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nice day, they wouldn’t be selling you that shit.
    Price grunted now, as if he’d discovered a flaw. Arkle turned from the window. ‘Something wrong?’
    Price said, ‘You know much about diamonds?’
    Baxter said in a bored voice: ‘I know a bit.’
    ‘Yeah?’
    ‘Yeah. I know you’re not the only guy in the West Country buys them.’ Still in the same bored voice, making Arkle proud of him.
    ‘We’ve got a deal,’ Price said, after a moment.
    ‘So don’t start chiselling.’
    ‘For fuck’s sake, I’m clearing my throat here. Where’s the problem?’
    Baxter just looked at him.
    And if he wasn’t sitting watching a soundless TV in a tin box, Arkle thought, Baxter could have been, not just an economist, but a banker or TV evangelist: someone making serious money . . . If the old man had had his way, they’d be supplying the basics to construction companies, instead of raking in more in three days than he had in six months. But then, if the old man had had his way, he’d still be alive. Death hadn’t been on his wish list. It had just been on his agenda, like everybody else.
    Price said, ‘Let’s try and keep this on a civilized fucking level.’
    Arkle said, ‘You parked in the usual place?’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘No reason.’
    Price said, ‘You enjoying this conversation? Or shall we shut up while I get on with it?’
    Arkle shrugged: get on with it.
    ‘Only it looks like the hobbit’s settled in for the night.’ Nodding at Trent, who was snoring rhythmically, sounding like his own respirator.
    Baxter, without taking his eyes from the screen, said, ‘Don’t dis the hobbit,’ and even Arkle couldn’t tell whether he meant Trent or that pixie from the film.
    Price went back to the merchandise.
    Arkle returned to the window. If it was open, and he had the crossbow, he could put a bolt right through Price’s radiator. Or any other part of the car he chose.
    And that had been last night, and Price had gone eventually, having said the merchandise would do, which was the word he’d used: do – as if there was anything else it could have done. Thirty grand . . . And if he’d paid thirty, it was worth more.
    But thirty grand would do .
    And now they were in the pub down the road from the yard – Arkle, Baxter, Trent – having lunch, which for Arkle was tap water and for Trent lager. Baxter was drinking wine. The pub was done up to look like a library which had become a pub by accident: like, how did that happen? Except Baxter made a point of plucking the occasional book from its shelf, sniffing, putting it back. Then explaining they’d been bought by the yard, as if this was news – there were fucking hundreds of them.
    Trent said, ‘Good couple days’ work,’ and it was the first sensible thing he’d said all morning, or at any rate, the first thing he’d said all morning.
    Baxter looked at him. ‘You ever consider detox?’
    Trent took a pull on his pint and set it down, dead centre of his beermat. He looked around the room: at the books on their shelves, at the barman, at the couple of ancient Chinese men drinking Guinness at the far end, then back at Baxter.
    Bax said, ‘It’s something you might want to think about.’
    ‘Know what I’ve been thinking about?’ Arkle asked.
    ‘No,’ said Baxter, turning to him. ‘But I know where you’ve been. Just this side of fuck-up central. Price was right. You were looking for an excuse.’
    ‘He was in the way. He had this uniform –’
    ‘He had a pair of overalls.’
    ‘You weren’t there.’
    ‘We’ve each got our part to play. Mine’s to drive. Yours is to get the stuff with the minimum fuss.’
    ‘We got away, didn’t we?’
    ‘No thanks to you.’
    Arkle stared at him a long moment, then looked away. It was an old building, and the windows were cramped uneven openings through which dusty sunlight fell in slanting beams. Every time you raised a glass you caused turbulence: swirls and eddies multiplied in the streams of