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was calling from abroad. The feedback from Besźel’s outdated exchanges was distinctive. “That’s kind of the point.”
    “How did you get my number?”
    “Borlú, shut up.” I wished again for logging telephones. I sat up. “Google. Your name’s in the papers. You’re in charge of the investigation into the girl. It’s not hard to get past assistants. Do you want me to help you or not?”
    I actually looked around but there was no one with me. “Where are you calling from?” I parted the blinds in my window as if I might see someone watching me from the street. Of course I did not.
    “Come on Borlú. You know where I’m calling from.”
    I was making notes. I knew the accent.
    He was calling from Ul Qoma.
    “You know where I’m calling from and that is why please don’t bother asking my name.”
    “You’re not doing anything illegal talking to me.”
    “You don’t know what I’m going to tell you. You don’t know what I’m going to tell you . It is—” He broke off, and I heard him mutter something with his hand over the phone, for a moment. “Look Borlú, I don’t know where you stand on things like this but I think it is lunatic, an insult, that I am speaking to you from another country.”
    “I’m not a political man. Listen, if you’d rather…” I started the last sentence in Illitan, the language of Ul Qoma.
    “This is fine.” He interrupted in his old-fashioned Illitan-inflected Besź. “It’s the same damn-faced language anyway.” I wrote that he said that. “Now shut up. Do you want to hear my information?”
    “Of course.” I was standing, reaching, trying to work out a way to trace this. My line was not equipped, and it would take hours to go backwards, through BesźTel, even if I could get hold of them while he was speaking to me.
    “The woman who you’re … She’s dead. Isn’t she? She is. I knew her.”
    “I’m sorry to …” I only said this after he was silent many seconds.
    “I’ve known her … I met her a time ago. I want to help you, Borlú, but not because you’re a cop . Holy Light. I don’t recognize your authority. But if Marya was … if she was killed, then some people I care about may not be safe. Including the one I care about most, my very own self. And she deserves … So—this is all I know.
    “Her name’s Marya. That’s what she went by. I met her here. Ul Qoma-here. I’m telling you what I can, but I never knew much. Not my business. She was a foreigner. I knew her from politics. She was serious—committed, you know? Just not to what I thought at first. She knew a lot; she was no time-waster.”
    “Look,” I said.
    “That’s all I can tell you. She lived here.”
    “She was in Besźel.”
    “Come on.” He was angry. “Come on. Not officially. She couldn’t. Even if she was, she was here. Go look at the cells, the radicals. Someone’ll know who she is. She went everywhere. All the underground. Both sides, must have done. She wanted to go everywherebecause she needed to know everything. And she did. That’s all.”
    “How did you find out that she’d been killed?” I heard his hiss of breath.
    “Borlú, if you really mean that you’re stupid and I’m wasting my time. I recognized her picture, Borlú. Do you think I’d be helping you if I didn’t think I had to? If I didn’t think this was important? How do you think I found out? I saw your fucking poster.”
    He put the phone down. I held my receiver to my ear a while as if he might return.
    I saw your poster . When I looked down at my notepad, I had written on it, beside the details he had given me, shit/shit/shit .
    I DID NOT STAY in the office much longer. “Are you alright, Tyador?” Gadlem said. “You look …” I’m sure I did. At a pavement stall I had a strong coffee aj Tyrko —Turkish style—a mistake. I was even more antsy.
    It was, not surprisingly that day perhaps, hard to observe borders, to see and unsee only what I should, on my way home. I was