‘No, wait a second. If you’ve come here because you want to prove something, then you’d better leave right now. Your problems with Marianne have got nothing to do with me.’

  I tried to kiss her again. She pushed me away in irritation like a mother with an importunate child: ‘No, leave me alone!’ She took my hand off her breast and I put it round her waist. Suddenly she sprang up from the sofa: ‘Jesus Christ!’ She stood over me, hands on her hips: ‘OK then. So you want to fuck me, then fuck me. I don’t think you could even get it up in the state you’re in. Could you?’

  She pulled her dress over her shoulders, threw it on the sofa beside me. She had a bra on but no slip. Her sudden nakedness shocked me. It seemed almost brutal, like a weapon to be used against me. She came towards me. I sat there doing nothing, not even looking at her. She started unbuckling my belt.

  ‘Could you?’

  She was crouched down between my legs, maybe kneeling. She had my belt unbuckled and now she was unbuttoning my flies. I shoved at her shoulders. I shoved her much harder than I’d meant to and she fell to the ground. There was a clumsy thump as she landed. She lay there not moving, staring up at me. ‘Just get out of here,’ she said finally, ‘get the hell out.’

  I almost fell down the stairs, I was shaking all over, I felt strange. Then as I was walking down Charlotte’s street I felt something on my face and I put my hand to my cheek. It was wet. I was crying. It shocked me. An old lady was looking at me with ill-disguised curiosity. I needed to sit down somewhere but obviously I couldn’t go into a pub or café so I ended up walking by the canal, then sitting down on a bench overlooking it. I gazed into the stagnant water. It was covered with a kind of oily scum that made rainbow patterns in the sun. A disintegrating milk carton bobbed along and further down I could see the swollen body and filthy fur of some animal swirling gracefully in the eddy. I took deep regular breaths to control my heartbeat and stop the shaking. After a while, a quarter of an hour maybe, I could feel a kind of calm descend over me and a resolution building up. It was clear what I had to do.

  It wasn’t easy driving, I couldn’t get rid of my shake. I had to really concentrate on the road ahead and at one point I almost collided with some other guy. It scared the hell out of me. I had to pull over for a moment to steady my nerves. I felt like having a joint or something to take the edge off things but in the end I didn’t do anything about it. I just couldn’t be bothered to go through the whole sordid hassle of scoring.

  Finally I got to Holland Road. There was a parking space right outside the block of flats but somehow that seemed too obvious and it took me ages to find another one, way up the road towards Shepherd’s Bush. I walked back slowly. There was a row of buzzers by the front door but only one with no name against it – I pressed it. A man answered: ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is Marianne there?’

  ‘Who is this, please?’

  ‘I need to speak to you.’

  ‘Who am I talking to, please?’

  ‘I live with Marianne.’

  There was a long pause: ‘You’d better come up. Third floor.’

  There was a lift but I walked up the stairs anyway. The building, which looked dingy from the road, was elegantly maintained inside with paintings on the wall and a hint of thirties-style luxury. It can’t be cheap to rent here, I thought to myself, and I could feel something quite terrible inside me, a sort of tearing hate.

  The man was peering at me through a chained door. Don’t worry, I said, I’m not going to do anything to you. He unchained the door and opened up: ‘I suppose I’ve been expecting you for some time now. Come in.’ I wondered what exactly he meant by that. He was wearing an expensive-looking dressing gown, possibly silk. A gift from Marianne, perhaps.

  I went in and glanced briefly about the bedsit. It was reasonably spacious but Spartan in its decoration. There was a double bed and chest of drawers at one end of the room; at the other, a tiny kitchen and dinner table by the window. Between the two was a hearth. On the mantelpiece above sat a glass vase with a simple bouquet of flowers, and a photo of Marianne grinning wildly at the camera. Behind the vase and photo was a huge mirror. A skirt that I recognised as Marianne’s hung over the back of a chair.

  ‘Is Marianne here?’

  ‘No.’

  I stood there not moving, accusing him with my stare.

  ‘You don’t believe me, do you? Go and look in the bathroom if you like.’

  His voice was crisp, patrician. I kicked gently at the door that led to the bathroom; it creaked open and I peered inside. There was no one there. I shouldn’t have done that, I thought, I shouldn’t have kicked at the door. I’ve made myself look foolish.

  ‘Please, sit down,’ the man said, removing Marianne’s skirt from the chair, folding it neatly, holding it in one hand and patting it with the other. ‘You’ll have to excuse me for a moment. I’ll get dressed. Then we’ll talk.’ He went to the chest of drawers, pulled a drawer out to put Marianne’s skirt away, opened another and took out some of his own clothes: ‘Please excuse me.’

  He went into the bathroom and I was by myself again. What struck me was the man’s civility, his politeness. It was so strange being here inside the flat when I’d spent so many mornings outside on the pavement looking in. There was something about the simplicity of the room that wrenched at me. It had the innocence of a bedsit that student lovers might share. From the bathroom I could hear the man splashing in the basin. What was he doing in his dressing gown at this time of day, it suddenly occurred to me. I looked over to the bed – it hadn’t been properly made. The cover had been thrown over it in an approximate fashion. He wasn’t waiting for Marianne, I realised. She’d already been and gone.

  Music wafted through the room: it had been on low and I was so keyed up that I hadn’t even noticed it before. It was Mozart. I knew the piece for once. It was one of Marianne’s favourites. I remembered when I’d first heard it. It was maybe the fourth or fifth time we’d made love. We’d laid the duvet down on the floor of Marianne’s old flat in Menilmontant and she’d put the music on and then we’d made love on the floor. It churned me up inside thinking about it.

  The man came back. He’d combed his thin hair into place and was now wearing corduroy trousers and an ironed white shirt.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know your name.’

  ‘My name?’ For some reason I hadn’t expected that question. ‘Bourne. Matthew Bourne.’

  The man looked surprised: ‘Actually I think we already know each other … I mean, we’ve spoken on the phone.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Perhaps I’ve made a mistake. You don’t work for a human rights organisation, do you?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Wasn’t it you who contacted me over the Jarawa business?’

  ‘I … Yes, it must have been me.’

  He extended his hand: ‘Richard Weldon. Professor Weldon. You wanted me to sign a letter of protest.’

  ‘Yes. I remember now.’

  He rubbed his badly shaven chin: ‘In fact, I’d been meaning to write to you. I felt bad about refusing and I don’t think I properly argued my case over the phone. It was more the kind of letter you wanted me to sign that I was worried about than the idea in general. It just struck me as naïve and very open to criticism. What I’d have liked to do is set up a meeting between you and Pierre Douff, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him …’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, he did a lot of work on West Africa in the eighties. I believe there are some very serious doubts regarding some of Jarawa’s political activities. I mean, human rights abuses …’

  I broke in: ‘I don’t believe that. I really don’t. I mean, I’m in charge of this campaign and I’ve looked very carefully into … I mean, there’re a lot of people who have vested interests … I mean … what does it matter anyway. What does it matter what he’s done. Does that mean we should work less hard for his release … are you actually saying you think he should be killed?’

  I’d suddenly got all excited, my words were falling over each other almost incomprehensibly and I wasn’t expressing myself well. I couldn’t get rid of my damned shake either. The man looked disconcerted: ‘No of course not … but perhaps now is not the moment to discuss this.’

  ‘No.’

  There was an awful silence. I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand and looked out the window. Two lovers were arguing on a street corner.

  Finally the man said: ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’

  I laughed, I don’t know why, and it sounded sinister. I said: ‘How long have you and Marianne been seeing each other?’

  The man didn’t reply immediately, then he spoke slowly, with deliberation: ‘Look, I don’t think I feel at liberty to say anything more than what Marianne has already told you.’

  ‘But she hasn’t told me anything, don’t you see?’

  ‘No. I don’t see. You mean she hasn’t told you of her decision?’

  ‘What decision?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘Know what? I don’t know anything.’

  ‘I see. I see.’ I was shaking badly, sweating too. The man stood up. ‘Listen. I think it’s not me you need to talk to, it’s Marianne. I think you should try and calm down then go home and see her. Don’t you think that would be best?’

  ‘Yes. You’re right. I’m sorry, I …’

  He waved his hand: ‘I’m the one who should be apologising. Please believe me, I’m sorry it’s come to this. I’m honestly very sorry.’

  From anyone else it would have sounded incredibly insincere but somehow I believed the man. He reached into his pocket and took out a packet of cigarettes, a French brand.

  ‘Do you smoke?’

  ‘No.’

  He lit a cigarette; the acrid aroma smelt vaguely familiar. Of course: I’d smelt it on Marianne. It reminded me of being in bed with her …

  ‘Perhaps a drink then?’

  ‘OK. A whisky. If you’ve got any.’

  ‘Sure.’

  There was a kind of built-in sideboard that divided the kitchen area from the rest of the room. A few bottles were lined up there by the wall.

  ‘Ice? Soda?’

  He was holding one of those soda bottles with a pressure trigger on the top. It looked like some strange sort of weapon.

  ‘No, straight.’

  He turned his back to me as he started preparing the drinks. It hurt me that the man hadn’t known my name or what I did. It meant that Marianne never spoke to him about me, that I hadn’t been worth the conversation. I wondered why he smoked French cigarettes, too. It was a kind of pretension, when he didn’t actually seem the pretentious sort, despite the silk dressing gown. Of course, if he’d picked up the habit while living in France, it wouldn’t be pretentious at all, merely normal. The thought entered me like a twisting knife. Perhaps he and Marianne had met up in France and not here, perhaps they’d been together since before Marianne and I had even known each other. It would explain a lot of things. How was it, for example, that she’d spoken such excellent English when I’d first met her, when she’d never lived in an English-speaking country? My mind scrolled wildly through scenario after scenario: perhaps the man has a sick wife he can’t leave … perhaps he has children he doesn’t want to abandon … then again what exactly was Marianne’s ‘decision’…

  As he fixed the drinks, the man kept talking: ‘You may be interested to know that I actually met Jarawa once. At a conference. Must have been some time in the mid-eighties. It was while he was, briefly, Minister of Culture. He’s got a lot of charm, I have to admit … he knows a hell of a lot about the arts as well …’

  The man left his cigarettes and lighter on the sideboard. I recognised the Zippo lighter at once: it was mine. Marianne had given it to me years ago to replace one that had once belonged to my grandfather. I’d lost my ‘heirloom’ in a pub and had been mildly upset about it at the time. When I’d come home the next day Marianne had given me the Zippo and put her arms around me. Later on when we’d both given up smoking cigarettes on account of Jessica, I’d mislaid it. Only I hadn’t mislaid it after all. Marianne had taken it back and given it to her lover. I couldn’t believe she’d done that. I just couldn’t believe it. But the evidence was right there before my eyes.

  I began to feel horribly dizzy. The man was talking. It was like a dream. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, only the Mozart that was on low, that was reaching its civilised crescendo. Then the dizziness passed and an extraordinary lightness and clarity seemed to possess me. The sun was spilling in through the window, splashing over the room, reflecting off the bottles and dazzling me. The man’s back seemed obscure, a dark rock looming over me. I could feel the sweat trickling down my forehead as I got up from the chair, picked up the vase from the mantelpiece and brought it crashing down on the man’s head. Suddenly, the air exploded in a spectacular shower of water and glass shards, shimmering in the sunlight, falling slowly like fireworks, like snowflakes, to the floor. I remembered the snowdome my great aunt had given me as a boy, with Saint Bernadette praying in the grotto. She’d brought it back from Lourdes. I’d found the snowdome so beautiful that I’d shaken it and shaken it again and again until finally it broke. Now I felt I was inside it, drowning.

  The man fell soundlessly. For a moment I just stood there, transfixed, watching him. He lay on his back, not moving at all. Then he started gesturing to me, ever so feebly. I knelt down, put my ear to his mouth. I could hear him murmuring something but I couldn’t make out what – after a while the murmuring stopped, but his lips continued to move. I sat up a little and looked into his open eyes. He was smiling at me, a beatific smile that absurdly reminded me of Jessica’s grinning teddy bear. I stared back. I stayed there crouched over him for a while, maybe a minute, maybe five minutes, before I realised that he was dead. He’d died as he smiled at me. I hadn’t noticed it, not at first. His eyes still engaged with mine somehow and I found it difficult to pull away. But I did, in the end.

  I slumped back down in the chair by the dinner table, assuming the same position I’d been in only moments before as the man had been telling me about Jarawa, his back turned towards me. I visualised him there by the sideboard and almost immediately I began to relive it all again, for the first time, as though I couldn’t stop myself vomiting up something I’d just eaten. I saw myself rise from the chair, grab the vase – how had I done that with my shaking hands? – and bring it down on the man’s head … then the fine shower of glass and water … The strange thing was that I saw it all not from my own perspective but from some neutral position, facing both myself and the man. I was looking into my own eyes … It was only much later that I realised what had happened, that as I’d picked up the vase I’d in fact been staring into the mirror above the mantelpiece, staring at myself, at the man, at everything, as though I weren’t really a part of it, as though I were the voyeur once again and for the last time.

  My glass of whisky was still sitting there on the sideboard, just as the man had left it. I drank it down, then poured myself another one and drank that down as well. As I poured, I noticed a strange thing: my shaking had gone. I looked out the window. The lovers were still there, still arguing. How could they be? It was like some relic from the distant past. I picked up the man’s cigarettes and took one from the packet. I lit it and inhaled deeply, feeling a rush of dizziness so overpowering that I had to sit back down again. It had been such a long time since I’d smoked pure tobacco that I was quite unused to it.

  Everything moved in dream colours, deep blues, greens. I felt quite helpless, I could hardly move. I thought how nice it would be to go to sleep and contemplated lying down on the bed, Marianne’s and the man’s bed, then decided against it. There was a phone. I hadn’t noticed it before, it was sitting on the floor in the corner. It was one of those old black ones with a proper dialling face. I picked up the receiver to call the police. With astonishment I realised I didn’t know or had forgotten the emergency number. Was it 999, or 000, or 123, or something else? I sat there holding the receiver for a long, long time. Then eventually I put it down again.

  I looked at the man. There were no visible signs of violence on his body, but a thick halo of blood welled out from behind his head like in an Italian painting. Scattered all about were glass, water and the fresh flowers, tulips. Some were beside the body and some draped over it, as if for a mysterious funeral ritual. As the pool of blood slowly grew it mingled with the water, creating little rivulets which marred the perfection of the halo. It wasn’t possible that he was dead, I said to myself. A single blow from a glass vase could hardly have killed him, not so quickly at any rate. People have fallen through plate glass windows without sustaining fatal injuries. I looked into his eyes again. They were dead eyes. I’d already seen eyes like that when I’d identified Susan Tedeschi’s body.

  I thought about that day in Oxford, I could remember it so well, better than anything else, so much better than what had happened only a few minutes ago. I remembered everything Christian had said to me and everything I had said to him. I’d stared at Susan Tedeschi’s face when I shouldn’t have. Had my fingertips accidentally grazed her body? Had I suppressed a desire to touch it? The debilitating fear and anger I had felt towards Christian was quite misplaced, I realised. It had been his wife’s fault, not his.

  I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out my Filofax. Tucked in the back was the scrap of paper Marianne had given me the other night with Christian’s number on it. It was an 0207 number. He must have moved up to London, or maybe he was just staying with friends. I dialled. I said: ‘It’s me. You called the other day.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Something’s happened.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t tell you over the phone.’

  ‘I’ll meet you somewhere. Where are you?’