IN U2's Zoo Station a man sat in a leather jacket and hid behind a thick moustache and an evening newspaper. Dodgy as fuck, as Thorsten would say. The man looked Russian, a member of Germany's large guestworker community and his moustache twitched like the ticking of a clock. He looked up at a big electric clock, studied the press of evening commuters and lit a pipe.

It sounds racist, but Slavic men shouldn't wear leather if they don't want to look suspicious (that's what Thorsten would say at least). There was a hint of a scarf around his neck too, perhaps some Caucasus soccer team, striped black and white... he saw a straw-headed lad coming up from the S-Bahn wearing the same coloured scarf and in his excitement nearly kicked over his briefcase. He made eye-contact with the boy, the boy came back with a blank North European look and the man in the leather jacket realised it was probably a coincidence. The newspaper went up again.

<<Excuse me>> a woman said sometime later. <<Can you put that thing out? Don't you know you're not meant to smoke in here?>>