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interrogate the afternoon drinkers at the Lymph Club on Greek Street, one place he might expect to get news of Sprake.
    Soho Square was full of schizophrenics. Adrift in the care of the community with their small dirty dogs and bags of clothes, they were brought together at sites like this by an attraction to movement, crowds, commerce. A middle-aged woman with an accent he couldn’t quite place had annexed a bench near the mock-Tudor shack at the centre of the square and was staring around with a lively but undirected interest. Every so often her upper lip folded back and a fey, unpremeditated sound escaped her mouth, more than an exclamation, less than a word. When Kearney appeared, walking fast from the Oxford Street end, an educated look sprang from nowhere into her eyes and she began talking loudly to herself. Her topics were disconnected and various. Kearney hurried past, then on an impulse turned back.
    He had heard words he didn’t understand.
    Kefahuchi Tract.
    “What does that mean?” he said. “What do you mean by that?”
    Mistaking this for an accusation, the woman fell silent and stared at the ground near his feet. She had on a curious mixture of good-quality coats and cardigans; green wellington boots; homemade fingerless mitts. Unlike the others she had no baggage. Her face, tanned by exhaust fumes, alcohol and the wind that blows incessantly around the base of Centre Point, had a curiously healthy, rural look. When she looked up at last, her eyes were pale blue. “I wonder if you could spare me the money for a cup of tea?” she said.
    “I’ll do more than that,” Kearney promised. “Just tell me what you mean.”
    She blinked.
    “Wait here!” he told her, and at the nearest Pret bought three All Day Breakfasts, which he put in a bag with a large latte. Back in Soho Square, the woman hadn’t moved, but sat blinking into the weak sunlight, occasionally calling out to passersby, but reserving most of her attention for two or three pigeons hobbling about in front of her. Kearney handed her the bag.
    “Now,” he said. “Tell me what you see.”
    She gave him a cheerful smile. “I don’t see anything,” she said. “I take my medication. I always take it.” She held the Pret bag for a moment then returned it to him. “I don’t want this.”
    “Yes you do,” he said, taking things out to show her. “Look! All Day Breakfast!”
    “You eat it,” she said.
    He put the bag down next to her on the bench and took her by the shoulders. He knew that if he said the right thing she would prophesy. “Listen,” he assured her, as urgently as he knew how, “I know what you know. Do you see?”
    “What do you want? I’m frightened of you.”
    Kearney laughed.
    “I’m the one frightened,” he said. “Look, have this. Have these.”
    The woman glanced at the sandwiches in his hands, then looked over her left shoulder as if she had seen someone she knew.
    “I don’t want it. I don’t want them.” She strained to keep her head turned away from him. “I want to go now.”
    “What do you see?” he insisted.
    “Nothing.”
    “What do you see?”
    “Something coming down. Fire coming down.”
    “What fire?”
    “Let me go.”
    “What fire is that?”
    “Let me go, now. Let me go.”
    Kearney let her go and walked away. Aged eighteen, he had dreamed of himself at the end of a life like hers. He was reeling and staggering down some alley, full of revelation like a disease. He was old and regretful, but for years something had been combusting its way from the centre of him towards the outer edge, where it now burst uncontrollably from his fingertips, from his eyes, his mouth, his sex, setting his clothes on fire. Later he had seen how unlikely this was. Whatever he might be, he wasn’t mad, or alcoholic, or even unlucky. Looking back into Soho Square, he watched the schizophrenics passing his sandwiches from hand to hand, peeling them apart to examine the filling. He had stirred them like