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not only to premeditate a crime but to remember it later. Now he took up his briefcase and followed Benny to the situation van for a jaw with Blince and his attendant foodstuffs. Entering, he pulled up a chair and insulted Blince in a degree of detail which did him credit.
    ‘ You got a point, Harpo,’ Blince wheezed, broken up with laughter. ‘I hate to be the one to say it. Watch this shyster, Benny - he can find evidence where none exists.’
    ‘ Learnt it all from you, Henry,’ Specter responded. He had a big soul which he sold by the hour. ‘First time I saw you cavorting with the facts my tears flowed like wine.’
    ‘ Ever misrepresented the Entropy Kid, Harpo? Cop-on-a-Stick here’s tagged him for the entertainment tonight.’
    ‘ Excuse the interruption,’ coughed Tredwell Garnishee, who had been trying to engage Blince’s attention for several minutes. ‘But that isn’t at all what I’ve been saying, sir.’
    Blince stared around at Tredwell as though some immaculate boundary of etiquette had been overstepped.
    ‘ Lemme bring you up to speed, Mr Blince,’ said Tredwell, blithely adding insult to injury. ‘This here’s the bank-floor view ten of your Earth minutes before the Kid entered, and fifteen minutes before lock-up. Now take a swatch at the other screen.’ On a second security screen was a view of the vault room.
    Just as Blince was opening his maw to ask what in the wide world of sports they were meant to be seeing, a figure abruptly appeared crouching in front of the vault. ‘Tape jumped,’ rumbled Blince.
    ‘ The tape isn’t faulty, sir - look at the timeframe as I replay it. Bear in mind also that the tapes of the bank floor and the vault room are synchronized - nobody entered the vault room from the bank floor. On the third screen we can see the man enter the vault itself and wrench a safe deposit.’
    ‘ What is that?’ asked Specter, approaching the screen to peer.
    ‘ I guess it’s a book,’ said Tredwell, blushing. ‘After, er ... reading a little he snipped the cameras. And as you can see, this man is not the Entropy Kid.’
    ‘ Well for God’s sake break it to me, Blue Boy - how’d the guy appear outta thin air?’ Suspecting the answer would shiver the brittle reed of his reasoning, Blince began instantly to fend it off. ‘It’s a trick or piece of chicanery. Everythin’ is, right Benny?’
    ‘ I’m feelin’ stranger’n Godzilla’s chubby son, Chief,’ said Benny, his voice slurred. ‘I think I’m gonna hurl.’
    ‘ Well go hurl at the gunslingers, Benny - our boys need all the help they can get. And these pasta shells are like magnified rugbugs - get ’em outta here.’
    Benny slammed out of the van holding his mouth.
    ‘ The vault works on a phased time lock, Mr Blince,’ Tredwell continued. ‘I believe the thief created an illegal fold.’
    ‘ It’s a time breach,’ muttered Specter, squinting at a freezeframe of the man in black tucking the book into his pants. ‘And I know this guy.’
     
    Benny staggered through a spread of ashes, breathing deeply. Acidic wasps were swarming behind his eyes, his brain being sucked through a straw. He was feeling the urge to go to a distant someplace, with something to achieve.
    Beyond the siege scene the street was freckled with molotov flares and halloween ribcages. Firefly smithereens warmed his face. The shots and shouts grew distant as Benny approached the hulk of a dying car. It was a yellow cab studded with shielding and railway buffers which hadn’t saved it. Bullet-riddled and internally ablaze, the car twinkled like a starry sky.
    In a sudden pounding flashback Benny was bundled into a VR car in the Mall, neon strobing and a voice giving him directions.
    Back in the now, he shook the recall from his tolling head. He told himself it was a residual drug effect, an eventuality he’d accepted when he became a cop. He could no longer trust the evidence of his senses.
    Benny turned back toward the