On this fine spring day the ice-cream sales were going strong, gaggles of children were vociferously eating, dribbling and spilling, parents were fractious, seagulls were attacking, cream was melting, pushchairs were tipping over, umbrellas were shimmering in the light breeze on the terrace and there in the far corner sat a man in a white shirt and a dark suit with a homburg hat on the table, wild grey hair surrounding a wizened turtle face. Klaus was sipping an espresso, beaming at the infantile chaos around him.

“Hi Klaus”

“Robbie my boy, vonderful to zee you, vonderful. Vat a beautiful spring day zis is, ze young vones at play, ze matrons zcowling.”

And before I could reply.

“A beautiful day, ze sun, ze breeze, ze new leaves on ze trees, ze vegetable vorld avakes, Robbie, and zo do we, I feel ze sap rising my boy, ze sap! Rising!”

“Calm yourself Klaus old man, we don’t want you losing another job.”

“Ach, zose days are over. Over! I have ozer interests now.”

I sat down, squinting in the sun, worrying about the other interests. We erected the umbrella in the middle of the table, it rocked and fluttered in the gently moving air. Under this unstable covering we continued.

“Progress, Robbie, is unztoppable,”

He placed a small black box on the table, it may once have held a man’s expensive wristwatch.

“But first food. We are late for lunch and they do good falafel here, and olives.”

“Let’s have a plate then”

Klaus stood up still beaming at the surrounding familial discord. He picked up the box and placed it conspiratorially in my hands before heading into the café to order.

Inside the box, nestled in red velvet was a human index finger, curled into a beckoning gesture. Now, Klaus must chop off many of these each week – so what was the angle here? I examined it closely, it was just a finger.

Klaus returned with a tray of Mediterranean delicacies a bottle of wine and two glasses. We toasted.

“To crime”

“To springtime”

The olives oozed oil, the falafel was sage-saturated, pickled red cabbage, sweet roasted peppers, anchovies in more oil, the wine was red and, unfathomably, Romanian.

“You gave me the finger?”

Klaus swallowed an olive, smacked his lips over a sip of wine. “Listen to zis, that finger has a small scar on the lower knuckle, do you see it”

I looked closely and saw the thin raised area of flesh encircling the knuckle.

“Uh huh.”

“The top two segments are transplants.”

“Ah.”

“So you change your fingers you see, you change your fingerprints.”

“mmm.”

“Not only that though Robbie, the DNA you see, the DNA of the finger differs from that of the hand.”

“Oh.”

“That’s all you’ve got to say?”

“Well.” I looked at the last piece of pepper and wondered who was going to get it. I looked up at the sky behind a corner of the wobbling umbrella. I looked at the finger in its velvet nest amongst the fast-emptying plates.

“Vell? Vell!”

“It seems a bit drastic, cutting off your fingers in order to commit a crime.”

“But what if you HAVE committed? What if the police HAVE your fingerprints, from the crime scene?”

“Even so …”

“I have a ready supply of fingers Robbie. I can do this operation. Some murderers would pay well to have replacement fingerprints I think!”

He seemed convinced. He appeared serious.

“Hmmm.”

I took the evidence bag with the cello string out of my pocket and handed it to him.

“There is a brown stain on this Klaus, could be the dead man’s blood. Could be the killer’s DNA there too.”

“Dead man?”

“The dead man in my case, George Austin.”

“Ah yes, George Austin.”

“Could you get it analysed”

He picked up the bag and peered at me through the polythene, in which the string was wound in a spiral, he winked at me through the hole in the middle.

“How did you obtain it?”

“I took it off a cello”

“Wearing gloves?”

“No.”

“Then it will probably have your DNA on it, it will not be admissible as evidence.”

“Even so, it will be useful to know. Could you find out?”

“Of course. The case is still open, I can submit it as a sample and see what comes back.”

“Thanks mate”

“zo … you are doubting zere is a market for replacement vingers then?”

His accent became broader as he drank. We poured more wine, ordered more olives.

“Zo Klaus,” I was doing it now, “Zese other interests you were talking about?”

“Ah, you zink zat I am after the young frauleins again? No no. all over. What, Robbie, is the largest zexual organ in the body?”

“Depends on the body?”

“Ze brain! Ze brain of course, ze saying ‘it is all in the mind’ – zo true!”

I had fleeting visions of proposed brain transplants, illicit aphrodisiacs, god knows what was coming…

 “Zo, my stimulation is now centred in my brain, ze intellect is ze true seat of satisfaction.”

“The intellect.”

“Chess my boy, chess. An infinite source of endless fascination, a subject which everyone can begin and no matter your level of attainment there is always more to discover, in addition of course the struggle to a conclusion, excitement of battle, the thrill of victory and the despair in defeat – all of human life is there.”

“I see, but who do you play?”

“This is also a vital component, I play deities, ghosts, ephemeral presences.”

“Internet?”

“Computers must be avoided at all costs; chess must be a purely human occupation or it is ruined. Absolutely no computerised involvement must be allowed.”

So what were these deities, I imagined opium-fuelled dreams resulting in half-remembered games, like Coleridge and his poem.

“Where are the deities?” I asked.

“One is in Kuala Lumpur, the other in Johannesburg.”

“Ah” my mind began to boggle. “Right, so you play? … How?”

“Shortwave radio. Outdated technology, this is how we escape the tyranny of the modern world. The Amish community in the USA, they have a point, continuing to use horses and to dress as Quakers of the 18^th century, it releases you from the rat-race, from the temptations and the pitfalls of the modern world.”

“Instead of a horse-drawn plough you have a shortwave radio?”

“I have no land to plough, I live on the third floor of a tower block in Peckham, I do however have a balcony, on which I have wound a short-wave aerial. It has taken much study, not a little expense and many nights searching the airwaves, but I have discovered two like-minded souls, also searching heaven for messages, we have connected, we have our allotted times, we communicate, we play chess one move at a time, it is tortuously slow but it is immensely satisfying.”

“Your opponents?”

“We chat of course, we have developed relationships, but we are not intimate, we are after all, rivals in relentless struggle. Malik is a baker somewhere in Chinatown, Kuala Lumpur, he has a wife and two children, we talk every other day at 9 p.m. which is 5 a.m. his time, before he starts work. Jabulani in Johannesburg has one child, no husband, and works in a car-wash, we talk three times a week.”

“How do you know they are not cheating?”

“What would be the point, tell me, we get no prizes for winning or losing, we are involved, that is the thing, we are in the struggle and out of the world.”

“So this is your interest.”

“I have two boards set up in the living room, surrounded by my reference books, this is my shrine and my retreat.”

“Klaus” I looked him straight in the eyes, “we seem to have finished the peppers – shall we get some more?”

Two bottles of Romanian red later I was meandering back up through the park, I reached the second Sphynx, she smiled at me, she may have winked. The radio mast towered above, I thought of Klaus and his Amish-inspired retro-communication system, his personal little stream of radiation beaming out from Peckham to Johannesburg and Kuala Lumpur, then this massive structure, all those signals going out, hundreds of thousands of TV shows on hundreds of channels, millions of phone calls, internet searches, pornography, cute pictures of cats. A massive column of electromagnetic radiation. One of those mobile phone transmitters; if you get within three feet, the microwave radiation will cook your brain from the inside out.