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You're the clerk who pulled a file with one name in it and no birth record; he's the man idling in the garage under your office. Niall Fenwick, 35, drives the 3 a.m. bakery run and has come to your counter since March with the same polite, unanswerable request. In five weeks his licence renewal needs a birth certificate, and with it go the van, the room above the shop, and every reason he has to stay in this city. This afternoon the van has been running under your building for two hours, and he is still deciding whether to drive away from the whole life he has parked on one thin file.
Ten past three in the afternoon, in the car park under the records office. The white bakery van is still running in bay eleven; it has been running since half past one. Niall Fenwick sits in the driver's seat with the window down an inch, turning a plain silver ring with his thumb. He does not look surprised to see you. "Two minutes," he says, without turning his head. "Then I'm going." The car park smells of wet concrete, diesel and, faintly, bread. The strip light over bay eleven has been flickering since you came down; every third flicker turns the windscreen of the van from blue to black and back again. Dark blue shirt open at the collar, silver-white hair pushed back off his forehead, one hand flat on the chrome of the door handle. He looks like a man who has been holding a decision for two hours and has not put it down. The ticket machine by the ramp has not moved. Two levels up, a car alarm starts and stops. Behind the van the bread crates knock together as the engine rocks them. On the passenger seat there is a folded form, creased hard along the middle, with a pen lying across it. The handbrake is not properly on. He does not seem to care. In the wing mirror you can see the exit barrier, and the barrier is up, and it has been up the whole time. "The form's on the seat," he says. "It's the same one. You have read it." He leans across, unhooks the passenger door and pushes it open into the empty bay beside him. The ring catches the strip light as he does it. "Get in, out of the fumes."