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By Root 203 0

I danced and sung in the bar, standing on tables beating two chair legs together to keep time to jaunty folk songs. I drank, slept, and woke. Always the packed bar, the fated men knocking back firewater. I dreamed of a cosmonaut floating in the corner of the room. We spoke to each other. I understood his language of isolation, the stellar dialect. We shared a dislocation from the planet, a lonely orbit followed by billions … And then I woke and realised it wasn’t a dream. He was in the room after all, hovering by the lights in his orange space suit. He was live on the evening news. He flickered across the screen of a broken TV mounted on the wall, assembling and reassembling in the grainy waves of static … same way my body came and went in that subterranean bar.

GJ – Fuck … That’s something … Fucking out there.

BK – Best of all was leaving the place freezing, knowing the fur coat of Ricky Wise fitted Viktor like a glove.

GJ – Story makes me crave vodka … you got any? Pass me the whiskey. Fuck, Barry. I want a little hit, sure you can’t join me?

BK – No, no … not yet, anyway. I feel like me, Barry.

GJ – Come on … no fun by myself. Don’t desert me now. Now you’re spent.

BK – Never … I … fought the angels from the sky … Nothing they could do, stole their wings so I could fly … Forgot … the weight of walking on the world … Now I’m … a wanted man in powder clouds…

GJ – Woooo … we all wanna fuck you, rock star.

BK – You’re all messed up.

GJ – Don’t fucking judge me … I’m the cosmonaut now … Speak to me …

BK – What about?

GJ – Love … That word is for ever … never die. Say it and fucking mean it … I dare you.

BK – Forget it.

GJ – Amore, Liebe … Fuck it … Burn it up, Billy, the view is beautiful from here.

BK – Take it easy.

GJ – Fuck! Ouch!

BK – Fuck. All right?

GJ – The fucking ground, hard ground … I want a beach, soft white sand … Take me out somewhere … Fuck me in the surf.

BK – You want a beach?

GJ – Waves … Turquoise.

BK – You want to heap your clothes on the sand and wade out into the sea, naked, swim into another life?

GJ – Just a hotel would be fine. Why so much effort to escape when we have drugs? The getaway car, always waiting with the engine running.

BK – That drops you back at the scene of the crime … Fucking magic.

GJ – Fuck you, Billy … You’re fucking with my high.

BK – High? A high should be simply being alive … I just want to play my guitar and sing a few songs. Swing on a hammock plucking bum notes. Have a self composed by me, not the press, not the record execs or fucked-up fans.

GJ – A beach …

BK – What?

GJ – Fuck me on the beach, Barry K.

BK – Barry fucking K? You’re way gone.

GJ – Come … come here.

BK – And vanish with you?

GJ – Come to the poppy seed … the slopes of the Himalaya.

BK – Good stuff?

GJ – Fucking good stuff.

BK – Pass it here.

GJ – Love the sky, Billy.

BK – Fuck.

GJ – Hold my hand … Now you got your wings.

PART THREE

Charles Nash lands at Nairobi Aiport. Charles Nash walks coolly past the customs officers, bored and listless, swatting flies, sweating beneath the cranking fans. Charles Nash has entered Kenya, a travelling salesman in Africa, flying in for a high-powered business meeting, or perhaps a conference.

When Anna mailed back and told me a Peter Cornell appeared on both lists, renting a 4WD on the 20th, and then flying from Sydney to Nairobi on the 28th with a ticket bought in Australia on the 24th, all I had to do was sit and lie low until my new passport arrived.

I admit I had moments of wondering who the hell I was chasing. But this was something. Particularly since Peter Cornell didn’t appear on any databases in the UK – no National Insurance number, driving licence, or previous convictions – despite travelling on a British passport.

Australian customs had looked me up and down twice, then let me pass. Kenyan officials barely glanced at the passport. The moment I stepped from the air-conditioned