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should do?’
    ‘Tell Tango Man to clear off and forget the whole thing. He’ll be up and running again soon. We don’t have to worry about a character who’s worried about his aluminium pan, not in the kind of situation we were in just now. And you’d better close your office for a few weeks and go to the country. Anywhere this bunch can’t find you and you’ll get a little colour in your cheeks.’
    Before I could say anything, Slibulsky made a dismissive gesture. ‘That’s all right. About how much?’
    I hesitated, knowing that I wasn’t going to accept what Slibulsky was offering, but I did the sums all the same. ‘Well … I’m two months behind with the office rent, I haven’t paid the phone bill yet, and I owe someone three thousand marks.’
    The someone was Slibulsky.
    ‘Right, I’ll give you seven thousand for the rent and thephone, you can have a holiday with what’s left. And just forget the three thousand …’ Slibulsky paused, and then grinned broadly. ‘The guy you owe it to has enough anyway.’
    To please Slibulsky I grinned too. My thoughts were somewhere else entirely. Refusing his money had nothing to do with pride or a sense of honour. I’d have taken twenty thousand without bothering too much, because there was no doubt about it, Slibulsky did have enough, or anyway as much as we both thought was enough. But I’d been fool enough to accept a job from Romario, and I’d mucked it up, and a lot of blood had been spilt and energy wasted for no good reason. If two men die and everything’s still the same as before, or worse, then something’s wrong. I had to make sense of it all, even if only by making sure that Romario could carry on acting the typical Brazilian at the Saudade in peace, complaining about the German weather and wearing an apron with parrots printed on it.
    Or I could have put it to myself more simply: I wished I hadn’t shot anyone.
    ‘Thanks, Slibulsky, but as I see it Romario may be an idiot – well, he
is
an idiot – but it all turned out this way on his account, and I think someone ought to get something out of it. And I have to know who those two were. I can’t just shoot a man like that. I won’t forget it.’
    Slibulsky looked straight ahead, driving the car gently along. I couldn’t see his expression in the faint orange light of the dashboard. We drove on to the next village in silence.
    ‘Look,’ he said at last, ‘It’s not a complete disaster because just once you really mucked up.’ They didn’texactly leave us much room to manoeuvre. But do it if you must. Three things: keep my name to yourself, pay your rent with my money, and when we’ve taken Tango Man to the airport let’s go back to my place. We’ll have a bite to eat and you can sleep on the sofa.’
    ‘Stinking cheese?’
    Slibulsky nodded. ‘And there’s a crate of beer in the fridge.’
    When the skyscrapers of Frankfurt appeared ahead of us I slipped lower down in the passenger seat and enjoyed the sight of the lights of the management offices on the top floors shining next to the moon. Whatever I’m feeling like, every time I drive into Frankfurt my heart lifts for a moment at the look of the skyline. In the normal way it’s probably just the image of such a concentrated, powerful place with those densely crowded tower buildings you can see miles away, giving a man who has his own little room somewhere among them a momentary illusion of being concentrated and powerful too. But this time those concrete pillars gave off another aura. As we drove past the Trade Fair Tower and I looked up at the façade that seemed to go on up and up into the sky, I felt a little calmer for the first time since the shoot-out. Was it my stupid subconscious whispering: a small-time character like you can’t really do anything too terrible? Or was it just the sight of such a mighty building making me feel that the world has seen and survived worse things than two dead thugs who were extorting