The meanest Flood

could have made more promises.
    What he did was to take another swig from one of his bottles and sit back in the chair with fiery breath. He laughed at her, a deep throaty roar of male pride and complacency. And as she backed out of the room and turned to stumble along the hall to freedom and independence he dug his finger-nails into the wood of the table and hooted and honked and shook long after the house had fallen silent and consciousness had drifted beyond his grasp.
     
    It was midnight in Oslo and Sam didn’t want to leave the flat because he still had some thinking to do so Geordie walked outside by himself. There was graffiti everywhere in Osterhaus gate, graffiti in English and Norwegian and Arabic, other languages that Geordie could only guess at. Tamil, maybe, if that was a language? Urdu? Russian? On the corner of the street was Hornaas Musikk, windows crammed with guitars and banjos, piano accordions and mandolins. In Storgata he peered through the windows of the Mai Vietnamesisk restaurant, looking in at the faces around the tables and wondering at the dishes of food and the glasses of alcohol. Maybe Sam was right again, it wasn’t at all like Russia.
    Geordie wandered in Grönland, the city’s Little Pakistan, and wove through Grensen and Karl Johans Gata. All the shops were closed but there were people spinning wax in the cafes and restaurants and the insistent beat of reggae and hip-hop, soul and rhythm and blues drifted together in the night air. He veered off to Aker Brygge and passed lovers talking and dancing by the side of the water, all of them swathed in woollens and skins, scarves and hats and warm leather boots. He got on the blower to Janet and told her he was safe and asked about Echo and Barney and the cats.
    ‘Don’t worry about us,’ she said. ‘We’re fine. I’m more worried about you.’
    ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I hardly recognized the man, he’s grown a beard.’
    Janet laughed. ‘Can’t imagine it. You sure it isn’t false?’
    ‘If it’s false,’ Geordie told her, ‘the guy who made it is gonna starve to death. OK, you got the picture of him with a beard? Now add a pair of specs.’
    ‘He’s in disguise,’ Janet said. ‘He doesn’t want to be recognized and repatriated.’
    ‘But who does it remind you of?’
    ‘Beard and specs? The only person I know like that is JD.’
    ‘Right on. He went to JD’s place, borrowed an old pair of specs and the guy’s passport and birth certificate. And he’s travelled halfway round Europe under a false identity.’
    ‘Yeah, it’s easy to do something like that now,’ Janet said. ‘European Union.’
    ‘If I travelled on someone else’s passport, Janet, they wouldn’t let me on the boat. This’s one of the things that’s infuriating about Sam. He can get away with stuff like that. He thinks, Oh, I’ll be JD, and next time you turn around he’s disappeared and a kind of cheap imitation of JD has taken his place.’
    ‘How is he?’
    ‘He’s cool on the outside, like always. You know what he’s like. You look at the guy, you listen to him and you wouldn’t know he was feeling anything. But this thing is getting to him. He can’t understand what’s happening. He doesn’t have any more of a clue than you or me. I’m worried he might crack.’
    ‘He’s under a lot of pressure, Geordie.’
    ‘I’ve seen him under pressure before. Usually pressure gets him going, makes him sharp. But what’s happening to him now’s the opposite of that. Seems like it’s putting him to sleep.’
    Janet was quiet at the other end. She said, ‘You take care, you hear?’
    ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘You can worry about Sam but I’m OK.’
    ‘Where are you staying?’
    ‘Sam’s got this flat. Belongs to a friend of a friend. Somebody he knows. Nice place. The guy who owns it is in Helsinki.’
    Janet was quiet at the other end of the line.
    ‘You still there?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Are you watching your back?’
    ‘All the time. This’s a foreign country. How’re you managing without me?’
    ‘We’ll get by,’ she said coyly. ‘But don’t take too long.’
    ‘Don’t worry ’bout that,’ he told her. ‘There’s nothing here I believe in. Except you.’
     

18
     
    The magician was pleased. ‘He’s gone,’ he told Jody. ‘First you saw him, then you didn’t. Disappeared.’ Sam Turner, private eye, alive and well, living in York until Diamond Danny waved his magic wand.
    The world was