thought not.
'Tell me about Dave Pullen,' he said quietly. 'Pretend I don't know.'
'Know what?'
'That he was the guy who hurt you the other night.'
'How the fuck did you know that?'
'I listened when we were down at Gunwharf. And I watched you.'
'Listened? Well, there's a first. Not too many girls get listened to in this town.' She frowned at him. 'What made you think it was them Scouse kids, then?'
'Guesswork. You sort out what you know, find a pattern, then try and make everything else fit. Sometimes it works.' He shrugged.
'Sometimes it doesn't.'
'Too right. The Scouse kids were OK.'
'Wrong, my love. The Scouse kids are shit.'
'So what does that make Dave Pullen?'
'He's shit as well. And ugly with it. So what does that make you?'
'You want the truth? It makes me a pathetic little slapper who's completely fucking lost it. You know what I've done about Dave? You really want to find out just how fucking stupid I am?'
'Tell me.'
'There's a guy called Bazza Mackenzie.' She paused. 'Yeah?'
'Yeah.'
'OK. So Bazza and my mum go back years. He's been screwing her since I can remember. He's like family, looked after me and my mum really well. Lately they've been having a bit of a problem but that doesn't make any difference to me. If I need someone to talk to, really talk to, then I know he'll always be there for me.'
'So you told him about Dave?'
'I did, yeah.'
'And you're worried what'll happen next?'
'I know what'll happen next. Bazza will kill him. And that's if he's lucky.'
'Does that bother you?'
'Of course it does. Dave's got his bad side, just like all of us. If I never see him again there won't be a happier girl in the world, but you can't be with a bloke for a couple of months and not feel something for him. He's a dickhead. He can be really horrible sometimes. But I shouldn't have gone shouting my mouth off the way I did. Because it's going to be my fault, isn't it? When Bazza breaks his legs?'
The loo door opened. Another blast of air freshener. Suttle waited until the woman had gone, then leant forward across the table.
'One thing I don't understand.'
'What's that?'
'Why Dave Pullen in the first place?'
Trudy gave the question some thought. Then she glanced at her watch and crushed the remains of her cigarette in the ashtray.
'Do you really live in Petersfield?'
'Near there, yes.'
'Own place?'
'Rented cottage. Shared with another guy.'
'Cool.' She reached down for her bag. 'I know some great pubs out that way.'
By the time Eadie Sykes got to Guildhall Square, the demo had already begun. She was no judge of crowds but the briefest headcount in the area closest to the Guildhall steps suggested a grand total of maybe a thousand. From his perch halfway up the steps, a thin, intense-looking man in jeans and T-shirt was using a portable megaphone to offer his thoughts on stopping the war. He himself, it seemed, had volunteered to go to Baghdad as a human shield, prepared to hazard his own flesh and blood against the fury of the fascist warlords. Reference to Bush's billion-dollar killing machine sparked yells of approval from the small army of school kids at the front of the crowd, and the human shield volunteer drew a wider round of applause as he ended his speech with a call for solidarity.
Eadie watched as the megaphone passed to a huge, bear-like man with a full beard. He beamed down at the mass of protestors, battling with the rising swell of chants, trying to impose some kind of order on the chaos below. The demo was to form up behind the wall of placards. The route would take them past the railway station and through the Commercial Road shopping precinct. With luck, he said, they'd stop the rush-hour traffic at the other end. The plan was to rally at the gates of HMS Excellent on Whale Island, but with so many police around there were no guarantees they'd make it that far.
Eadie knew what he meant. She'd been in touch with the demo organisers earlier, a mobile number handed out by the Stop The War Coalition, and her offer to tape the proceedings had been snapped up.
There were plans to pool video footage from all over the country, to edit maybe a half-hour documentary interweaving the people's protest with news footage from the opening hours of the war itself. That way, the voice at the other end had explained, there might be a chance of shaming the government into pulling back from this madness. Even now, he had said, with British troops pouring into Iraq, there had to be someone left in government with just a shred of conscience.
Eadie herself rather doubted it. For whatever reason, it had become clear that this was Tony Blair's war, the consequence of a deal struck months ago with the neo-cons in Washington. Quite why a centre-left Prime Minister should ally himself with a bunch of ultra-rich fascists was beyond her, but it was already clear that the forces of law and order were preparing themselves for a spot of serious containment. The man with the loudspeaker was right. The milling crowd of demonstrators was already boxed in by a line of yellow-clad policemen and there were rumours of dozens of police vans lying in wait outside the square.
Eadie raised the little Sony and began to hunt for images. A wide shot from the top of the Guildhall steps established the scale of the demo.
A brief interview with the man nursing the loudspeaker provoked an eloquent if despairing tirade against New Labour's latest sell-out.
Then, down amongst the crowd itself, she concentrated on the shots she knew would make an impact: a child in a Capitalism Sucks T-shirt, two gays with a placard reading Screw Boy George, a pensioner in a wheelchair trying to coax some sense from his hearing aid.
Surfing these faces, storing them away on tape, gave her an almost physical buzz, a sense of kinship at once intimate and detached. Using her skills this way, she told herself, was as practical a contribution as she could ever hope to make. The next hour or so, as events developed, might yield pictures that would make a real difference. It was, in a way, a grander, more public version of what she was trying to achieve with the drugs project. Attitudes had to be changed. People deserved the truth. It was time for the nation to wake up.
Working her way towards the front of the demo, she felt the column of protesters begin to shuffle forward. At the exit from the square, she ducked out of the crowd and stationed herself beside one of the council buildings, letting the river of faces flow through her viewfinder.
Then, spotting a gap, she rejoined the march, picking up the chant,
'Hell no, we won't go! We won't fight for Texaco!' looking for cutaways that would put the event in its proper context. The police were everywhere. She filmed them in twos, threes, arms crossed, watchful, waiting, tiny earpieces feeding them the bigger picture.
Then, quite suddenly, came something new on the tiny fold-out screen. A police cameraman. Taping her.
Nick Hayder's bed was curtained off when Faraday finally made it to Critical Care. He'd driven to the hospital after a detour to take J-J home. The ride to the Bargemaster's House had been tense. J-J was white-faced, utterly beyond reach, and by the time he dropped the boy off Faraday had the feeling that he, rather than his son, was somehow the accused. Trying to break the ice, he asked J-J what he'd really meant to do with the petrol, and the matter-of-factness of his reply had chilled him to the bone.
'I was going to burn their house down,' he signed. 'The guys with the drugs.'
Had he been joking? Was this simply a gesture, a piece of wishful thinking in the face of events which had
