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feminine gestures. The group seemed to be strengthened by their shared anticipation so that when McClure came out and waved the first one into the room a murmur of gentle encouragement came from the others. Heather thought they looked like candidates for interview. That McClure and his boys were waiting behind the door to probe them on the significant regrets of their lives, to debrief them of crucial sorrows.
    They emerged with their heads down, walking gently as if escorted from the room by some disconsolate presence.
    Darkie would go drinking in local discos to bring back new girls. They were always impressed by the cars parked outside the flat. RS2000s, Opel Mantas in rally spec, Escorts with wide wheel arches and magnesium alloy wheels. Things to conjure with. Rich paintwork suggesting the visionary landscape of the showroom catalogue. The UDA men were popular with these women. They carried wads of cash in their hip pockets and played money games with the girls, inserting twenty-pound notes into apertures in their clothing. It was all obvious. Nothing was left to chance. The girls’ squeals and gestures of denial were artificial. There were overtones of family violence, red-eyed fathers beating their daughters with belts. Occasionally one of them would move away from a man and smooth her skirt down primly. The man would gaze sullenly into space. A sign that he had left out a detail of the flirtation.
    On the third Saturday night a girl did a striptease on the living-room floor. A retired sergeant from the B-Specials useda torch as a spotlight and men tried to pull her on to their knees. Once she had taken her blouse off there was a seriousness to her movements as though she was trying to piece together a precise sequence of arousal from remembered fragments. A boy who held her against the wall and whispered. The smell of rain. She turned away from her audience, her hips moving, unfastening the strap of her white bra. Heather wanted to touch her narrow back, its discovered grace. She thought about words you used when you were young. Promise you won’t tell if I let you. I never let nobody before.
    Often towards morning Heather would come across one of the Englishmen leaving the bedroom, shivering, and with his eyes blank as though he had just returned from a journey in which he carried the unbearable news of his own death.
    *
    Drinking in the Botanic Inn Ryan had a phone call telling him to meet Coppinger in the Gasworks bar on the Ormeau Road. Walking through the University area he detoured through Chlorine Gardens to Stranmillis where he had lived with Margaret . There had been several visiting professors and a television producer living in the same street. There was a small coffee shop where their wives gathered in the morning and Ryan had gone there sometimes to listen to them. Conversations he imagined you would hear at embassy parties in the eastern bloc or foreign compounds in Gulf states. The inadequate grasp of local politics, talk of staff becoming sullen and unco-operative, the belief in the army’s ability to maintain order on the streets. There were symptoms of bewilderment and a fear of last-minute evacuation.
    The windows of the Gasworks bar were covered with wire mesh. You entered through an unlit corridor of sandbags. Heads turned towards the door when he entered the bar. Ryan felt suspect. There was no sign of Coppinger. As soon as he walked in he knew he was going to be singled out. He hadtrouble summoning the correct responses. It was a question of assembling an identity out of names: the name of school attended, the name of the street where you lived, your own name. These were the finely tuned instruments of survival. He lurched towards the toilets. Inside he leaned his head against the wall in front of him while he pissed. The sound of running water was deafening, ruinous. He read the word Adamant stamped on the massive Victorian urinal. The name had a monumental quality. It had the strength of