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piled on shelves well above head height.
The only items stacked in plain view of the counter were the sweets and chocolates and the alcohol. The confectionery was at risk from thieving school kids in the afternoon and both from drunks
late at night, when they realised that they didn’t have enough cash for a take-away because they’d just whacked back eight pints on an empty stomach. Mrs Singh obviously trusted her own
eagle eyes rather than the closed-circuit for security, and even then the cigarettes and spirits were stacked behind her cash register. I wondered if she’d bought the system from
Veronica.
    Despite the suit, she recognised me, though I had not seen her for several months. I smiled and we exchanged Hellos and I drifted along the shelves of canned and bottled beer which were
interspersed with bottles of alcoholic concoctions flavoured with lemons, oranges, cherries, passion fruit, ginseng, ginger, glucose, even hemp. (No, not that sort.) It took me a while to focus on
those that were actually flavoured with beer.
    I sneaked a look at the CCTV around the edge of Mrs Singh’s sari to make sure that the shop was empty, then turned back to the beer shelves and spoke over my shoulder, dead casual, while
running a finger across the shoulders of a row of bottles.
    ‘Haven’t you got any of that French lager, Mrs S.?’
    When I didn’t get a reply, I turned and saw that she was staring at me.
    ‘You know, that cheap beer in the little bottles. Mr Singh let me have a couple of cases last month.’
    ‘Don’t know what you mean,’ she said sullenly. ‘We’ve got what you see.’
    ‘I can’t see it. You know, the stuff that comes from France in the dumpy bottles. Mr S. let me have a case for a fiver last time I was in.’
    ‘Then come back when my husband is in,’ she snapped. ‘He’s got his receipts for everything here. All the receipts. Come back later tonight.’
    ‘Hey, it was never this difficult to get a drink when I lived round here,’ I said with a big smile, but it cut no ice.
    ‘Come back later. Tonight. After dark.’
    I saw that she had taken a fold in her sari and was twisting it with both hands as if she was ringing water out of the material. It wasn’t worth pushing it.
    ‘Okay, Mrs S., I’ll pop back. Take care.’
    She said nothing but I felt her watching me through the closed-circuit cameras until I reached the door.
    As I opened it, I noticed that the fingers of my right hand were filthy with dust.
    I once had a old and distinguished friend (still have, if he’s not in prison somewhere) who used to drive trucks across Europe for Heavy Metal bands. I’m talking
serious articulated lorries here, not pick-ups or Transits or ten-tonners. It was a rule of thumb amongst Heavy Metal bands that you could never have enough trucks, for sound and lighting gear, and
stage props, and a band on tour with less than three was definitely on the B-list.
    On one trip he was driving through a village in a mountainous region of a certain Central European country when he had to slow to a crawl to avoid a flock of sheep blocking the road. The young
shepherds, and he swears none were over ten years old, made obvious signs that they wanted cash hand-outs from the man in the big truck who was obviously richer than they were. Naturally, as any
good ‘transport tech’ (they’re not called roadies any more) would, he ignored them. In the next village, a couple of kilometres down the road, there were no sheep but there was a
flock of young lads who shouted and gesticulated at him and threw things at the truck. Not noticing any physical damage, he kept going until the next village where he had to stop because the local
cops were waiting for him. They pointed to the fresh blood on his hubcaps and headlights and, part in broken English and part in pantomime, accused him of running over a sheep, which was still a
hanging offence in those parts. Despite pointing out that a fair number of hen