‘Good, good, you should make that point on air,’ said Dale absently, checking her eyeliner.

‘Fifteen seconds on the break,’ said the floor manager. Four, three, two, one…

Oliver’s face lit up. ‘We’re talking to Bruce Delamitri, the hot tip for tonight’s “Best Director” Oscar. But amidst all the glory and the adulation there lurks very real controversy.’

Dale picked up the ball. ‘Bruce Delamitri’s movies are hard, tough, witty, sassy streetwise thrillers, where the life is low and the body count is high. Remind you of something?’

‘You tell me, Dale,’ said Ollie, deploying his serious and thoughtful face.

‘How about America ’s streets?’ said Dale, looking equally portentous. ‘That’s right, the streets of America, hard, tough and dangerous, where the kids grow up fast and dying is a way of life.’

‘You’re saying that the movies of Bruce Delamitri reflect the streets of America?’

‘Some say reflect, some say influence. America, it’s your call. We’ll be back after these messages.’

The studio lights dimmed again. Oliver and Dale went dark and shuffled their papers.

‘Do you have sensitive teeth? Does icecream make you go ow! when you should be going mmmmm?’

Chapter Two

On the morning after it all happened, a young woman, hardly more than a girl, stared across a bare formicatopped table at an interrogating police officer. She was being interviewed in the nextdoor room to the one in which Bruce was being questioned. Unlike Bruce, however, the young woman was considered highly dangerous and was therefore in chains, her thin wrists manacled to her almost equally thin ankles. In fact, so petite was she that it looked as if she could have slipped off the steel bracelets if she had wished and just floated away on the next breeze. She was indifferent to whether they chained her or not. She had nowhere to go anyway.