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Except that this was the kind of bar that ordinary guys in search of a quick half reversed out of at speed. He was raising a bottle of Pils to his mouth. As he did so his gaze met mine for a moment and registered . . . something. Maybe he’d just realized how much he’d had to pay for the Pils. He drank, lowered his head, and I saw his lips move. Nowadays everyone knows what men speaking into their lapels are doing.
    I didn’t turn back to the main door. If I’d got it right, the guys he was talking to would be coming in through there pretty quickly. Instead I followed a sign reading Toilets and found myself in a dead-end corridor. I peered into the Gents. Windowless. I pushed open the door of the Ladies. That looked better. A frosted-glass pane about eighteen inches square. There was a bin for the receipt of towels. I stood on it and examined the catch. It didn’t look as if it had been opened in years and the frame was firmly painted in place. I stepped down, picked up the bin and hit the glass hard. Cheap stuff, it shattered easily. Behind me I heard a door open. I swung round but it was only a woman coming out of one of the cubicles. I’ll say this for the Dysons, they don’t do swoons or hysterics.
    She said, ‘About time they aired this place out.’
    I rattled the bin around the frame to dislodge the residual shards, put the bin on the floor once more, stood on it and launched myself through the window. As I did so, I heard another door open and male voices shouting.
    I felt my trousers tear, then my leg, so my clear-up technique hadn’t been all that successful. I hit the ground awkwardly, doing something to my shoulder. I was dazed but able to see that I was in a narrow alley. One way it ran into a brick wall, the other on to a busy street. I staggered towards the street.
    Behind me, voices. Ahead, a crowded pavement. I could vanish into the crowd, I told myself. I glanced back. Two men coming very quick. I commanded my legs to move faster and the old in-your-face-abrasive technique worked.
    I erupted on to the pavement at a fair rate of knots, decided that turning left or right would slow me down, so kept on going.
    The thing about London buses is you can wait forever when you want one in a hurry, but if you don’t want one . . .
    I saw it coming, even saw the driver’s shocked face, almost saw the number . . .
    Then I saw no more.

Elf
    i
    ‘It’s . . . interesting,’ said Alva Ozigbo cautiously.
    Wolf Hadda smiled. It was like a pale ray of winter sunshine momentarily touching a dark mountain. In all the months she’d been treating him, this was only the second time she’d seen his smile, but even this limited observation had hinted at its power to distract attention from the sinister sunglasses and the corrugated scars, inviting you instead to relate to the still charming man beneath.
    Charm was perhaps the most potent weapon a pederast could possess.
    But it was a weapon Hadda could hardly be conscious of possessing or surely he would have brought it out before now to reinforce his lies?
    He said, ‘I remember interesting. That’s the word they use out there to describe things they don’t understand, don’t approve of, or don’t like, without appearing ignorant, judgmental or lacking in taste.’
    She noted the intensity of out there.
    She said, ‘In here I use it to describe things I find interesting.’
    They sat and looked at each other across the narrow table for a while. At least she presumed he was looking at her; his wrap-around glasses made it difficult to be certain. She could see herself reflected in the mirrored lenses, a narrow ebon face, its colouring inherited from her Nigerian father, its bone structure from her Swedish mother. Also her hair, straight and pale as bone. Many people assumed it was a wig, worn for effect. She was dressed in black jeans and a white short-sleeved sweater that neither obscured nor drew attention to her breasts. Don’t be provocative in your dress,