The Pure

again, lit another cigarette. Compulsively, he placed his foot against a leg of the coffee table and nudged it, feeling the weight; heavy, too heavy for a regular table. There was no sign it had been tampered with. His ‘slick’ was secure.
    In the bathroom, he unscrewed the showerhead and rattled it over the sink, then scraped at it a few times with a spoon. He’d read that dirty showers contain dangerous levels of mycobacterium avium, which if inhaled can rot the lungs. When satisfied, he dropped his cigarette butt sizzling in the toilet and had a cold shower. Snail-like, he slipped back into the shell of his clothes, shaking the moisture from his head.
    It was hot in the flat. Something about the quality of the heat made him think back to the summers of his youth. That summer when, at the age of fourteen, he had won the national junior shooting prize, scoring 197 out of 200 with an old Shtutser rifle. His parents told everyone about it; he had been the envy of the entire Gededei Noar Ivri, the Battalion of Hebrew Youth. The beginning of an illustrious career, he thought bitterly.
    The kill, the Brussels night, appeared in his mind; he blocked it out. He thought about the Hungarian girl. He had a headache. In the kitchen he swallowed an aspirin without water, then, finding the capsule still sharp in his oesophagus, filled a glass and drank. It was as if a furnace was raging inside him, and the water was turning to steam. He refilled the glass and took a key from a drawer. He was ravenous, his soul was hungry. Leaving the glass forgotten on the counter, he left the kitchen, unlocked the spare bedroom and entered.
    The room was filled with an unmoving, fragrant cloud, and the windows were blacked out. He could hear the hum of his small machines. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, a dozen wooden structures were revealed, like balsa wood wardrobes, their walls made of white sheets pinned up with thumbtacks. Concertina pipes looped lazily on to the ground and out the window. Carefully, he opened one of the boxes and dazzling light spilled out, blanching his face. He reached inside.
    The plants, set amongst reflective silver sheeting, were full and supple. He inspected the leaves closely, pinching and twisting them in his fingers: the white hairs had begun to turn reddish brown, almost ready to be harvested. Their roots were threaded into a bed of pebbles, through which a mechanical pump sent bursts of chemical solution. Hydroponic cultivation. Complicated but more efficient, and no soil needed. He spent a few minutes going from box to box like a zookeeper, checking the temperature and humidity gauges, then the extractor fans and pumps. He got some chemicals from the bathroom and replenished the plastic reservoir in the corner of the room, checking that the timer was running properly. Finally he opened the airing cupboard in the corner, took out some drying trays, divided a pile of desiccated buds into eighths, and bagged them up. Casting a final eye over everything, he left the room and locked the door behind him.
    He put on some aftershave, jeans and a linen jacket, turned off the televisions and went out, carrying his crop in a rucksack. Pickings would be rich tonight. One deal, one thousand pounds. But first there was the matter of that bastard Avner. He checked his phone and there was a text waiting, the first for days. It said: c u 4 ok? Reluctantly, he replied: ok.

 
3
    When Uzi arrived at the café in Primrose Hill, Avner Golan was waiting for him, sitting at a table in the corner, nursing a latte in a glass. Uzi hated the sight of a latte in a glass. Whoever thought of a latte in a glass should be shot. He was feeling jumpy. It was dangerous to arrive at a meeting point when your contact was already there. On operations, if you arrived and your contact was there waiting, you cancelled the meeting. It was forbidden even to go to the bathroom and leave your contact at the table, for who knows what they could be doing in your absence? But he fought his instinct. This was Avner, he reminded himself, just Avner. Granted, a bastard through and through, but one of the few people that could, to some extent, be trusted.
    Uzi knew that under his arms and in the centre of his back were ovals of darkness. He didn’t care. He gave Avner a cursory comrade’s embrace and sat down, taking out a packet of cigarettes.
    ‘Ah, my brother. You’re still wearing your old clothes,’ said Avner – for some reason he was