He arrives at Twelfth House on Gallaho Mews in a homicidal state of mind. Bicycle thieves run down the back streets, old pros wheeling them three abreast at a good pace. Young men with natty mustaches preen in the windows. Children loot the dustbins. Courtyard corners are drifted with official papers, the shed skin of a Beast at large. A tree has inexplicably withered in the street to a shingly black corpse. A fly lands belly-up on the front fender of Roger’s motorcycle, thrashes ten seconds, folds its veined and sensitive wings, and dies. Quick as that. First one Roger has ever seen. P-47s fly over in squadron box formations, four checkmarks apiece RedWhiteBlueYellow on the unamended form of the whitish sky, squadron after squadron: it is either some military review, or another war. A plasterer is busy around the corner, smoothing over a bomb-scarred wall, plaster heaped on his hawk luscious as cream cheese, using an unfamiliar trowel inherited from a dead friend, still, these first days, digging holes like an apprentice, the shiny knife-edge not yet broken to his hand, the curl of it a bit more than his own strength could have ever brought it to… Henry was a larger bloke…. The fly, who was not dead, unfolds its wings and zooms off to fool somebody else.

All right Pointsman stomping into Twelfth House, rattling the corkboards down the seven hallways and flights, receptionists making long arms for the telephone dammit now where are you—

Not in his office. But Géza Rózsavölgyi is, and tries to give Roger a hard time. “You are ma-king a spec-tacle of your-self, young man.”

“Shurrup you Transylvanian twit,” snarls Roger, “I’m looking for the boss, see, one funny move out of you and it’s your last taste of O-negative, Jackson, those fangs won’t even be able to gum oatmeal when I’m through wiv you—” Alarmed Rózsavölgyi, retreating around the water cooler, tries to pick up a swivel chair to defend himself with. The seat falls off, and Rózsavölgyi is left with only the base, which happens, embarrassingly, to be shaped like a cross.

“Where is he,” Mexican standoff, Roger gritting his teeth do not succumb to hysteria, it is a counter-productive luxury you cannot, in your present great vulnerability, afford…. “Come on you sod, tell me or you’ll never see the inside of a coffin again—”