THE SNAKE EATER BY
THE NUMBERS
Lee Child

Numbers. Percentages, rates, averages, means, medians. Crime rate, clearance rate, clearance percentage, increase, decrease, throughput, input, output, productivity. At the end of the twentieth century, police work was about nothing but numbers.

Detective Sergeant Ken Cameron loved numbers.

I know this, because Cameron was my training officer the year he died. He told me that numbers were our salvation. They made being a copper as easy as being a financier or a salesman or a factory manager. We don't need to work the cases, he said. We need to work the numbers. If we make our numbers, we get good performance reviews. If we get good reviews, we get commendations. If we get commendations, we get promotions. And promotions mean pay and pensions. You could be comfortable your whole life, he said, because of numbers. Truly comfortable. Doubly comfortable, he said, because you're not tearing your hair out over vague bullshit subjective notions like safe streets and quality of life. You're dealing with numbers, and numbers never lie.

We worked in North London. Or at least he did, and I was assigned there for my probationary period. I would be moving on, but he had been there three years and would be staying. And North London was a great place for numbers. It was a big manor with a lot of crime and a population that was permanently hypersensitive to being treated less well than populations in other parts of London. The local councillors were always in an uproar. They compared their schools to other schools, their transport spurs to other transport spurs. Everything was about perceived disadvantage. If an escalator was out at West Finchley tube station for three days, then they'd better not hear that an escalator had been fixed in two days down at Tooting Bec. That kind of thing was the birth of the numbers, Cameron told me. Because stupid, dull administrators learned to counter the paranoid arguments with numbers. No, they would say, the Northern Line is actually 63 per cent on time up here, and only 61 per cent on time down there.

So, they would say, shut up.

It wasn't long before police work fell in with the trend. It was inevitable. Everything started being measured. It was an obvious defensive tactic on the part of our bosses. Average response time following a 999 call? Eleven minutes in Tottenham, Madam Councillor, versus twelve minutes in Kentish Town. Said proudly, with a blank-but-smug expression on our bosses' meaty faces. Of course, they were lying. The Kentish Town bosses were lying too. It was a race towards absurdity. I once joked to Cameron that pretty soon we would start to see negative response times. Like yes, Madam Councillor, that 999 call was answered eleven minutes before it was made. But Cameron just stared at me. He thought I had lost it. He was far too serious on the subject to countenance such a blatant mistake, even in jest.

But certainly he admitted that numbers could be massaged.

He collected massage examples like a connoisseur. He observed some of them from afar. The 999 stuff, for instance. He knew how the books were cooked. Switchboard operators were required to be a little inexact with their time-keeping. When it was noon out there in the real world, it was four minutes past noon inside the emergency switchboard. When a sector car was dispatched to an address, it would radio its arrival when it was still three streets away. Thus, a slow twenty-minute response time went into the books as a decent twelve minutes. Everybody won.

His approach to his own numbers was more sophisticated.

His major intellectual preoccupation was parsing the inconvenient balance between his productivity and his clearance rate. For any copper, the obvious way to enhance his clearance rate was to accept no cases at all, except the solid gold slam-dunks that had guaranteed collars at the end of them. He explained it like a Zen master: Suppose you have only one case a year. Suppose you solve it. What's your clearance rate? One hundred per cent! I knew that, of course, because I was comfortable with simple arithmetic. But just for fun I said, OK, but suppose you don't solve it? Then your clearance rate is zero! But he didn't get all wound up like I thought he would. Instead, he beamed at me, like I was making progress. Like I already knew the dance steps. Exactly, he said. You avoid the cases you know you can't solve, and you jump all over the cases you know you can solve.

I should have spotted it right then. The cases you know you can solve. But I didn't spot it. I was still inside the box. And he didn't give me much time to think, because he rushed straight on to the main problem, which was productivity. Certainly major points could be scored for a 75 per cent clearance rate. That was obvious. But if you achieved that mark by clearing three cases out of four, you lost major points for a lack of productivity. That was obvious, too. Four cases a year was absurdly low. Forty cases a year was low. In North London at that time, each detective was looking at hundreds of cases a year. That was Ken Cameron's big problem. The balance between productivity and clearance rate. Good productivity meant a bad clearance rate. A good clearance rate meant bad productivity. He said to me, See? Like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Although that was a misinterpretation on my part. He was really saying: So I'm not such a bad guy, doing what I'm doing. I should have seen it. But I didn't.

Then, still in his Zen master mode, he told me a joke. Two guys are in the woods. They see a bear coming. 'Run!' says the first guy. 'That's ridiculous,' the second guy says. 'You can't run faster than a bear.' 'I don't need to run faster than the bear,' the first guy answers. 'I only need to run faster than you.' I had heard the joke before, many times. I suppose I paused a moment to remember who had told it to me last. So I didn't react the way Cameron wanted me to. I saw him thinking fast track training college wanker. Then he regrouped and explained his point. He wasn't looking for extremely high numbers in and of themselves. He was just looking to beat the guy in second place. That's all. By a point or two, which was all that was necessary. Which he could do while maintaining an entirely plausible balance between his clearance rate and his productivity.

Which he could do. I should have asked, how exactly? He was probably waiting for me to ask. But I didn't.

I found out how the day I met a prostitute called Kelly Key and a madman called Mason Mason. I met them separately. Kelly Key first. It was one of those perceived disadvantage things. Truth was, North London had a lot of prostitution, but not nearly as much as the West End, for instance. It tended to be of a different nature, though. It was definitely more in-your-face. You saw the hookers. Up west, they were all inside, waiting by the phone. So I was never really sure exactly what the locals were up in arms about. That their hookers were cheaper? That they wanted prettier girls? Or what? But whatever, there was always some street-clearing initiative going on, usually in the northern reaches of Islington and all over Haringey. Working girls would be dragged in. They would sit in police stations, looking completely at home and completely out of place all at the same time.

One morning we got back from the canteen and found Kelly Key waiting. Ken Cameron evidently took a snap decision and decided to use her to teach me all kinds of essential things. He took me aside and started to explain. First, we were not going to write anything down. Writing something down would put her in the system, which would aid our productivity, but which would damage our clearance rate, because solicitation cases were very hard to make. But, the longer we concealed our indifference, the more worried old Kelly would get, which would result in some excellent freebies after we finally let her go. A cop who pays for sex, Cameron told me, is a very bad cop indeed.

Bad cop. I suppose, in a relative way.

So I watched while Cameron harassed Kelly Key. It was late morning, but she was already dressed in her hooker outfit. I could see a lot of leg and a lot of cleavage. She wasn't dumb enough to offer anything off her own bat, but she was heavily into doing the Sharon Stone thing from Basic Instinct. She was crossing and uncrossing her legs so fast I could almost feel the disturbance in the air. Cameron was enjoying the interview. And the actual view, I suppose. I could see that. He was totally at his ease. He had the upper hand, so definitively it was just an absolute fact. He was a big man, fleshy and solid in that classic police-man way. He was probably forty-something, although it's hard to be precise with guys who have that sort of tight pink flesh on their faces. But he had his size, and his badge, and his years in, and together they made him invulnerable. Or together they had, so far.

Then Mason Mason was brought in. We still had an hour of fun to go with Kelly, but we heard a disturbance at the front desk. Mason Mason had been arrested for urinating in public. At that time we called the uniformed coppers woollies, because of their wool uniforms, and on the face of it the woollies could handle public urination on their own, even if they wanted to push the charge upwards towards gross indecency. But Mason Mason had been searched and found with a little more folding money in his pocket than street people usually carry. He had £90 on him, in new tenners. So the woollies brought him to us, in case we might want to try a theft charge, or mugging, or even robbery with violence, because maybe he had pushed someone around to get the cash. It might be a slam-dunk. The woollies weren't dumb. They knew how we balanced clearance rate with productivity, and they were self-interested too, because although individual detectives competed among themselves, there was also an overall station number, which helped everybody. There was a number for everything.

So at that point Cameron put Kelly Key on the back burner and Mason Mason on the front. He took me aside to explain a few things. First, Mason Mason was the guy's actual name. It was on his birth certificate. It was widely believed that his father had been drunk or confused or both at the Registry Office and had written Mason in both boxes, first name and surname. Second, Mason wasn't pissing in public because he was a helpless drunk or derelict. In fact, he rarely drank. In fact, he was pretty harmless. The thing was, although Mason had been born in Tottenham – in a house very near the Spurs ground – he believed he was American, and believed he had served in the United States Marine Corps, as part of Force Recon, who called themselves the Snake Eaters. This, Cameron said, was both a delusion and an unshakeable conviction. North London was full of dedicated Elvis impersonators, and country and western singers, and Civil War re-enactors, and Omaha Beach buffs, and vintage Cadillac drivers, so Mason's view of himself wasn't totally extraordinary. But it led to awkwardness. He believed that the North London streets were in fact part of the ruined cityscape of Beirut, and that to step into the rubble and take a leak against the shattered remains of a building was all part of a Marine's hard life. And he was always collecting insignias and badges and tattoos. He had snake tattoos all over his body, including one on his chest, along with the words Don't Tread On Me.

After absorbing all this information I glanced back at Mason and noticed that he was wearing a single snake earring, in his left ear. It was a fat little thing, all in heavy gold, quite handsome, quite tightly curled. It had a tiny gold loop at the top, with a non-matching silver hook through it that went up and through his pierced lobe.

Cameron noticed it, too.

'That's new,' he said. 'The Snake Eater's got himself another bauble.'

Then his eyes went blank for a second, like a TV screen changing channels.

I should have seen it coming.

He sent Kelly Key away to sit by herself and started in on Mason. First he embarrassed him by asking routine questions, starting with a request that he should state his name.

'Sir, the Marine's name is Mason, sir,' the guy said, just like a Marine.

'Is that your first or last name?'

'Sir, both, sir,' the guy said.

'Date of birth?'

Mason reeled off day, month, year. It put him pretty close to what I guessed was Cameron's age. He was about Cameron's size, too, which was unusual for a bum. Mostly they waste away. But Mason Mason was tall and heavily built. He had hands the size of Tesco chickens and a neck that was wider than his head. The earring looked out of place, all things considered, except maybe in some kind of a pirate context. But I could see why the woollies thought that robbery with violence might fly. Most people would hand over their wad to Mason Mason, rather than stand and fight.

'Place of birth?' Cameron asked.

'Sir, Muncie, Indiana, sir,' Mason said.

The way he spoke told me he was clearly from London, but his faux-American accent was pretty impressive. Clearly he watched a lot of TV and spent a lot of time in the local multiplexes. He had worked hard to become a Marine. His eyes were good, too. Flat, wary, expressionless. Just like a real jarhead's. I guessed he had seen Full Metal Jacket more than once.

'Muncie, Indiana,' Cameron repeated. 'Not Tottenham? Not North London?'

'Sir, no sir,' Mason barked. Cameron laughed at him, but Mason kept his face blank, just like a guy who had survived boot camp.

'Military service?' Cameron asked.

'Sir, eleven years in God's own Marine Corps, sir.'

'Semper Fi?'

'Sir, roger that, sir.'

'Where did you get the money, Mason?'

It struck me that when a guy has the same name first and last, it's impossible to come across too heavy. For instance, suppose I said hey, Ken, to Cameron? I would sound friendly. If I said hey, Cameron, I would sound accusatory. But it was all the same to Mason Mason.

'I won the money,' he said. Now he sounded like a sullen Londoner.

'On a horse?'

'On a dog. At Harringay.'

'When?'

'Last night.'

'How much?'

'Ninety quid.'

'Marines go dog racing?'

'Sir, Recon Marines blend in with the local population.' Now he was a jarhead again.

'What about the earring?' Cameron asked. 'It's new.'

Mason touched it as he spoke.

'Sir, it was a gift from a grateful civilian.'

'What kind of civilian?'

'A woman in Kosovo, sir.'

'What did she have to be grateful about?'

'Sir, she was about to be a victim of ethnic cleansing.'

'At whose hands?'

'The Serbs, sir.'

'Wasn't it the Bosnians?'

'Whoever, sir. I didn't ask questions.'

'What happened?' Cameron asked.

'There was social discrimination involved,' Mason said. 'People considered rich were singled out for special torment. A family was considered rich if the wife owned jewellery. Typically the jewellery would be assembled and the husband would be forced to eat it. Then the wife would be asked if she wanted it back. Typically she would be confused and unsure of the expected answer. Some would say yes, whereupon the aggressors would slit the husband's stomach open and force the wife to retrieve the items herself.'

'And you prevented this from happening?'

'Me and my men, sir. We mounted a standard fire-and-manoeuvre encirclement of a simple dwelling and took down the aggressors. It was a modest household, sir. The woman owned just a single pair of earrings.'

'And she gave them to you.'

'Just one, sir. She kept the other one.'

'She gave you an earring?'

'In gratitude, sir. Her husband's life was saved.'

'When was this?'

'Sir, our operational log records the engagement at 0400 last Thursday.'

Cameron nodded. He left Mason Mason at the desk and pulled me away into the corner. We competed for a minute or two with all the one-sandwich-short-of-a-picnic metaphors we knew. One brick shy of a load, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, that kind of thing. I felt bad about it later. I should have seen what was coming.

But Cameron was already into another long and complicated calculation. It was almost metaphysical in its complexity. If we logged another case today, our productivity number would rise. Obviously. If we broke it, our clearance rate would rise. Obviously. Question was, would our clearance rate rise faster than our productivity number? Basically, was it worth it? The equation seemed to me to require some arcane calculus, which was beyond me, and I was a fast track training college wanker. But Cameron seemed to have a handy rule of thumb. He seemed to suggest that it's always worth logging a case if you know you're going to break it. At the time I suspected that was a non-mathematical superstition, but I couldn't prove it. Still can't, actually, without going to night school. But back then I didn't argue the arithmetic. I argued the facts instead.

'Do we even have a case?' I asked.

'Let's find out,' he said.

I imagined he would send me out for an Evening Standard, so we could check the greyhound results from Harringay. Or he would send me to wade through incident reports, looking for a stolen snake earring from last Thursday night. But he did neither thing. He walked me back to Kelly Key instead.

'You work hard for your money, right?' he said to her.

I could see that Kelly didn't know where that question was going. Was she being sympathized with, or propositioned? She didn't know. She was in the dark. But like all good whores everywhere, she came up with a neutral answer.

'It can be fun,' she said. 'With some men.'

She didn't add men like you. That would have been too blatant. Cameron might have been setting a trap. But the way she smiled and touched his forearm with her fingertips left the words It can be fun with men like you hanging right there in the air. Certainly Cameron heard them, loud and clear. But he just shook his head, impatiently.

'I'm not asking for a date,' he said.

'Oh,' she said.

'I'm just saying, you work hard for your money.'

She nodded. The smile disappeared and I saw reality flood her face. She worked very hard for her money. That message was unmistakable.

'Doing all kinds of distasteful things,' Cameron said.

'Sometimes,' she said.

'How much do you charge?'

'Two hundred for the hour.'

'Liar,' Cameron said. 'The twenty-two-year-olds up west charge two hundred for the hour.'

Kelly nodded.

'Fifty for a quickie,' she said.

'How about thirty?'

'I could do that.'

'How would you feel if a punter ripped you off?'

'Like he didn't pay?'

'Like he stole ninety quid from you. That's like not paying four times. You end up doing him for nothing, and you end up doing the previous three guys for nothing too, because now that money's gone.'

'I wouldn't like it,' she said.

'Suppose he stole your earring, as well?'

'My what?'

'Your earring.'

'Who?'

Cameron looked across the room at Mason. Kelly Key followed his gaze.

'Him?' she said. 'I wouldn't do him. He's mad.'

'Suppose you did.'

'I wouldn't.'

'We're playing let's-pretend here,' Cameron said. 'Suppose you did him, and he stole your money and your earring.'

'That's not even a real earring.'

'Isn't it?'

Kelly shook her head. 'It's a charm from a charm bracelet. You guys are hopeless. Can't you see that? It's supposed to be fastened on to a bracelet. Through that little hoop at the top? You can see the wire doesn't match.'

We all stared at Mason Mason's ear. Then I looked at Cameron. I saw his eyes do the blank thing again. The channel-changing thing.

'I could arrest you, Kelly Key,' he said.

'But?'

'But I won't, if you play ball.'

'Play ball how?'

'Swear out a statement that Mason Mason stole ninety quid and a charm bracelet from you.'

'But he didn't.'

'What part of let's-pretend don't you understand?'

Kelly Key said nothing.

'You could leave out your professional background,' Cameron said. 'If you want to. Just say he broke into your house. While you were in bed asleep. The home-owner being in bed asleep always goes down well.'

Kelly Key took her gaze off Mason. Turned back to Cameron.

'Would I get my stuff back afterwards?' she asked.

'What stuff?'

'The ninety quid and the bracelet. If I'm saying he stole them from me, then they were mine to begin with, weren't they? So I should get them back.'

'Jesus Christ,' Cameron said.

'It's only fair.'

'The bracelet is imaginary. How the hell can you get it back?'

'It can't be imaginary. There's got to be evidence.'

Cameron's eyes went blank again. The channel changed. He told Kelly to stay where she was and pulled me back across the room, to the corner.

'We can't just manufacture a case,' I said.

He looked at me, exasperated. Like the idiot child.

'We're not manufacturing a case,' he said. 'We're manufacturing a number. There's a big difference.'

'How is there? Mason will still go to jail. That's not a number.'

'Mason will be better off,' he said. 'I'm not totally heartless. Ninety quid and a bracelet from a whore, he'll get three months, tops. They'll give him psychiatric treatment. He doesn't get any on the outside. They'll put him back on his meds. He'll come out a new man. It's like putting him in a clinic. A rest home. At public expense. It's doing him a favour.'

I said nothing.

'Everyone's a winner,' he said.

I said nothing.

'Don't rock the boat, kid,' he said.

I didn't rock the boat. I should have, but I didn't.

He led me back to where Mason Mason was sitting. He told Mason to hand over his new earring. Mason unhooked it from his earlobe without a word and gave it to Cameron. Cameron gave it to me. The little snake was surprisingly heavy in the palm of my hand, and warm.

Then Cameron led me downstairs to the evidence lock-up. Public whining had created a lot of things, he said, as far as police work went. It had created the numbers, and the numbers had been used to get budgets, and the budgets were huge. No politician could resist padding police budgets. Not local, not national. So most of the time we were flush with money. The problem was, how to spend it? They could have put more woollies on the street, or they could have doubled the number of CID thief-takers, but bureaucrats like monuments, so mostly they spent it on building new police stations. North London was full of them. There were big concrete bunkers all over the place. Manors had been split and amalgamated and HQs had been shifted around. The result was that evidence lock-ups all over North London were full of old stuff that had been dragged in from elsewhere. Stuff that was historic. Stuff that nobody tracked anymore.

Cameron sent the desk sergeant out for lunch and started looking for the pre-film record books. He told me that extremely recent stuff was logged on the computers, and slightly older stuff was recorded on microfilm, and the stuff from twenty or thirty years ago was still in the original handwritten log books. That was the stuff to steal, he said, because you could just tear out the relevant page. No way to take a page off a microfilm, without taking a hundred other pages with it. And he had heard that deleting stuff from computer files left telltale traces, even when it shouldn't.

So we split up the pile of dusty old log books and started trawling through them, looking for charm bracelets lost or recovered years ago in the past. Cameron told me we were certain to find one. He claimed there was at least one of everything in a big police evidence lock-up like this one. Artificial limbs, oil paintings, guns, clocks, heroin, watches, umbrellas, shoes, wedding rings, anything you needed. And he was right. The books I looked at told me there was a Santa's grotto behind the door behind the desk.

It was me who found the bracelet. It was right there in the third book I went through. I should have kept quiet and just turned the page. But I was new and I was keen, and I suppose to some extent I was under Cameron's spell. And I didn't want to rock the boat. I had a career ahead of me, and I knew what would help it and what would hurt it. So I didn't turn the page. Instead, I called out.

'Got one,' I said.

Cameron closed his own book and came over and took a look at mine. The listing read Charm Bracelet, female, one, gold, some charms attached. The details related to some ancient long-forgotten case from the 1970s.

'Excellent,' Cameron said.

The lock-up itself was what I supposed the back room of an Argos looked like. There was all kinds of stuff in boxes, stacked all over shelves that were ten feet high. There was a comprehensive numbering system with everything stacked in order, but it all got a little haphazard with the really old stuff. It took us a minute or two to find the right section. Then Cameron slid a small cardboard box off a shelf and opened it.

'Bingo,' he said.

It wasn't a jeweller's box. It was just something from an old office supplier. There was no cotton wool inside. Just the charm bracelet itself. It was a hand-some thing, quite heavy, very gold. There were charms on it. I saw a key, and a cross, and a little tiger. Plus some other small items I couldn't identify.

'Put the snake on it,' Cameron said. 'It's got to look right.'

There were closed loops on the circumference of the bracelet that matched the closed loop on the top of Mason's snake. I found an empty one. But having two closed loops didn't help me.

'I need gold wire,' I said.

'Back to the books,' Cameron said.

We put his one of everything claim to the test. And sure enough, we came up with Gold Wire, jeweller's, one coil. Lost property, from 1969. Cameron cut a half-inch length with his pocket knife.

'I need pliers,' I said.

'Use your fingernails,' he said.

It was difficult work, but I got it secure enough. Then the whole thing disappeared into Cameron's pocket.

'Go tear out the page,' he said.

I shouldn't have, but I did.

I got a major conscience attack four days later. Mason Mason had been arrested. He pleaded not guilty in front of the magistrates, and they remanded him for trial and set bail at five thousand pounds. I think Cameron had colluded with the prosecution service to set the figure high enough to keep Mason off the street, because he was a little worried about him. Mason was a big guy, and he had been very angry about the fit-up. Very angry. He said he knew the filth had to make their numbers. He was OK with that. But he said nobody should accuse a Marine of dishonour. Not ever. So he stewed for a couple of days. And then he surprised everyone by making bail. He came up with the money and walked. Everyone speculated but nobody knew where the cash came from. Cameron was nervous for a day, but he got over it. Cameron was a big guy too, and a copper.

Then the next day I saw Cameron with the bracelet. It was late in the afternoon. He had it out on his desk. He slipped it into his pocket when he noticed me.

'That should be back in the lock-up,' I said. 'With a new case number. Or it should be on Kelly Key's wrist.'

'I gave her the ninety quid,' he said. 'I decided I'm keeping the bracelet.'

'Why?'

'Because I like it.'

'No, why?' I said.

'Because there's a pawn shop I know in Muswell Hill.'

'You're going to sell it?'

He said nothing.

'I thought this was about the numbers,' I said.

'There's more than one kind of numbers,' he said. 'There's pounds in my pocket. That's a number too.'

'When are you going to sell it?'

'Now.'

'Before the trial? Don't we need to produce it for evidence?'

'You're not thinking, kid. The bracelet's gone. He fenced it already. How do you think he came up with the bail money? Juries like nice little consistencies like that.'

Then he left me alone at my desk. That's when the conscience attack kicked in. I started thinking about Mason Mason. I wanted to make sure he wasn't going to suffer for our numbers. If he was going to get medical treatment in jail, well, fine. I could live with that. It was wrong, but maybe it was right, too. But how could we guarantee it? I supposed it would depend on his record. If there was previous psychiatric treatment, maybe it would be continued as a matter of routine. But what if there wasn't? What if there had been a previous determination that he was just a sane-but-bad guy? Right then and there I decided I would go along to get along only if Mason was going to make out OK. If he wasn't, then I would torpedo the whole thing. Including my own career. That was my pact with the devil. That's the only thing I can offer in my defence.

I fired up my computer.

His name being the same first and last eliminated any confusion about who I was looking for. There was only one Mason Mason in London. I worked backwards through his history. At first, it was very encouraging. He had had psychiatric treatment. He had been brought in many times for various offences, all of them related to his conviction that he was a Recon Marine and London was a battlefield. He built bivouacs in parks. He went to the toilet in public. Occasionally he assaulted passers-by because he thought they were Shi'ite guerrillas or Serbian militia. But generally the police had treated him well. They were usually kind and understanding. They got the mental health professionals involved as often as possible. He received treatment. Reading the transcripts in reverse date order made it seem like they were treating him better and better. Which meant in reality they were tiring of him somewhat. They were actually getting shorter and shorter with him. But they understood. He was nuts. He wasn't a criminal. So, OK.

Then I noticed something.

There was nothing recorded more than three years old. No, that was wrong. I scrolled way back and found there was in fact some very old stuff. Stuff from fourteen years ago. He had been in his late twenties then and in regular trouble for public disorder. Scuffles, fights, wild drunkenness, bodily harm. Some heavy duty stuff, but normal stuff. Not mental stuff.

I heard Cameron's voice in my head: He rarely drinks. He's pretty harmless.

I thought: Two Mason Masons. The old one, and the new one.

With an eleven-year gap between.

I heard Mason's voice in my head, with its impressive American twang: Sir, eleven years in God's own Marine Corps, sir.

I sat still for a minute.

Then I picked up the phone and called the American Embassy, down in Grosvenor Square. I couldn't think of anything else to do. I identified myself as a police officer. They put me through to a military attaché.

'Is it possible for a foreign citizen to serve in your Marine Corps?' I asked.

'You thinking of volunteering?' the guy answered. 'Bored with being a cop?' His voice was a little like Mason's. I wondered whether he had been born in Muncie, Indiana.

'Is it possible?' I asked again.

'Sure it is,' he said. 'At any one time we've got a pretty healthy percentage of foreign nationals in uniform. It's a job, after all, and it gets them citizenship in three years instead of five.'

'Can you check records from there?'

'Is it urgent?'

I thought of Cameron on his way to Muswell Hill. Being shadowed by a Recon Marine with a grudge.

'It's very urgent,' I said.

'Who are we looking for?'

'A guy called Mason.'

'First name?'

'Mason.'

'No, first name.'

'Mason,' I said. 'Both his names are Mason.'

'Hold the line,' he said.

I spent the time working out Cameron's likely route. He would probably walk. Too short a journey to drive, too awkward on the tube. So he would walk. He would walk through Alexandra Park.

'Hello?' the guy at the embassy said.

'Yes?'

'Mason Mason served eleven years in the Marines. Originally a UK citizen. Made the rank of First Sergeant. He was selected for Force Recon and served all over. Beirut, Panama, the Gulf, Kosovo. Received multiple decorations and an honourable discharge just over three years ago. He was a damn fine jarhead. But there's a file note here saying he was just in some kind of trouble. One of the Overseas Veterans' associations just had to bail him out from something.'

'Why did he leave the Marines?'

'He failed a psychiatric evaluation.'

'You get an honourable discharge for that?'

'We kick them out,' the guy said. 'We don't kick them in the teeth.'

I sat there for a moment, undecided. Should I dispatch sector cars? They would be no good in the park. Should I send the woollies on foot? Was I overreacting?

I went on my own, running all the way.

It was late in the year and late in the day and it was already getting dark. I crossed the railway as a train rumbled under the bridge I was on. I watched the road ahead, and the hedges on each side. I didn't see Cameron. I didn't see Mason.

Alexandra Park's iron gates were already closed and locked. This facility closes at dusk, said the sign. I climbed over the gates and ran onwards. The smell of night mist was already in the air. I could hear distant traffic all the way from the North Circular. I could hear starlings roosting somewhere to the south. In Hornsey, maybe. I followed the main path and found nothing. I saw the dark bulk of Alexandra Palace ahead and stood still. Go on or turn back? The streets of Muswell Hill, or the park? Surely the park was the danger zone. The park was where a Recon Marine would do his work. I turned back.

I found Cameron a yard off a side path.

He was half hidden under some low shrubbery. He was on his back. His coat was missing. His jacket was missing. His shirt had been torn off. He was naked from the waist up. He had been ripped open from the sternum to the navel with a sharp blade. Then someone had plunged his hands inside the wound and lifted his stomach out whole and rested it on his chest. Just pulled it out, the whole organ. It was right there on his chest, pale and purple and veined. Like a soft balloon. It had been squeezed and pressed and palpated and arranged until the faint gold gleam of the charm bracelet showed through the thin translucent lining. I saw it quite clearly, in the fading evening light.

I think I was supposed to play the part of the Kosovo wife. I was Cameron's co-conspirator, and I was supposed to recover the jewellery. Or Kelly Key was. But neither of us did. Mason's tableau came to nothing. I didn't try, and Kelly Key never even saw the body.

I didn't report it. I just got out of the park that night and left him there for someone else to find the next morning. And someone else did, of course. It was a big sensation. There was a big funeral. Everyone went. Then there was a big investigation, obviously. I contributed nothing, but even so Mason Mason became the prime suspect. But he disappeared and was never seen again. He's still out there somewhere, a mad Recon Marine blending in with the local population, wherever he is.

And me? I completed my probationary year and now I'm a detective constable down in Tower Hamlets. I've been there a couple of years. My numbers are pretty good. Not quite as good as Ken Cameron's were, but then, I try to live and learn.