1

The city has Finnish-looking trams. Ferries, helicopters and Finnish-looking trams.

A tennis-court stands next to a cathedral. A sandwich-bar embarrasses a Theosophical temple.

Some of the smaller banks have tinted windows, science-fiction panes the colour of petrol. And the Yohst and Kubrick Centre in Bilton Square wears copper epaulettes; at night, it's painted by floodlights of lime and guava-pink.

As three a.m. approaches, the station settles down, achieves a degree of equilibrium. It loosens its belt (as it were) and breathes a little easier. And the mad and the bad and the sad in the cells downstairs? They admit defeat and shut up—finally.

Detective Mark Traven rises from his desk. Time to empty the bladder and stretch the legs. In white shirt and loud floral tie, Mark looks like a shoulder-holstered Mormon, trim and youthful and smoothly truculent.

He drifts toward Stella Greybill's desk. She's up to her armpits in folders papers files, her messy hair a storm of golden wisps. 'Cut your crap, Traven.'

'I haven't said a word.'

'This place stinks of fries and hamburgers.'

'Yours and mine,' says Mark, 'but mostly mine.'

'Ain't that the truth.'

'We should be the subject of a study. The scientists should study us long and hard. Nutritionists with clipboards, probing the mysteries of our bright eyes and bushy tails.'

'Grow fucking up.' Is what Stella says.

'I'm closing fast on my next cigarette. I'm cruising stealthily.'

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'Not me. Not this detective. What I want is beef tea, if you're passing the machine.'

'Beef tea? Since when? These are questions the machine itself will ask.'

'The secret is not to bully it. The secret is to let it do its thing.'