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Kavita.
    â€˜Maybe we should give it a tranquilizer,’ Aarif suggested. ‘A small dose of metoserpate hydrochloride, like they give to chickens whenever they get stressed.’
    â€˜No,’ said Nathan. ‘At least, not yet. Let’s just give it time to relax. I don’t want to risk giving it an overdose.’
    Outside in the street, they heard the wailing and honking of sirens. At the same time, the building’s super appeared in the doorway, a tall rangy black man called Henry. He wore a flappy gray uniform with the Schiller insignia on the pocket, and a peaked cap.
    â€˜Holy Moses, Professor!’ he said. ‘What happened in here? I heard a bang, but I thought it was just more thunder.’
    â€˜Slight accident,’ said Nathan.
    â€˜You ain’t kidding me. Look at this place!’
    â€˜Don’t worry. We called the fire department, as you can hear.’
    â€˜But your face, Professor! You’re all cut up!’
    â€˜It’s nothing, Henry. Only a few scratches. Why don’t you go back down to the lobby and show the firefighters where we are? And you can tell them that the fire’s out now, so they won’t be needing their hoses.’
    Henry loped around the workbenches in his thick-soled shoes, sniffing and shaking his head. The way he walked always reminded Nathan of Jar Jar Binks. ‘You know they had this entire laboratory refurberated just last fall, only a couple of weeks before you moved in. Man, oh man! Mr Kasabian, he’s going to go apeshit.’
    He passed close to the phoenix cage, and as he did so, the phoenix screeched and scrabbled at the bars. Henry jumped back, and said, ‘ Shee -it! That’s some seriously cranky bird you got there, Professor!’
    He bent down and peered at it more closely. ‘ Homely , too. Never saw a bird like that before.’
    Nathan was dabbing more blood from his ear, but he couldn’t stop himself from smiling. ‘No, Henry, you never did. Nobody ever did. Nobody in this day and age, anyhow.’

FIVE
    Tuesday, 7:43 a.m.
    â€˜ M ore coffee, honey?’ asked Trixie.
    Detective Jenna Pullet shook her head emphatically from side to side. ‘No, thanks, Trixie. I don’t want to spend the rest of the morning shaking like a fricking epileptic.’
    â€˜You didn’t touch your bacon,’ said Trixie, frowning at her plate. ‘You hardly touched your eggs, neither.’
    â€˜That’s because the bacon is watery and the eggs are rubbery. And is this a buckwheat pancake or a mouse mat?’
    â€˜I don’t never know why you come in here,’ said Trixie. ‘You order breakfast, you always hate it.’
    â€˜I come in here to lose weight. It’s a whole lot nearer than my gym.’
    For Jenna, her weight was a never-ending struggle. She was blonde, with big hair and a wide, generous face, and a wide, generous figure to go with it. In her closet at home she had seven suits of three different sizes – the suits she could comfortably get into, the suits she could get into if she wore her Bali firm-control briefs and held her breath from morning till night, and the suits she could only aspire to get into.
    It was the irregular mealtimes that did it. The jelly donuts when they were out on early-morning stake-outs, the hurried Reuben sandwiches before they had to give evidence in court, and then the cheesesteak and beer orgies after they had made a successful arrest. She could never keep track of the calories, and she always imagined that her digestive tract was like the CSX marshaling yard, with food being shunted down her like coupled-up railroad cars.
    â€˜So, you doing anything exciting today?’ Trixie asked her, taking away her plates.
    â€˜Sitting in front of a computer screen, most likely. Things have been real flat for the past couple of weeks. Even the South Philly mob are sitting at home and doing all their racketeering online. These