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I realized that I’d been shot. By the car.
    He opened his eyes briefly and looked at Hawthorn, as if to check that he was still there. Then he closed them again.
    – I thought it was the stupidest thing that could ever have happened.
     
    Child shrugged in the corridors.
    – You’re not happy, are you? he said.
    – He saw what he saw.
    – He saw what he thought he saw.
    – He’s been completely consistent.
    – And vague. A low dark car. With running boards. A lovely car.
    – Silver door handles.
    – Silver door handles.
    – It’s no more vague than descriptions we get from people who don’t know cars. We explicate.
    – We what?
    – Explicate?
    – I don’t think that’s the right word, Hawthorn.
    – We put them together.
    – Extrapolate?
    – Yeah.
    – We work it out. But. You know. I’m not sure we have a model book that goes back to … whenever. If he insists on it the CPS will have a bit of a problem.
    They wandered through the corridors. Hawthorn assumed Child knew where he was going.
    – What it is, said Child, is that you don’t want to go back to Mishazzo.
    Hawthorn looked at him.
    – What?
    – It’s a hallucination, or whatever. Rivers has it tied up. You want a loose thread so that we’re not back following that idiot all day long. Looking at windows. Going slowly insane.
    – It’s not that.
    – And Rivers is being a prick. I know that. It wasn’t our fault we lost the driver. So I get it. Really. If there was anything believable about it I’d go along. But what do we do with a vague description of some sort of vintage car, when we’ve got CCTV of the Hyundai, and two crack-high idiots weaving their way north? I wouldn’t put it past them to have just thrown the gun on the back seat.
    – Still. We can’t just decide things that don’t fit are hallucinations .
    – No. We usually don’t decide anything about things that don’t fit. They just don’t fit. So we leave them out. Least with this there’s an explanation why it doesn’t fit.
    He hunched his shoulders and took a turn without looking . Hawthorn glanced at a sign board. He saw nothing about an exit.
    – It’s like Jetters, Child said. He thought he heard ochre . We know he didn’t. But he was convinced that’s what he heard. So, should we start looking for an ochre-coloured car?
    Hawthorn was hating this conversation now.
    – It’s different.
    – No it’s not. It’s people imagining things. We start investigating what people imagine …
    He trailed off, looked over his shoulder.
    – Where the fuck are we?
    Hawthorn shook his head. They turned another corner.
    – It’s not even plausible, Child went on. The vintage car. You know there was a camera pointing all the way up Plume Road? From down near the tube. Looking all the way back up. You can see the junction with Hampley Road. It’s in the distance, but you can see it. This is a traffic camera so it’s digital whatever. It has the timer on it, and it’s clear. And at exactly the right time, the Hyundai comes around that corner. Nothing before. Nothing after. No vintage cars. Just the Hyundai. And no vintage cars.
    Hawthorn looked at him. He hated it.
    – You know what those things are like.
    Child laughed.
    – No, I know what they’re like when they don’t fit. I know how suddenly when it’s the wrong thing on the camera the timer mysteriously gets scrambled, or a bird shits on the lens, or somebody deletes the wrong file. But this is straightforward . It’s simple. There are no other explanations.
    Hawthorn looked at him.
    – There are several other explanations.
    – Such as?
    – There are dozens.
    They were near the café. They paused at the junction of three corridors and looked around.
    – Name one.
    – There are hundreds.
    Hawthorn took the turning to the left, towards a flickering light.
    – Do you know where we are? Child asked him.
    – No, he said. There are millions of explanations. There’s an infinite number of