He grabbed a can of Blue Moon from his bar and enjoyed the gloom as he settled back on his lounger. JJ’s crew had bounced and the partying teens didn’t want to be close by if the cops showed, so Harry found himself alone on his double lounger, detached from dancing, splashing and the laser show coming out of the DJ booth. He thought about going home and catching some sleep, but he lacked energy, and figured the decent thing was to give Matt and Hermione a clear hour at the apartment.

But no cops showed. A guy in a suit barked orders as pool attendants swarmed JJ’s cabana, gathering towels and drinks, mopping tiles, covering up the bar and placing fresh cushions and rolled towels on each lounger. As the clean-up crew left, an electrician came along with a TV balanced on his shoulder.

He whistled cheerfully as he placed the screen face down on the bar. Then he opened a little tool bag and started unscrewing the broken set. Feeling wasted and watching the party from a distance had made Harry grumpy, but he was captivated by the happy little man in his beige shorts and Red Spot-branded polo.

‘Can I ask you something, sir?’ Harry said politely, sitting up.

The man turned and smiled. ‘Depends what it is, I guess.’

‘Have you got a one-one-seven?’

The psychiatrists who developed and studied Zombie mods as a way of combatting mental illness catalogued hundreds of genetic modifications that might affect brain chemistry and alter a person’s mental state. Most z-mods were still known by these catalogue numbers.

‘How’d you work that out?’ he asked.

Harry smiled. ‘Guys with sixty-eights and one-seven-nines are more jittery,’ Harry said. ‘But one-one-sevens are chilled.’

The electrician strained as he lifted the broken TV from its wall mount.

‘May I ask why you had it done?’

‘Wife dumped me,’ the electrician explained. ‘Lived with my daughter for a while, but there wasn’t a lot of space in her apartment. Wound up drinking more and staying out later every night. I’d wake up stinking of booze and aching like the world was ending. I thought about killing myself. Got as far as buying a handgun, then I met a guy in a bar selling mod kits for eight hundred bucks. Took me out back to show me how to do the needles and the rest is history …’

Harry was fascinated. ‘So now you’re happy all the time?’

‘Not happy exactly,’ the electrician answered. ‘You feel sad but it don’t matter.’

‘Isn’t it flat, though?’ Harry said. ‘Like, does anything matter, if you’re happy no matter what?’

There was a pause as the electrician lifted the new TV on to the bracket and reached behind the bar to plug cables.