Instead, Frejah’s scenario was this. A warm, sunny afternoon, with a light breeze from the sea. A ludicrously over-powerful car pulls up outside my home. It stands idling on the narrow coastal road, partly obstructing other traffic, two wheels up on the grassy verge that Jo and I from time to time have to cut back and make tidy. The engine, over-tuned, belches heavy gasoline or oil fumes, blatantly and uncaringly above the emissions limit for my island. Cars and bicyclists go past. Children play on the beach. An elderly woman, a senior cop past the age of retirement, known to me as unreliable at least, recently beaten up by masked men, utters mysterious threats, speaking of an enemy I do not know I have.

It was quirky, it was complicated, it lacked conviction. It did not have the atmosphere or the illusory feeling of reality that fiction should create. It was believable, but only because that was what had happened. It would never work in a novel.

Once again I felt irritated with Frejah. She was determined to drag me into her intrigues, her old police cases, the past murders she might or might not have investigated. For none of these I felt any responsibility.

I made supper, and afterwards had a long online chat with Jo. I said nothing to her of Frejah’s visit. I watched the news on television, then downloaded a movie and viewed it with Barmi curled up on my lap. I went to bed late. (I did make sure all the windows and doors were locked.)

A Parity of Arms

21

A Parity of Arms

Spoder came to see me. I invited him because I wanted at last to catch up with what he was doing. Because he lived in Raba City itself, I was also interested in finding out from him how the financial debacle looked from his perspective. He was eager to visit. He said he had news, things had developed. He roared up to the house on his motorbike within an hour of my call.

I was still following the daily news reports about the financial crash, which was growing worse and better in roughly equal proportions.

More banks and financial institutions had either had to close their doors, or were being administered by liquidation accountants appointed by the seignioral commissariat in Salay Ewwel, the first. On the plus side, a large number of new ATM cash machines had suddenly appeared in shopping malls, supermarkets, commercial centres and so on. People of course flocked to these, which fulfilled a real need, but their operation as actively reliable automats was strictly limited. Most of them became erratically unusable within about a day and a half of their appearance. Some were taken away and replaced. Naturally, there was always a huge rush to use a new ATM whenever it appeared.