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fridge.”
    “I’ll pass,” I said, and he got on with making up the bill. Quiet, tinny grunts came from his TV set, and I added: “I’ll be checking my change.”
    “Sure you will,” he said, reaching under the counter to bring up a battered brown paper bag. I put my purchases into it, trying to make sure the heavy stuff went at the bottom, like Henna had taught me to. Sometimes things like that swam up through the years. Then on an afterthought I reached behind me and took down a bottle of Jack Daniels. Actually, it wasn’t an afterthought. It had been a first thought and an in-between thought. I’d been trying to make it an ex-thought, but something inside me gave up.
    The bill came to nearly sixty dollars. I had no obvious way of getting hold of any more cash, and I couldn’t use my ownCard without setting off a large flashing sign saying, “Anyone interested in bringing unhappiness into Jack Randall’s life will find him right here.” But most of the food was concentrate, and we were going to have to eat wherever we went. Running out of money would simply bring the inevitable on a little sooner. I paid the man, picked up my bag, and made for the door.
    “Lieutenant.”
    I froze. It was very dark outside, and I could see flecks of cold rain hitting the cracked glass, cutting lines across it.
    “Don’t remember me, do you.”
    I turned slowly. The man was still standing behind the counter, arms folded. Something almost like life had crept into his eyes when I wasn’t looking.
    “Should I?”
    “You put me away.”
    Oh, shit, I thought. I briefly considered facing him down, but the look in his eyes killed the idea almost before it was born. He’d made me. I looked away and then back, and in that moment realized that the last five years were apt to blow away to nothing, and that in some sense I’d never been away.
    “I probably had a reason.”
    “Three years. That’s a long time.”
    “I’m surprised I don’t recall the circumstances.”
    “You never met me. I was just a mule.”
    I stared calmly back at him, trying to work out how I was supposed to play this. It was the last thing I needed. The very last thing. We looked at each other for a while and I could hear the blood pumping through the arteries in my head. It stepped up a notch when I realized that I was holding the grocery bag in front of me with both arms. He could have had me in pieces before I got my hand anywhere near my jacket pocket.
    “You’ve bounced back nicely,” I said eventually.
    “I took someone’s fall, and they looked after me. They still do.”
    “I’m not The Man anymore,” I said, abruptly. His face changed then, as a broad vicious smile spread slowly across it.
    “I know,” he said. “Guess we all heard about that.”
    “You want to say something funny?” I asked, and his grin died. The light went out of his eyes and they went back to looking like two very old coins pressed into dirty white plasticene. Like so many of his kind his facelooked far away and unformed, as if imperfectly glimpsed through a layer of water.
    I smiled faintly, nodded, then left. The wind had picked up outside and the rain was turning to sleet. As I stepped out of the store I heard his voice again.
    “Lieutenant,” he said. I didn’t turn round but kept on walking, and the rest of his words were blurred by the sound of the wind and a siren in the distance. “Be seeing you.”’

    When I was round the corner I picked up the pace, swearing dully and repetitively. A quick glance behind showed that no one was following, but that was no consolation. A phone call would be all it took, a phone call from a man so far down the food chain that plankton probably made fun of him behind his back.
    All I’d wanted was to sell the RAM and get an hour by myself. It should have been so easy. Most people manage it, just walking around, without bringing grief into their lives. But now we’d been in town less than three hours and trouble was