Free Cold by John Sweeney Page B

the sun punched a hole through the cloud cover. The thought of non-winter made him almost whinny with pleasure – that and being away from those miserable creatures. ‘Bureaucratic entropy’ was how Vanessa used to explain that special universe they constructed for themselves. She had such a way with words.
    Green Park beckoned. He had time and enough to get some fresh air, grab a sandwich and then return to hear his fate. He rang Terri, his union official. No answer. He left a message about the preliminary being the fact-finder, then rang off.
    The park was damp and grubby, the grass slick and wet, the soil overused, the ground so hard-packed by tens of thousands of tourists and office workers that it had the feel of concrete. The air, too, throbbed with chaotic sound. Perhaps he’d had enough of London, its noise and dark energy. Yet as he walked deeper into the park, the great trees still dripping fat raindrops lifted his spirits. Vanessa’s great hero was Orwell, who’d written something about loving the surface of the planet. She liked to quote him, word for word.
    He stopped and typed Orwell and surface into his phone, and out the answer popped:
     
So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the Earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.
     
    He smiled with delight at the clever tricks his mobile could do, and fondness, too, for the wonder of Vanessa’s intellect.
    He walked on, heading for the south-east corner of the park, where it met The Mall. For the first time that day, he felt a tiny wave of happiness, and at that very moment he saw the two shadows who had stalked him. One hundred yards ahead of them was Wolf Eyes, and one hundred yards ahead of her, splashing in and out of the puddles, was Reilly.

UTAH
    I t was gone midnight when Sergeant William Chivers stared into the styrofoam cup holding his coffee, trying to block out the modern world. Twenty-three years he’d been with the Salt Lake City Police Department, and none of it was getting easier. Instead of enjoying a bit of downtime, taking pleasure in doing not very much for five minutes, the kid sitting next to him in the cruiser, Officer Luiz Alvarez, was messing about jumping between radio stations, hitting on a tune half played out and using some clever thingamajig on his phone to work out what the song was before the DJ got to tell the world.
    A thudding bass riff? ‘“All That She Wants” by Ace of Base,’ called out Alvarez. A saxophone pumping out a threnody of exquisite melancholy: ‘“Baker Street”, Gerry Rafferty.’
    It was beyond irritating.
    Chivers didn’t want to come over a bore, but he was about to call on Alvarez to give it a rest when the cruiser’s police radio crackled. An affray of some sort: an elderly man, slight, described as being the worse for drink, set upon by five assailants in the alley at the back of Harry’s Bar. The sergeant gunned the cruiser, hit the siren and flicked on the light. They became their own mobile storm, flickering electric-blue lightning as they rolled along.
    Hatches of light from windows shone on brick walls and a steel fire staircase high above; puddles reflected the blue flash-flash from the cruiser underfoot; but at street level, the alley was cast in gloom.
    The officers switched on their torches, illuminating a scene beyond strange. Five men, ne’er-do-wells, some of whom Chivers recognised – crackheads, scammers, winos – lying on top of each other like logs, their hands, feet and midriffs trussed up by plastic tape. Sitting on top of the heap of humanity, singing to himself, was a senior citizen, hog-whimperingly drunk.
    ‘Sir, are you all right?’ Chivers asked the old man. He sang his tune and stared into space as if the two police officers and the criminal pyramid beneath did not exist. Close up, his breath stank of booze.
    ‘What’s your name, sir?’
    ‘Archibald