'Christ,' said Kearney.

He took another look at Sprake, Sprake was clutching an old electric kettle in one hand and a pamphlet edition of Yeats's Hodos Chameleontos in the other. A moment before, perhaps, he had been holding them up with his arms outspread in the hieratic gesture of a figure on a Tarot card. The floor in front of him was littered with objects that seemed to have fallen out of his lap as he died. Seashells, the skull of a small mammal: Serbian gypsy ornaments which had belonged to his mother. There was a feeling that something else was going to happen in the room. Despite the finality of what had already taken place, something else could easily happen.

Alice Sprake said: 'He was good boy.'

She groaned loudly. The broken springs of the sofa creaked and were silent. After a moment she got to her feet and smoothed her skirt down over her thighs. She was six feet tall, Kearney thought, perhaps more. Her great size had a calming effect on him, and she seemed aware of that. She smelled powerfully of sex.

'I will see to this, Mikey,' she said. 'But you must go.'

'I came because I needed his help.'

The idea seemed to give her no satisfaction.

'It is your fault that he is like this. Ever since he met you he has been mad. He was going to do wonderful things with his life.'

Kearney stared at her.

'Sprake?' he said in disbelief. 'Are you talking about Sprake?' He started to laugh. 'The day we met he was a fuck-up in a railway carriage. He did tattoos on himself with a Bic pen.'

Alice Sprake drew herself up.

'He was one of the five most powerful magicians in London,' she said simply. Then she added: 'I know what you are afraid of. If you don't go now I will send it after you.'

'No!' said Kearney.

He had no idea what she might be able to do. He stared panickily from her to the dead man, then ran out of the room, down the stairs and into the street.

Anna was asleep when he let himself back into the flat. She had wound herself in the duvet so that only the top of her head showed, and there were new notes everywhere. Other people's problems are their own, she had tried to remind herself: You aren't responsible for other people's problems.

Kearney went quietly into the back room and began to empty the chest of drawers, stuffing clothes, books, packs of cards and personal items into his Marin courier bag in the dark. The room looked out on to the central well of the block. Kearney hadn't been in there long when he began to hear voices echoing up from one of the lower floors. It sounded like a man and a woman arguing, but he couldn't make out any words, only a feeling of loss and threat. He got up off his knees and drew the curtains. The voices seeped in anyway. When he had what he wanted, he tried to zip up the bag. The zip caught. He looked down. The bag and everything in it was covered in a thick soft even layer of dust. This image gave him such a sense of his life draining away that he was filled with terror again. Anna woke up in the other room.

'Michael?' she said. 'Is that you? That's you isn't it?'

'Go to sleep,' Kearney advised her. 'I just came for some things.'

There was a pause while she assimilated this. Then she said:

'I'll make you a cup of tea. I was just going to make tea but I fell asleep. I was so exhausted I just fell asleep.'

'There's no need to do that,' he said.

He heard the bed creak as she got up. She came and leaned in the doorway in her long cotton nightdress, yawning and rubbing her face. 'What are you doing?' she said. She must have smelt the vomit on the front of his jacket, because she said: 'Have you been ill?' She switched the light on suddenly. Kearney made a futile gesture with the bag in his hand. They stood there blinking at each other.

'You're leaving.'

'Anna,' Kearney said, 'it's for the best.'

'How can you bloody say that!' she shouted. 'How can you bloody say it's for the best?'

Kearney began to speak, then shrugged.

'I thought you were going to stay! Yesterday you said this was good, you said it was good.'

'We were fucking, Anna. I said that was good.'

'I know. I know. It was good.'

'I said it was good fucking you, that's all,' he said. 'That was all I meant.'

She slid down in the doorway and sat with her knees drawn up.

'You let me feel as if you were going to stay.'

'You did that yourself,' Kearney tried to persuade her.

She stared up at him angrily. 'You wanted it too,' she insisted. 'You practically said as much to me.' She sniffed, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. 'Oh well,' she said. 'Men are always so stupid and frightened.' She shivered suddenly. 'Is it cold in here? I'm awake now anyway. At least have some tea. It won't take a minute.'

It took longer. Anna fussed about. She wondered if there was enough milk. She began the washing up, then abandoned it. She left Kearney to finish the tea while she went into the bathroom and ran the taps. After that he heard her rooting about somewhere else in the flat. Drawers opened and closed. 'I saw Tim the other day,' she called. This was so transparent Kearney didn't bother to answer. 'He remembered you.' Kearney stood in the kitchen, staring at the things on the shelves and drinking the weak Earl Grey he had made. He kept hold of the courier bag, feeling that if he put it down he would weaken his position. Every so often a wave of anxiety licked over him, starting somewhere deep in the brainstem, as if some very old part of him could detect the Shrander long before Kearney himself heard or saw it.

'I've got to go,' he said. 'Anna?'

He emptied his cup into the sink. When he got to the door she was already there, standing so he couldn't open it. She had dressed for going out, in a big cable-knit cardigan and fake Versace skirt, and there was a bag at her feet. She saw him looking down at it. 'If you can go I can go too,' she said. Kearney shrugged and reached over her shoulder for the knob of the Yale lock.

'Why don't you trust me?' she said, as if it was already established that he didn't.

'It isn't anything like that.'

'Oh yes it is. I try to help you-'

He made an impatient gesture.

'-only you won't let me.'

'Anna,' he said quickly, 'I help you. You're a drunk. You're anorexic. You're ill most days, and on a good day you can barely walk down the pavement. You're always in a panic. You barely live in the world we know.'

'You bastard.'

'So how can you help?'

'I'm not letting you go without me,' she said. 'I'm not letting you open this door.'

She struggled against him.

'Jesus, Anna.'

He got the door open and pushed past her. She caught up with him on the stairs and held on to the collar of his jacket and wouldn't let go even when he started to drag her down the stairs.

'I hate you,' she said.

He stopped and stared at her. They were both panting.

'Why are you doing this, then?'

She hit him in the face.

'Because you have no idea!' she shouted. 'Because no one else will help you. Because you're the useless one, the damaged one. Are you so stupid you can't see that? Are you so stupid?'

She let go of his coat and sat down suddenly. She glanced up at him, then away again. Tears poured down her face. Her skirt had ridden up as she fell, and he found himself staring at her long, thin thighs as if he had never seen her before. When she saw that, she blinked her tears away and pulled the skirt up further. 'Christ,' Kearney whispered. He turned her over and pushed her into the cold stone stairs, while she pushed back hard against his hand, sniffing and crying throughout.

When, ten minutes later, he dragged himself away and walked off towards the tube station, she simply followed.

He had met her in Cambridge, perhaps two years after he stole the dice. He was looking for someone to murder, but Anna took him to her room instead. There he sat on the bed while she opened a bottle of wine, showed him photographs of her most recent brush with anorexia, walked nervously about in a long cardigan and nothing else. She told him: 'I like you but I don't want to have sex. Is that all right?' It was all right with Kearney, who-constrained by the Gorselands fantasies and worn out by the evasions he normally had to practise on these occasions-often found himself saying much the same thing. Every time the cardigan fell open thereafter, he gave her a vague smile and looked politely away. This only seemed to make her more nervous. 'Will you just sleep next to me?' she begged him when it was time to go. 'I really like you but I'm not ready for sex.' Kearney spent an hour stretched out next to her, then, at perhaps three in the morning, left the bed and masturbated violently into the bathroom sink. 'Are you all right?' she called in a muffled, sleepy voice.