey-hey, googly-moogly!’

’Tell me about the googly-moogly, Beemore. You get a lot of that stuff? You like ’em young? Like ‘em white, huh?’

’Pretty girls, pretty girls, everywhere, da da da da daa… When I make it to the beach, there’s a pretty girl there …’

‘Who scratched your Ferrari, you know who done that terrible thing?’

’I’m gonna get me a car, gonna move on down the road… Nope. Only seen it this mornin’. Coulda been anytime, anyplace, anywhere… byyyyanng! Well I can go anywhere, without you! I can go anyplace…’

Pardoe slammed out of the interview room, marched past his tittering colleagues who’d been following the Q and A at their desktops, into the reception hall, up to the reporter and said:

’Sure I’ll give y’a statement. Sergeant Joe Pardoe, NOPD Sex Crimes Unit. Turn that thing on.

‘We’re talking with Beemore Franklin, the well-known record producer, owner of the Algorhythm Music Group, Cosmo’s Studios and Resurrection Records, about an allegation of rape. The young lady involved is a singer, Miss Emmylou Ducroy, eighteen years old.’

That was the bite. That was all they’d have time for. He held the pose, waited for the click.

‘And if you want her address, it’s 34B Clarke Avenue, over in Metairie Parish, but you didn’t get it from me.’

Robert had noticed that the restaurant manager was watching their table. He was a chunky little guy for a dancing waiter, with a scrubby beard, a pony-tail and an angry smile. Surely he couldn’t be annoyed because Cecilia was shmoozing with the customers; a certain amount of that was obviously part of the job, along with the exhibition dancing, the waiting tables and the whole MC routine. Maybe she was overdoing it; she had been laughing and flirting with Brin and Jeremy for quite a while. Or perhaps the manager had noticed that she was going down like a shit sandwich with the girl at the table, who had already turned down another drink and looked about ready to ask somebody to call her a cab.

‘Yes,’ Kirsty was telling Robert, ‘I do actually know Gary Mordick personally. I’m a sort of consultant adviser on the PR side of the operation, which is fun, but the guy is just incredibly dynamic. Mind you, he’s smaller than he looks on the screen. And very charismatic. Of course he has to be, I mean he runs the whole thing, both sides of the pond, very hands-on.’

‘Pardon?’ Robert yelled over the washboard obligato.

‘Very hands-on! Mordick! He’s constantly whizzing about, season ticket on Concorde Two, talking to the heads of the various divisions. London, Nashville, New York. Manic about scheduling. And research. Total research freak. I could look you up on his database, find out what kind of car you drive, what brand of lavatory paper you buy. Look, shall we go?’

‘What, dance? Sorry, did you say shall we dance?’

‘Go! Leave! I’m a bit, y’know, jet-lagged.’

‘Are you not enjoying yourself?’ Robert ventured. ‘You sound a bit fed up. Is the waitress annoying you?’

‘I’m not pissed off with her,’ Kirsty replied in a grumpy whisper. ‘I’m just very annoyed with Jeremy. I accept his invitation to dinner, I make a bit of an effort - y’know, the lippy, the stockings, high-heels - only to discover that he’s also invited you and Brin - well, fair enough, you’re both very nice, but then do we go in a cab like civilised people? No, I’m expected to ride on a rickety green tramcar so that Brin can do his Tennessee Williams jokes, then we get here and well, I mean… plastic tablecloths and beer in plastic jugs? OK, fine, but then Jeremy seems perfectly happy to ignore me all evening while he canoodles with some jitterbugging barmaid. So yes, I’m pissed off.’

Robert shrugged and looked at his colleagues. Brin Shiller was (at a guess) a quarter of the way through a story about John Birt’s leaving do. Jeremy was translating the BBC management jargon and supplying footnotes, so that Cecilia would know when to laugh.

The song finished, but the story flowed on. The manager stepped up behind Cecilia and placed proprietorial hands on her bare shoulders. ‘OK folks? How y’all doin’ here? Sorry to bust up the party, but this little lady has to get back to work.’

The three Englishmen looked up at the intruder.

‘Fuck off, sunbeam,’ said Brin. ‘We’re having a conversation here.’

‘OK, guys.’ The smile got angrier. ‘It’s past your bedtime. C’mon. Let’s go. Cecilia, let’s have the check here. Hey, like, now, OK? Let’s move it….’

The manager was watching the fat mouthy one, which was a mistake, because the move came from the tall bastard with the pink shorts. A chair was kicked over, a beer was tipped into Kirsty’s lap and Jeremy had a grip on the pony-tail and was holding a steak knife against the bearded face, its point a couple of millimetres from the left eye.

‘You probably don’t know who we are,’ said Jeremy. ‘Let me introduce you. I’m Jeremy Seymour. This is Brinsley Shiller, Head of Entertainment for the BBC and one of the dozen most influential men in British broadcasting. My friend Robert here is almost as important, and this is Kirsty – sorry about the beer, Kirsty – who is a friend and colleague of Mr Gary Mordick, President of the Oceania Group. And you are?’

The eye twitched as the knife-point touched its lower lid.

‘Paul… Paul Girardet.’

‘Hello Paul. Now I suggest you take Mr Shiller’s advice and fuck off.’

‘Please, Jeremy,’ Cecilia pleaded. ‘Don’t make things worse. Put the knife down. I’ll get the check…’

‘Oh no! You stay right there. Brin’s in the middle of his anecdote, and it’s a good’un, as I know because I’ve heard it five times.’

Robert straightened the chair, handed Kirsty a napkin, moved across, grasped Jeremy’s wrist and carefully eased the knife away from Paul’s face.

‘That’ll do, Jez. Let him go. We’ll pay the bill and we’ll call it a night, huh?’

The restaurant was uncannily quiet. Several embarrassed male tourists stirred as though to show their wives and daughters that, if this thing wasn’t straightened out, they were ready to wade right in there, but they stayed in their seats all the same.

Paul backed away from the table, shaking with rage and shame. He pointed at Cecilia.

‘You,’ he announced, ’are through. That’s it. You blew it. Take your very important friends and get the fuck out. Forget the check. Just go. Va t’en!’ At a safe distance, he turned and marched back to the dance-floor, clapping his hands rhythmically. The band took the cue and scraped into ‘Eh Petite Fille’.

Jeremy turned to the others and said ‘Shall I ask him to call us a cab?’

Emmylou was good on camera; she was like a Best Supporting Actress on Oscar night. She had so much wow-shucks-little-me charm and sincerity that the reporter gave her a full ninety seconds.

The best thing was, she seemed to know instinctively how much detail was going to make it past the Breakfast Newsnanny. ‘They used me like some kinda sex-toy… perverted sex acts… left me feelin’ dirty and humiliated and…’ Hold the fierce gaze, ‘and… angry!’ In tight for the tear-streaked close-up… ‘So very angry!’ …and… cut.

Elaine Renton had been watching from the car, waiting for the newsman to leave. She wasn’t about to kill the story just yet. Let it run, she reckoned, and if the Captain wants to know in the morning who tipped the Big Easy Breakfast Show on a rape accusation that wasn’t going to make it past the interview room, let Pardoe stand on the carpet and explain how he lost his cool with a jive-ass millionaire and did a stupid thing.

The reporter unhitched his shoulder-camera, tossed it into his car, drove away as Emmylou turned to go back inside.

‘Miss Ducroy, I’m sorry to be troublin’ you again. May I come in?’

‘Yeah? What’s this? Aftercare?’

Emmylou led the detective through to a surprisingly tidy den. Renton had imagined, though she guessed it was unfair of her, that a singer would live in squalor. The girl was relaxed now, a different creature from the mess who’d given that high-fifties feedback.

‘You get a confession? You didn’t? But you’re gonna fry his balls anyhow, right?’

‘Emmylou, I want to ask you a favour, this won’t take two minutes, and I’ll be long-gone, just a quick thing. Tell me something, is that the purse you had with you Monday night?’ It was likely, she figured. Emmylou wasn’t the type to own more than one. The girl nodded warily.

‘You mind if I look inside it? You can say no if you want. It just might help.’

Another nod, and Renton took the bag and tipped its contents onto the coffee table. She sorted through the usual stuff – cellphone, make-up, tissues, gum, plastic comb, perfume, diary, photographs, receipts, e-card, book-matches, condoms – and placed to one side a fistful of coins and a bunch of keys.

‘Could you turn on the lamp there, Miss? Thank you.’

She found what she was looking for. The tip of one of the keys – a heavy mortice key – was marked with flecks of red.

‘That’s where you scratched Mr Franklin’s car, am I right?’

‘So I put a scratch on his flyin’ penis. After what he done to me? You gotta be joking, lady. Yeah I scratched his car. Arrest me.’

‘Hey, no problem. Nobody’s gonna lock you up for it. Just tell me one thing, Emmylou. Exactly when did you do it?’

Silence.

‘It was after the assault, right?’

Silence, and a blank, guilty stare.

‘Because you see, Emmylou, you told us you grabbed your clothes and you ran. You ran straight down the road. You were desperate to get away. So it would seem strange if you had stopped to look in your purse, take out your keys and scratch the car, while there’s three guys chasing you… ’

Emmylou grabbed a tissue from the packet on the table and held it tight.

‘Well I did. They wasn’t coming after me, so I just scratched the car and ran…’

‘Whereas,’ Renton went on as though the girl had not spoken, ‘Mr Franklin told us that you went to bed with him, then you got up in the night while he was asleep and that’s when you left. And you see, if everyone was asleep, that would be a good time to scratch the car, wouldn’t it?’

The girl was still clutching the tissue as Renton left, but she wasn’t crying. It wouldn’t have helped.

They dropped Cecilia outside her house on Jefferson Avenue. It was a cute place in the Garden Quarter, a converted coach-house that had belonged to the neighbouring mansion, and she’d been lucky to find it. Her father paid the rent and the cost of her law course at Tulane University, but she had to earn her own pocket-money, which was why she had taken the job at the restaurant. But they mustn’t feel bad because she had been thinking about quitting in any case.

She didn’t ask them in for coffee, and when Brinsley suggested it, as Robert knew he would, she returned a firm no without any awkwardness. Robert found this impressive. He held the door as she stepped from the cab. God, she was graceful. It was now or never.

‘Cecilia, I’m sorry about what happened. I’d like to make it up to you. Perhaps I could call you tomorrow?’

She turned away from the cab, looking in her purse for the door-key, and then blessed him with a smile, a handshake and a card. ’Cecilia Charles’. Address, phone number, mobile and e-mail address. Perfect.

Kirsty got out at Le Pavillon, and Jeremy went with her to ‘walk her to the lift’.

‘Don’t wait for me,’ he said jauntily. ‘I’ll make my own way back’.

‘If you don’t get past the lift,’ shouted Brin as the cab moved off, ‘you’ll find us in the bar.’

Robert, who’d been wanting to thump the arrogant young dickhead for that psychopathic routine with the steak-knife, discovered to his astonishment that he no longer cared. The night air blew hot and food-scented into the car. He was cruising through his favourite city and he was, he thought, maybe, probably, definitely, in love.

The miniature screen above the windshield gave them the late news from EasyTV. Brin was burbling too, something about the difference between Cajun cooking and Creole cuisine, so Robert almost missed the bit. He told Brin to shush a minute, picked up the passenger zapper and spooled back the broadcast. There it was again.

‘New Orleans record-company boss Beemore Franklin is in jail tonight, facing charges of gang-rape. Here’s Ward Gillett.’

A tracking shot along the front of a building. The garish sign: ‘Cosmo’s’.

’It was here at Cosmo’s Studios, where some of the Big Easy’s biggest stars recorded their hits, that Beemore Franklin’s computer wizardry brought Elvis Presley back from the grave for this summer’s smash hit Love is a Sometime Thing.’

Library footage, Beemore in the studio, looking thoughtful, while the pseudo-Elvis crooned quietly.

’But it was here at Franklin’s Lakeshore mansion…

The locked gates, pillared portico, yellow tape.

‘…that it’s claimed he and two of his friends brutally raped a young singer on Tuesday night.’

Which was where he’d started the spoolback. The TV dropped back into live transmission. A blonde girl, crying.

‘They used me like some kinda sex-toy… ’

‘I’d give her one,’ Brin contributed.

‘Shush.’

‘What’s so important about a mucky tale on the telly, that you feel it incumbent upon you… hang on, we’re here.’

The car stopped and the driver turned in his seat.

‘There’s a ten per cent cash discount, gentlemen’ he told them. ‘But if you wanna use e-cash there’s a ten per cent surcharge.’

Brinsley applied his brain to the mathematics of the driver’s remark.

Robert pointed at the television screen. ‘Beemore Franklin.’

‘So?’

‘I know the guy.’

‘What do you mean, you know him?’

‘I’d arranged to see him tomorrow.’

Brin still looked puzzled.

‘We were at Oxford together.’

‘Ah!’