THE INFORMATION

"I'm dead," he whispered, and steadied himself against a comic rack. Aquavixen v. Animalman. "I'm dead."

He reckoned he was dead ten times over. Crash would kill him for this but not today and not tomorrow. Crash wouldn't kill him today because Crash was in bed eating hospital food. Even as things stood, Crash wouldn't speak to 13 or even glance his way. All 13 knew was that three men had done his brother, wanting information. It was Grievous Bodily Harm, no argument, as opposed to Actual. In his bed at St. Mary's, Crash seemed to be contemplating the letter G. Grief was what he seemed to be full of. His eyes didn't blink. They stared inward with childish and narcotic melancholy-staring at the grief of his wounds.

On top of everything else 13 had parked Giro in Crash's flat in Keith Grove. Pining, and scratching the doors.

Grendel and Cerebus, Venom and Magma. 13 looked through the dark glass of Ultraverse, across the market street: PriceSlash. As instructed, he had left the orange van in the yard of the dead garage in Basing Street.

"Who is this Tad Green?" said Rory Plantagenet.

"Thad Green. Thaddeus, presumably: American. I can't find any record of him anywhere. The publisher's long defunct. Which all figures. Oh I think we can trust friend Barry to have thought this through pretty thoroughly. He's not going to claim he wrote Hamlet.''''

"It seems so out of character. From what I know."

"Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief. Taffy came to my house-"

"This isn't some kind of hoax, is it? I've got a sixth sense about these things. When I'm being used."

"I swear on my wife and kids. Come on. Don't you see how hard this is-for me? We shared rooms at Oxford. I love that fucking guy."

"Well the more I think about it, the more I think that Smatt will want to whale on this," said Rory-Smatt being the office nickname for his editor (a Cumberland cruiserweight called Sir Matthew Druitt). "It's perfect for him."

"Why, particularly?"

"Because Gwyn's Labour. And Welsh. Let's get on to the women."

When the bill had been called for Richard left the table and made for the pay phone. Rory wanted to inspect Stumbling on Melons and take it away for the weekend; he would read it, alongside Amelior, and, if everything pa

He dialed his own number.

At 49 Calchalk Street, Flat E, Gina was sitting naked in the bath, her hair all gray and greased with some glutinous unguent or elixir. She stopped her ears with her forefingertips, and lay back. Only her breasts and her caligulan nose were visible in the steam.

Next door, the telephone started ringing. It rang and rang and rang. It stopped ringing.

Gina's head and torso surged up from the water.

Space-time was not on Richard's side. The universe was definitely through with him.

Gwyn came out of the Adam and Eve and walked down Calchalk Street. Although his work conjured up an idealized vision of humankind, hehimself remained. Robustly individual, he went about things in his own. No one could accuse. He always . . .

On the steps of Number 49 he rang the bell marked Tull. He waited. He looked at his watch, and at his fingernails.

"Hello?"

"It's me."

There was a silence. The buzz sounded and he went on up.

Gina was waiting by the door at the top of the stairs in her pink towel dressing gown. She said,

"Are you going to stop?"

Lizzete released Marco's hand as she stood on the street checking her change.

"Hey."

It was 13. Marco was pleased. He liked 13. And he sensed the cool of black. Lizzete was black, but she was a girl. 13 was black, but he was a boy.

"Where've you been, man?" said Lizzete.

"Angela wants you." He pointed with a bent finger, meaning: round the corner. "In the Black Cross."

Marco backed off as Lizzete flusteredly shifted her weight: Angela was her oldest sister. She transferred the shopping bag from her right hand and reached out for Marco.

"You can't take a kid in a pub. We'll wait here."

Lizzete looked hard at 13.

13 said, "Give us him."

"Now here, Gina, we encounter an ambiguity. You being from Nottingham. Am I going to stop. I love it when you say that. Am I going to stay? Or am I going to desist?"

"Well which?"

"Both. I'll stay this time, if I may. And then I'll desist. So I'll stop- and then I'll stop."

"You say that but you keep coming back. Please-desist, and don't stay. Go."

Gwyn sighed. He said, "Fine. So you don't mind me telling Richard. I wonder how I'll break it to him. Will it make it easier or harder for him, do you think, that you did it for the money??

"I didn't do it for money. I did it for revenge."

"Oh yes. Poor Anstice. I met her once. Unbelievable."

"I'm surprised he hasn't guessed already. I always told him I'd do the worst thing."

"Ah but he thinks you don't like me."

"I don't."

He turned his head away. And he actually said it. He said: "Women!" He sighed again. Then he reached for his wallet and produced four notes of high denomination. "Nevertheless money was involved. I like to think of myself as Richard's patron. Keeping his family struggling along while he completed his last and, some say, his greatest novel. What was it called?"

"Enough. Stop. Desist."

"Why do you stop? Meaning stay. I must say, these days I find his presence . . . entirely soiling. But of course you have this wonderful love life, don't you. This raging sea of hysterical sex. Why don't you just chuck him out? He'd go."

And he would go. With a suitcase, to the callbox.. . He would go quietly. One thing about Richard. She sensed all the violence, all the verbal violence, he contained. But he had never turned it on her. And she knew he never would.

"One last time," said Gwyn. "And just beauty and the beast."

It was naturally the phenomena of his own eye-level that claimed the lion's share of Marco's attention. For example, the cavernous murk beneath the stalls where an apple or a turnip might have rolled: between the gutter and the shadow-edge. The i

He looked up. He turned a full circle. 13 was gone. Immediately Marco's ears started humming at him. He wheeled and his vision wheeled, wheeled for a face to form out of the swings and roundabouts, the costumed impostors, the taffetaed dissemblers-the kings and the queens and the jacks.

A bus stood at the crossroads. Behind it, Marco's father, accompanied by his friend, walked past, continuing down Westbourne Park Road to Ladbroke Grove.

"There was this novelist," Richard was saying, "who taught a creative-writing course at Brixton Prison. He went away for six months and when he came back all the lags had written a novel each. Or transcribed a novel each. But there were only about five novels in the prison library for themto plagiarize. Three of them had done The Cruel Sea."

Rory frowned. They walked on.

"Jesus. I'd better pick up the vacuum cleaner. Do you mind? It's been there for weeks and I get hell at home."

Three days of weather were stacked in the sky. Here was today. And there was tomorrow. And over there, the day after.

"Beauty and the beast," said Gina. "And that's it. For ever."

"Amazing that women find that less intimate. Particularly when they're swallowers, like you. It always seems more intimate to me."