“I don't need a camera,” his fingers were repulsed by it, “My memory is omniscient. My mind's a fucking breathing library. I've even got a young lady up there who catalogues it all away, handy she is and pretty, got a memory all or her own, ya knows what I am saying?” He flicked through the address book of Arthur’s phone, “whose Molly?”

Arthur’s eyes tossed a wink to Charlie, “Oh you know, just someone.”

“Randy? You got a mate called Randy. What kind of cunt calls his kid Randy?

“A small man with ambition.”

“I bet your hand shakes when ya phone im.”

“You should try it on vibrate.”

“I might just slip out back.”

“Don't wipe the phone.”

“You want it back in a mess.”

“No, I want it back with my numbers on it.”

Barry massaged the call button, ghosting it, kneading it with his thumb. “Who's Maurice? ”

It was the shadow’s hand that passed momentarily through Arthur’s eyes that further ignited the felon’s distrust and forced Barry to squeeze the button. The asset of interconnectivity was to be Arthur’s downfall. A telephone’s circuit board is the lash to an electronic maze of invisible thread, tying this modern world of individuals tightly together. One single tug can catch a man tight.

Within a moment of the thumb pressing to call Maurice, Officer Rudy Tinker fell out of sleep and off his couch. He stumbled to his feet as his phone screamed at him, he tried to focus his eyes, as it wailed. He failed to notice the howl of its warning which grew in panic as he fumbled his desk. At that very moment there was a knock at his office door. His shirt was all over the place. He found the phone, pressed answer and dropped it as the door opened. The phone landed with its one ear facing the door and its camera wide eye lens blinked open, as a young police officer, with his silver numbers on his shoulder, popped his head around the door. It was as if Barry had an ACME body with a long neck and stuck his head into the room, through the phone.

Barry hangs up, heart tight and angry by what he has just seen. “Voice mail.” He flips the phone back to Arthur, like it was a two headed coin, the odds stack unmistakably in his favour. “How is Gregor,” he asks, “not heard from him in a while?”

Arthur looks Barry in the eye, “He’s being Gregor.”

In the silence that followed Barry lit a cigarette, its smoke a dreadful genii’s wisp, which penetrated Arthur’s skin and made him nervous, “you know, Gregor,” he said. His words pulled over him like a shroud.

A few hours later a porta cabin sat like Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat, peaking the top of a half built, high rise, car park. Two pigeons took off. They flew up and circled, below them traffic moved in starts and stops. The birds rose and fell before returning to the window sill of the porta cabin to peer in. Through the window they could see Charlie watching. He was a little tense. Arthur sat at a desk in front of Barry. Howard, with his chiselled buttocks, stood behind him.

Barry smoked an ethereal cigarette, its magic pervaded. “A veil has been lifted from me, Arthur.”

Arthur was too nervous to flinch.

Barry breathed out some more cloudy power. “Do you know what it's like to live some parts of your life in darkness? Its like being one of those fucking Arab women, ya know, watching the world through a fucking slit. Ain't good.”

From where Arthur sat nothing looked good.

Barry breathed out smoke from his mouth and took it back in through his nostrils, “always stuff happening out in the peripheral, ya know just out the corner of ya eyes. I swear, sometimes I see things that ain't there.” He winked at the big guy stood at the door. The big guy stepped outside for a moment.

In the time that he was gone everybody smiled. Arthur smiled nervously, the others smiled knowingly. When the big guy came back in he was carrying a bucket with a white dish cloth laid over the top. Charlie had a grin full of sculptured teeth.

“I wouldn't look so fucking happy Charlie, you little cunt, this copper is your fucking mate!” Arthur felt like his buttocks were bolted to the chair without anaesthetic. “He fucking saw you coming didn't he.”

Barry’s eyes filled with mock playhouse shock – professional not amateur, “I've just let the cat out of the bag. I could never write a film or nothing like that cause I'd be a right fucking bruiser with the suspense. I'd fucking bludgeon it, I would, fucking screaming murder. And now I'm going to kill the suspense some more, and tell ya there's a fucking head in there. Of course it's a fucking head, a bloke like me has a bucket brought to the table and it's just got to be a fucking head inside, ain't it? So the question is, whose fucking head is it?”

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