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Reid looks at him. ‘No shit, Sherlock.’

He calls up the picture again and runs another program, which smooths and softens the man’s features.

‘Hey!’ says Collins.

Reid points at the screen. ‘Get him,’ he says.

‘Wait a minute,’ says Stigler. ‘You said we’d need a warrant, and I can’t see no court giving –’

Reid claps him on the back. ‘Don’t you worry about it,’ he grins. ‘That man is dead.’

He stalks away and leans once more on the sill, looking out through the window at the city, and smiles into the sunlight.

6

The Summer Soldier

I looked up from the Observer on the breakfast table. Outside, through the french window, our small walled backyard hummed with bees and bloomed with weeds. Ten o’clock sun slanted steeply in. Annette was sitting feet up along the bench opposite, leaning against the wall, enjoying her first cigarette and second coffee of the day. Eleanor, the main reason why we were up at this hour on a Sunday morning (and the result of a Sunday morning seven years earlier when getting out of bed was the last thing on our minds) knelt over felt-tip pens and a colouring-book.

‘What are we doing today?’ I asked.

‘Peace-fighting,’ Annette said firmly.

‘Not me,’ I said, in chorus with Eleanor’s groaned ‘Oh no, mummy.’ I’d forgotten about the CND demonstration, although it had been pencilled, then biro’d, on the kitchen calendar for weeks.

‘Please yourselves, anarchists,’ Annette said, stubbing out her cigarette. Something in her tone and gesture told me she was annoyed – having succeeded in getting us to demos before, she knew our objection was based more on sloth than principle. In this year of Chernobyl and Tripoli, we were letting the side down.

‘How about if we meet you there?’ I suggested hastily. ‘Eleanor and I could nip over to Camden market, then we’ll go and see Granny and Grandpa at Marble Arch and watch out for you, and we can all go to McDonald’s afterwards.’

As I spoke Eleanor transparently calculated whether trailing around second-hand bookstalls was worth it for the sake of seeing her grandparents and tanking up on cheeseburger and milkshake. From the way her eyes brightened it looked like the bottom line was in the black. I turned to Annette, who gave me a relenting smile.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘At least you’ll be there.’ She stood up, in a graceful slither of nightdress and negligée. ‘And come on, you,’ she added, stooping to pat the sticking-up rump of Eleanor, now back at her colouring. ‘Get yo’ little ass into some kinda decent gear.’

‘Do we have-to?’

There were times – like this, and bedtimes – when I regretted ever answering the question: ‘Daddy, what’s libertarianism?’ with anything but a lie.

‘No, we don’t have to,’ I said. ‘But we’re going to, because I bloody say so.’

‘I’ll tell mummy you said that.’

‘Said what?’

‘Bloody.’

‘Go ahead, clipe.’

‘Whassa clipe?’

‘A much worse word. A terrible word.’

By this time we were in the street, walking briskly along to Holloway Road. Even on a Sunday the trucks were lined up, honking nose to stinking tail. I blamed the environmentalists, who’d delayed the widening of the Archway road for years and inflicted planning blight on the entire neighbourhood. At least it lowered the price of a ground-floor flat. I relieved my feelings by starting to sing ‘Ten Green Protestors’ and got Eleanor skipping and singing along. By the time we’d reached ‘…there’d be no Green protestors and a road through the wall!’ we were on the Camden bus.

Top deck, branches brushing past. Smokers had to sit at the back. I blamed the environmentalists.

Chalk Farm Road and Camden Market cheered me up, as they always did whether or not I found anything I wanted. Stalls and canals and the invincible hand of the flea market, its black plastic bags and canopies the banners of an anarchist army that would still be there when the rest had done their worst, if anything were there at all.

We left with a leatherbound Lord Macaulay for me, an antique rayon bodice for Annette, a coral paperweight for my parents and a climbing wooden