The meanest Flood

will,’ Geordie said. ‘The guy wouldn’t’ve attacked you if you hadn’t gone after his camera. For some reason he wanted a photograph of you. Once he’d got that he was happy. Maybe thought you was a film-star.’
    ‘Gene Hackman,’ Sam said, ‘when he was younger. People always say I look like him. The Popeye Doyle period.’
    Geordie shifted Echo on his knee and gave her a slow wink. Sam had a sense of humour about most things but not his looks. He still believed he looked like that guy. Times in the past Geordie had tried to show him that Gene Hackman had a different-shaped face, that Gene Hackman was kinda good-looking in a sweet old-fashioned way. But Sam wouldn’t have it. According to him Providence had sorted it that he and Gene shared the same DNA.
    And this was a guy who had a face like a broken bag. OK, he had the kind eyes and he could make them twinkle, but in a face with so much old leather in it, what wouldn’t twinkle? And he had a good voice, kind of mellow with some of the blues in it, and when you heard it it made you feel safer, closer to a world that only seemed possible when you were young. Come to think of it there was a whole load of things you could say about Sam Turner: he was a good friend, he could be brave, and was often the only guy around who had the right idea.
    ‘JD thinks it’s karma,’ he said. ‘The universe’s way of telling you to slow down and take time off.’
    ‘Me and the universe,’ Sam said, ‘we’ve been together a long time. Neither of us works like that. I think the universe needs something, I write a letter to the papers or I get Celia to write it and sign my name at the bottom. The universe thinks I need a lift it’ll send me a ticket to ride, Barcelona or a new Dylan CD. In cases of extreme deprivation I’ll get both. This is how we work together. In our long association the universe has never found it necessary to send a photographer to knee me in the balls. The times I’ve been kneed in the balls it always turned out that the knee that did it belonged to a guy who was out of sync, someone with a universe of his own.’
    ‘So what are you telling me?’ Geordie asked. Echo was wriggling so he put her on the floor and she toddled over to the bathroom. Barney followed her like a minder.
    ‘It feels like there’s a connection with Katherine getting herself killed in Nottingham while I was there. I still can’t believe that was a coincidence.’
    ‘You heard about Plato’s cave?’
    ‘Is this more of JD’s wisdom?’
    ‘He mentioned it but I’ve talked to Marie about it, Janet, and I’ve got the book. It’s an allegory so you have to imagine it.’
    ‘This is just what I need,’ Sam said. ‘Better than Lucozade.’
    ‘There’s these people in a cave. They’re chained up so they can only kneel down and face one way, towards one of the walls. Way back in the cave there’s a fire burning and between the people in the chains and the fire there’s a walkway, like a stage. You getting this?’
    ‘I guess. Up to now.’
    ‘OK. The next thing is that there are figures on this walkway and some of them are carrying things, like animals or different figures, and some of them are talking but not all of them. And because of the fire behind them the wall is lit up and the shadows of these people on the walkway are thrown on to the wall.’
    ‘It’s like a marionette show, right?’
    ‘Right,’ Geordie said. ‘Except that the people who’re chained up have been there all their lives so they think it’s reality. It’s the only thing they’ve ever seen. They’ve seen shadows but because they can speak to each other they give the shadows names and don’t think that they’re naming shadows, they think they’re giving names to reality. Also there’s an echo in the cave and when one of the people behind them speaks they hear the echo and think it comes from one of the shadows.’
    ‘Echo,’ said Echo from the bathroom door.
    ‘Not you, darlin’,’ Geordie said, laughing. ‘I’m telling Sam a story.’
    ‘Where we going with this?’ he asked.
    ‘Imagine what’ll happen if some of these people are unchained. First of all they’re gonna be stiff, right? Disoriented. They’re looking into the light for one thing, so their eyes are gonna hurt. They’ve got stiff necks. They can walk around in the cave and everything is a new experience to them. They see these characters walking on the stage and they see the things they are