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'Still that thing you caught in Bali? What was it? Clap?'

'Clap?' he said. 'Clap? No, mate. I caught the bloody plague.'

Then his shot face grew serious. 'John. Have you fucked anyone's wife recently? Run over anyone's kids?'

'Uh?' I said, and pushed out a hand to steady myself against the cold wall.

'I mean — is there anyone out to do you a bit of harm?'

'Well yeah.' I shifted my weight. Some days it seemed that everyone was out to do me harm.

''Real harm?' he specified. 'Something a little bit serious?'

'No. What is this?'

'I was down the Fancy Rat the other night,' said Terry Linex. 'We think we drink. They're nutters down there. It's a scotch contest. I was with this crew of villains, one of them says, "Oy. You've got a business associate, John Self, right?" I says, "What of it?" He says, "There's some work out on him. Not sure what. But there's some work out on him." Now it's true, as you know, that an awful lot of ballocks gets talked down the Fancy Rat. But there's usually something in it... Want me to ask around?'

I looked into Terry's fiery face — cheap churned hair, half an ear bitten off, penny-farthing nostrils. His teeth are as randomly angled as shards of glass on a Backstreet wall. Terry is one of the new princes, an improviser of fierce genius. His current dream is to hire a handicapped chauffeur: the Disabled sticker would give Linex unlimited parking anywhere he pleased.

'Yeah, do that.'

'Glad to,' he said. 'Better safe than sorry. Know what I mean?'

So now as I plod home through the crumpled afternoon, veering this way and that among my brothers and sisters, with eyes meeting and not meeting, it's sort of nice to know that it's all official.

—————— 'Check,' I said.

Selina looked up at me indignantly. Her lancing eyes returned to the board. She exhaled, and made an irrelevant move with her black-square bishop.

'Check,' I said.

'So what?'

'It means your king's threatened. I can take your king.'

'You can have it. It's more bloody trouble than it's worth.'

'You don't understand. The whole —'

'I'm going to have a bath. I hate chess. Where are we going to go? I'm not having Indian or Chinese. Or Greek. Kreutzer's.'

'If you like.' I reset the heavy pieces.

'Your hair looks terrible. You should let me cut it.'

'I know.'

I'd had a twenty-quid rug-rethink that very afternoon. The little faggot sorted through my locks for a while, curled his lip and said, 'How old are you?' Roger Frift asked me the same question. It's the heart, the heart. My heart's wrong, my ticker's wrong. My clock's not right.

I went into the bedroom and browsed through Selina's knicker drawer, intending to spring a selection on her when she emerged from the tub. Hello, these are new. And so are these .. As I experimentally fingered a disused bodice I felt something solid in the tuck of the lining. What's this? Whalebone? No: a roll of used tenners — two hundred pounds! Now Selina's knicker drawer is a dumb place for Selina to hide things in, because I am always rootling about in there, as Selina well knows.

She came out of the bathroom with a handtowel belted round her waist. I pointed. She barely blinked when she saw the money — negligently scattered on her side of the sack.

'Where d'you get it?'

'I won it!'

'How?'

'At roulette!'

'What's all this about you being penniless?'

'It was my last fiver! I put it on a number on my way out of the door!'

'They only pay thirty to one — what about the other fifty?'

'It was a tip!'

'You said you were working there, right?'

'Right!'

'What as?'

'A croupier!'

I scowled, and paused. Selina had worked as a croupier before. This is true. The Cymbeline hires little cockteasers to police the tables. This is true also. They doll them up in mini-skirts and see-through blouses. The chicks look as though they'd come across for a cigarette but they're all strict business-heads and are forbidden to tangle with the punters — as I myself established, one night after my girl had gone to bed.

'Look — how do I know you weren't just shacked up there with some guy?'

'Ring Tony