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always been tempted by cyclone fences—the sadistic instructors must have sent us over hundreds of the bastards at terrific risks to our virility—but not this one. It was wired up to blazes and looked as if sirens would wail if you touched it, while relaying TV pictures of your blackheads to the main block.
    I walked up to the booth. Some distance from it a metallic voice bounced off my chest.
    â€œPlease state your business.”
    The guy in the booth leaned forward to look at me through the glass. He wore a white shirt, grey jacket and black tie. Through the thick glass his face was a pale, distorted blob. No microphones were visible. He just spoke in my general direction and I heard him loud and clear. I had to assume he could hear me.
    â€œI have an appointment to see one of Dr Brave’s patients at 7.30. My name is Hardy.”
    He pressed a button, a pane of glass slid back. He put his right hand through and snapped fingers tightly gloved in black leather.
    â€œIdentification please.”
    I fished in my pocket and pulled out the licence card. It looks like a student ID card and would get me into Robert Redford movies half-price if I looked twenty years younger and could stand Robert Redford. I handed the card over. More glass slid back and the guard looked me over critically like a Russian customs officer who can be satisfied as to your identification but is pretty unhappy that you exist at all. He nodded, handed back the card and pressed a button; a gate beside the booth swung open.
    â€œPlease walk up to the largest building ahead of you, Mr Hardy. Stay on the path all the way please.”
    I went through. There were a few lights up on poles and some in hatches at ground level. They focused on the wide, intricately laid brick path. There was no excuse for slipping off it onto the velvet grass but I dawdled off to the left and took a couple of steps on the sward just for the hell of it. Closed circuit security TV is even more boring than the public kind, and I might just have made someone’s day.
    Close up all the buildings had a severe practical look. The main block had heavyweight glass and timber doors at the top of a dozen steps. I went up, pushed them open with a featherlight touch and went into a cool, navy-carpeted lobby with a reception desk set at an artful angle. No blondes. A tall burly guy who looked like an Italian eased himself off the desk and stepped towards me. He was wearing a denim suit with knife edge creases and white shoes. His white silk shirt was open far enough to show a gold medallion nestling in a thatch of thick, black hair. His waist was slim, there was no flab on him and only a slight thickening of his features betrayed how many fights he’d been in. He looked as if he’d won most of them.
    â€œPlease come with me, Mr Hardy. Dr Brave is waiting for you.”
    He inclined his black pompadour towards a teak door at the end of the room. He’d said it before, more or less, but he was still having trouble wrapping his western suburbs Italian accent around the polite words. He was built for action and it was a pity to make him talk. He ushered me through the door and down a long corridor done up in the same style as the lobby. Glass-panelled doors opened off it at frequent intervals and the Italian plucked at my sleeve when I slowed down to take a look through one. The place was getting to me—it looked like a jail for people who were very rich and very sorry for what they’d done. I passed him on the left and pulled open the next door on that side.
    â€œInteresting place this,” I said, sticking my head into the room. Empty, sterile, with bars on the windows. A hand fell down on my shoulder and the fingers closed vice-like around the bone. He pulled me back as easy as a kid pulling on a wad of gum.
    â€œDon’t do that again, Mr Hardy.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said. “Just curious.” I had a feeling that he was