'Really? You see absolutely nothing?'
'Well, not nothing, but nothing that makes any sense. Splodges of colour, sunlight I suppose, the light through my eyelids.'
'You can make no sense of it, so you ignore it.'
'What am supposed to do, make shapes out of it like you do with cloud formations?'
'What can you hear?'
'You.' She waited while I listened again. 'I can hear the birds singing, there are cows in the fields across the way there.'
'What else?'
'A plane, maybe?' I lifted my face into the light to hear better. 'Is that a plane or is it traffic from the road? I can hear noise from the kitchens now that you mention it, and if I listen very carefully I can hear the breeze.'
'Anything else?'
'What else is there?' I asked.
'Your heart.'
'My heart? I'm supposed to listen to my heart? What's it telling me?'
'It's not telling you anything, at least not in sound. It is pumping blood through your ears fifty or sixty times a minute. Each pump has a pulse, and if you were to listen to my chest you'd hear my heart pumping much the same,' she said. 'Say Dockweed.'
'Dockweed, why?'
'Does it sound louder to you when I say it, or when you say it?'
'When I say it, because I can hear it inside me.'
'Then why can't you hear your heart?'
'Sorry?'
'You are able to hear my heart, if you listen, and a word is louder when you say it then when I say it, but when I asked you what you could hear you did not hear your own heart. It is pumping blood through your veins, through your ears, and yet you do not hear it. Why not?'
'I suppose because I'm used to it.'
'More than that.'
'Because it's my heart?'
'Yes, and no.'
'Why then?'
'Because, if you could hear your heart then you would hear nothing else. It's loud in your ears but your brain has learned to ignore it because it contains no useful information. Instead you can hear the bird in the woods or the tiger sneaking up on you, conditioning and survival has made it so.'
'Evolution in action,' I said.
'Not evolution, perhaps. Some say that in the womb we hear our heartbeat and that of our mother, and that only later do we learn to filter it out. Not evolution, but choice.'
'What's this got to do with my lesson?'
'What can you feel?'
'I don't know — the seat we sit upon, the breeze on my back, the dampness of my shirt. Am I supposed to be feeling my breakfast digesting in my stomach?'
'So seldom do we truly listen, truly feel, that we forget that the world exists whether we perceive it or not. We hide our heads under the blankets like children and pretend there's nothing there.'
'Are you saying that there really are monsters under the bed?'
'I'm saying that for reasons of comfort and the freedom from being overwhelmed by our sense of the world, we choose to ignore a great deal of it, but we forget that we have chosen and continue as if what we have chosen is all there is.'
She let me think about that for a moment, and then continued, 'I'm saying that you block your sense of the world, and that to perceive it better you will need to unblock your sense and see the world anew.'
'How do I do that?'
'You learn to listen. You take time to feel. You pay attention to what your brain is telling you to ignore until you can hear your own heart, if you so wish.'
'And where will that get me?'
'You want the reward before the work, Niall Petersen.' She frowned in disapproval.
'No, but it's not unreasonable to ask what the benefit will be if I accomplish this task, is it?'
'It's a fair question.' She considered. 'A violinist teaches themselves the fine distinction between a note that's sharp or true. A painter knows every shade of blue that his paints can render. A tumbler can sense their balance no matter which way they tumble, and yet none of these begin that way. They practice what they do until they have it right. They don't attempt to play a symphony, or paint a masterpiece, until they have mastered the basics.
'And this is basic?'
'No, this is fundamental. It is the beginnings of power and the end. Knowing the nature of things, being able to name them truly despite their appearance, or attempts to deceive, is a great gift.'
'So you're not fobbing me off with trifles?'
'Triviality ended some time ago, Niall. The play is in progress and the stakes of the game are survival itself. I will leave you to practice.'
I opened my eyes, squinting up at her in the sunlight as she stood and smoothed her long skirt, then walked easily back towards the house leaving me on the bench seat. I was still there some twenty minutes later trying to hear my own heartbeat when Tate found me.
'Trouble,' he said.
'What's up?' I stretched. Having absorbed the tranquility of the garden I had the sense that I might have been asleep when Tate's footsteps alerted me to his approach. I wasn't sure that's what Blackbird had in mind.
'One of your escapees has broken cover.'
FIVE
'This isn't trouble, this is a circus! What am I supposed to do with this lot watching?'
Tate's only response was to shrug and look back at the crowd gathered at the end of the road. Police officers in black stab-proof vests were keeping people back and I could see a similar barrier at the other end of the road. In between were an array of police vehicles and ambulances, blue lights flashing. I could hear sirens in the distance, so maybe more were on their way.
'We don't even know if it's him, do we?' I was referring to the file that Garvin had pushed into my hand before we had left the courts and travelled down the ways to Streatham in south London.
'The address matches that of his estranged partner,' said Tate. 'It was issues with her that sparked the whole thing off, at least that's what the file says. There's an injunction against Difford being within a mile of the house.'
'It looks like he's within a mile of it now.'
'Then I don't think the injunction is working,' said Tate, mildly.
'What's he doing in there?'
'Not a social call.'
I went forward to the line of onlookers. 'What's going on?' I asked a man in a sweatshirt and shorts who was craning his neck to see.
'It's a siege,' he said gleefully, 'Some bloke's got himself holed up in the house — they reckon he's got a hostage. Gonna have to shoot him, I reckon.'
'Won't that risk the hostage?'
'Nah. They'll use one of them sharpshooters from the windows opposite, you wait and see.'
I stood on tiptoe, watching the police moving around the vehicles and talking into radios. There was no sign
