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tussocks hid nearly everything at ground level. He hoped he wouldn’t get carried away and stand up, though Vic of all people knew the risks they were running. In a matter of minutes the drums were empty, loosely re-lidded and stowed back in the van beneath the tarpaulin. Cruz retrieved the hammer and chisel and, holding them like a picnicker collecting firewood, swung suddenly around and stared in their direction. He had put on a pair of mirrored sunglasses, megashit bent cop or maybe family man setting about a barbecue in his mail order shades. Then he gazed out to sea in the direction of Corregidor Island,preparing to bore the kids with the usual yawny stuff about General MacArthur and the Japanese. No, actually, the man was taking a leak. Flack-flack-flack. Blow that one up for the Press Club notice board. The Tamaraw slammed its doors, coughed black fumes, turned slowly so Vic got its rear plate flack-flack and drove off, noticeably bouncier over the bumps.
    In the distance the van was lost among the shanties. Prideaux began to stand up, sweat pouring down his back. Vic pulled him down again with a suddenly thrown-out hand. He was following the van through the telephoto lens, finger off the shutter release. ‘Crafty Cruz, they call him. We wait.’ They remained crouched. Prideaux’s knee joints burned; his feet had gone to sleep. After a long ten minutes Vic said, ‘Don’t move. Just turn your head. You see that heap of sand?’ It was by the road, perhaps a quarter of a mile away. ‘Go left to the sari-sari store with the white sign. The corner of the block.’ A vehicle was parked in the shadow, just its nose visible and the windscreen’s flat stare.
    ‘Shit and derision.’
    ‘Told you he was foxy. He doesn’t suspect us. He’s curious to know if anyone noticed enough to come trotting over for a look. I don’t think they’ve got binoculars. I’ve never seen a cop with binoculars.’
    Prideaux had followed Vic’s instruction to wear dull colours. His army green T-shirt was black with sweat. A drip formed at the end of his nose and fell onto a slab of charred upholstery in the grass. The pain in his knees became a clock he began to watch with narrowed attention. When he next looked up the Tamaraw was gone and the world empty in a general glare.
    ‘Okay now.’ Vic stood up. ‘I’ll even tell you where they’ve gone. There’s a Savory’s on Del Rosario down in Tondo. They’ll be ordering half a fried chicken each and probably drink fivebeers apiece. Then back to the station. Another day, another dollar.’
    Prideaux was not listening to this breezy lore. The blood was getting back to feet that were stumps of cement with hot wires running through them. His knees felt arthritic. Middle age.
    ‘So what did we see?’ Vic asked. ‘Could be what? Illegal dumping of toxic waste? “Fishpans seen contaminated for fifty years. Judge raps cops turned moonlighting waste disposal experts”.’ He had begun walking towards where the Tamaraw had unloaded, limber as a childin his trainers, pouching the big lens and fitting something shorter. ‘Yeah. What they do, you see, is economise.’
    They had reached the three bodies which had already started to bloat during their long hours in the drums. All had their thumbs tied behind their backs with plastic twine which ran down between the buttocks to both big toes, drawing them into a semi-squat. Their eyes were open but slitted with puffiness, their hair was beginning to dry. Vic shot them carefully, moving from face to face. ‘Don’t recognise any of them.’ Flack-flack-flack. All three shirts were rucked up, revealing the scarred, scrawny torsos of marginal living. ‘Get the tattooes? BCJ here, Sigue-Sigue Commando here. Jailbirds. Don’t know about this one. Could be he’s kuwerna, unmarked. He’d have had a bad time inside. No protection.’
    The face of a boy, thought Prideaux, even a subnormal boy, now staring at a flattened Magnolia ice cream carton