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you down the front, I think."
    "I don't suppose my husband beat us to it?"
    "If he's not here he can't be here," the young woman assured her, tapping the name above the pair she'd just checked off. "Why did we want him, did we say?"
    "He's a bookseller."
    "That wouldn't be it. Unless," the assistant said hopefully, "he's been in trouble with the police?"
    "Not even a ticket as of this morning."
    "Is he American too?"
    "That's for sure."
    "Maybe that was it. We'll have to leave a space for him at the back." The assistant steered Marshall past herself, and looked ready to wield Susanne's elbow too. "Travis family. One missing," she told the floor manager who flustered to meet them.
    Several wide rows of seats full of people and noise faced an expanse of floor planted with cameras and lights. Quite a few of the people were already red-faced with arguing or with eagerness to do so. Four of Susanne's students were sitting together on the top row, and three of them waved to her—Elaine appeared too embarrassed to acknowledge her as the floor manager indicated seats on the front row with a sweep of his open upturned hands, one of which he then used to rub out some of his frown. Susanne took the seat beside two women in track suits who gave her grey suit and black tights an unimpressed glance each; Marshall shared part of his place with a man who seemed committed to discovering how much space his legs could encompass. As Susanne tugged her skirt over as much of her knees as it covered, a man in a suit which was apparently designed to be a size too big for him strode out from behind the cameras, and the assistant with the clipboard closed the door.
    The younger members of the audience whistled and cheered and stamped their feet to celebrate the emergence of the presenter, and their lead was followed by an aggressive theme which sounded almost as though it was being performed by an orchestra as the presenter reappeared, having taken a turn around the cameras and lights. The floor manager wafted the applause higher with the hand that wasn't flattening his forehead, and the younger set went even wilder as the music withdrew in defeat. The floor manager patted the uproar down with both hands, and the presenter turned to the cameras and shot his cuffs. "Violence," he said.
    Someone determined to have the last noise or unable to contain it emitted a shrill whistle, but the presenter ignored it. "At this very moment someone in Britain is being raped or mugged or murdered. Last week the whole community was shocked by the case of the nine-year-old whose sister was knocked down by a speeding Ferrari and who went up on a bridge over the Manchester rush hour with some of his friends and dropped a concrete block on the first Ferrari they saw..."
    "Wasn't that yesterday?" Marshall whispered.
    "Not by the time we're transmitted," Susanne said in his ear.
    "The Home Office reports that violent criminals are getting younger and younger. Police are resigning because they say they're losing the fight against violence. Are we spending too much time and money trying to understand it? How much of it is caused by what we let people watch? How can we stop it being beamed into the country by satellite? How far should ordinary innocent people be allowed to go in order to protect themselves and their family? What signals should we as a society be sending to criminals? Just some of the questions I'll be discussing with the audience here tonight," the presenter said, and swung around. "So let me start by asking—what are the causes of violence?"
    Only his eyes were moving in his round stubble-topped face. Their darting halted as he flung out his right hand. "Yes, there, no, girl at the back."
    It was Rachel, one of Susanne's students, for whom a technician was fishing with a microphone. "I don't know what people watching films on satellite has to do with me and my friends being afraid to go out at night," Rachel said. "I should think they'd be home watching