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blob of wet gaberdine that wafted a gentle stench of some male fragrance advertised by chest-waxing ponces in underpants. Dave Rudman shifted the cab into drive and shuddered off up the nearside lane, expertly swerving to avoid a coach that lurched
out of its bay. Then he rubbed his sore nostrils with a wad of tissue as shapeless as snot. Day-and-fucking-Night-nurse . . . that's what you need in this job. Open the hatch and through it comes another slant-eyed virus at 120 mph.
    The fare sat in the middle of the back seat, knees akimbo, potbelly exposed by the open flaps of his trench coat, both hands
on the safety handles set in the rear doors of the cab as if he's in a rickshaw costing twenty-five-fucking-grand. 'When I say range, cabbie,' said the fare, leaning forward to push his fat face through the open hatch, 'I mean, I've heard
of your famous Knowledge, but I figure that maybe Mill Hill is a bit beyond ít … beyond the area you have to cover.' He's a talker, this one, he wants to talk, he goes to whores and when they try to plate him he says he'd rather talk, 'coz the only thing he wants in their mouths is comforting words. He'll start on fucking Afghanistan in two minutes flat. He's gonna go all Tora Bora on me …
    'That's right, it is a little beyond the six-mile radius from Charing Cross, which is the theoretical limit of the London
streets we have to learn.'
    'Theoretical?' He doesn't expect to hear this word out of my lower-class lips, lips he sees flapping in the rearview. He's putting together a photofit of me from lips, chin and the back of my head. He ain't fooled by the baseball cap – and he likes that I'm going bald, as a fatty it gives him the drop. 'Yeah' – put him still more at his ease, this cunt could be an earner – 'theoretical, because in practice we also have to know a fair bit of the suburbs, which would cover Mill Hill as well.'
    'Uh huh.' The fare was satisfied, he'd marked his card, he'd shown Dave he wasn't just another dumb tourist who thinks London
is a nine-hundred-square-mile souvenir T-shirt, decorated with tit-helmeted coppers, red phone boxes, Mohican-sporters, tiara-jockeys and black-bloody-cabs. The fare looked to the left at the Avenue of plane trees running up to Speakers' Corner. He looked to the right at the tiny
road-cleaning machine bumping along the gutter, its circular electric brushes polishing the York stone molars. He was lost,
momentarily, in a reverie provoked by a pair of backpacking lovers, wet-weather freaks, who were leaning up against the lip
of a fountain, her thighs imprisoned in his. He was thinking about his family – and Afghanistan.
    'Kinduv weird being in Europe.'
    'I imagine you'd rather be at home, what with all this business – '
    'In Afghanistan, you bet I would. Sure, it's crazy to think you're any more at risk here, or your family's any more at risk
if you're not there, but still – '
    'You'd rather be with them.' And so would I, in a small clean family hotel on Gloucester Place, seventy quid a night, walking tour of Bloomsbury inclusive. Two big, burger-stuffed kids, plenty of metalwork in their mouths, Mom in a beige trouser suit. I want his family so I can slot them into the gap left by my own.
    'I'd booked the flight before 9/11, I figured it would be giving like succour to the enemy if I didn't come over.'
    'Gotcha.'
    'Eek-eek' the wipers went; the cab braked, then heeled over to join the other rusty hulks cruising around Marble Arch, a reef
of Nash that loomed up out of the silty drizzle. 'I tell you something, cabbie.' Tell me everything, you dumb motherfucker, pour it all out. 'I didn't vote for Bush, but I reckon he's handling this OK, and it wasn't the Twin Towers that set me against these Taliban
fellows – though Lord knows it was a terrible thing – but I knew these were dreadful people when they blew up those two ancient
statues of the Buddha, you know the ones?'
    'Yes.' Fellows? Lord knows!?
    'Any