Medusa

CHAPTER ONE

I was at the office window, looking out over the still waters of the harbour and watching a small boat break the reflection of Bloody Island's hospital ruins, when he drove up. It was our first real spring morning, the air fresh and clear, red roofs shining in the sun of the promontory opposite and the sounds of the port coming with great clarity across the water. He was driving one of those small Italian cars hired out to tourists and I watched idly as he backed it into the raw parking lot we had recently bulldozed out where the roadway stopped abruptly at the water's edge.

The local people had thought us mad to set up shop in this cul-de-sac on the east side of the Gala Figuera. It was so far from the main waterfront highway and almost overhung by the cliffs on which the small town of Villa Carlos was built. But we were close to the Atlante, one of the best restaurants in Mahon, and we had found that people liked an excuse to come to this rather wild little spot that gave them a totally different view of the harbour.

I glanced at my watch, looking down at him, still idly, as he got out of the car and stood there in the sunshine, gazing out to the small motor boat now clear of Bloody Island and cutting a broad arrow as it headed towards Cala Rata on the far side of the harbour. It was not yet eight, early for anybody to visit us on business, and at that hour you don't expect the arrival of somebody destined to shatter your whole life. Nevertheless, there was something about him, his hesitation perhaps, or the way he held himself — I couldn't take my eyes off the man.

He seemed to brace himself, closing the car door and turning abruptly. But instead of crossing the roadway, he stood there, still hesitant, his hair gleaming black in the sun. He had the sturdy compactness of a climber, or a man who played games, and he was good-looking; neatly dressed too, in blue trousers, white short-sleeved shirt open at the neck, and his bare arms had the paleness of somebody who had spent the winter in the north. He glanced up at the open window where I was standing. It was a big bay window we had built out over the roadway to give us more room in the tiny office. He could not help seeing me and he began to cross the road.

But then he checked, stood staring for a moment at the chandlery, then turned quickly and strode back to the car.

The door below me slammed shut and Carp came out, walking across the road to his motor bike, which was parked as usual against one of the old bollards. He was dressed in overalls with a thick cardigan over the top, the bald patch at the back of his head catching the sun.

Carp was the only Englishman we employed. He was an East Coast man, and that cardigan, or some form of woollen pullover, was never discarded until it was hot enough to melt the tar on the Martires Atlante opposite. He looked after our boats. His full name, of course, was Carpenter and he always left for the naval quay about this time of the morning. But instead of starting off immediately, he paused after jerking the bike off its stand, turning to look back at the driver of the Fiat.

For a moment the two of them were quite still, facing each other. Then the visitor reached out and opened the door of his car, ducking his head inside, searching for something, while Carp began to prop the bike up on its stand again. I thought he was going to speak to the man, but he seemed to think better of it. He shook his head slightly, half-shrugging as he kick-started the engine.

As soon as he was gone the visitor came out from the car's interior and shut the door again, standing quite still, watching until the motor bike disappeared round the bend by the restaurant. He was frowning, his rather square, clean-cut features suddenly creased with lines. He turned slowly, facing towards me, but not looking up, and he just stood there, still frowning, as though unable to make up his mind. Finally, almost reluctantly it seemed, he started across the road.

Our premises were the only buildings there, so I called down to him and asked if he wanted something from the chandlery.

He checked abruptly, head back, looking straight up at me. 'Am I too early?' He said it as though he would have been glad of an excuse to postpone his visit.

'The door's not locked,' I said.

He nodded, still standing there. Only a few years separate us in age, but at that first meeting he seemed very young.

'What is it you want?'

'Just a chart.' He said it quickly. 'Of Mahon and Fornells. And one of the island as a whole if you have it. Admiralty Charts 1466 and 1703.' He rattled the numbers off, then added, all in a rush, 'Are you Michael Steele?'

I nodded, looking beyond him to the sharp-cut shadows of the old hospital, the peace of the harbour, resenting his intrusion. It was such a lovely morning and I wanted to get out on the water.

'I think you know a Mr Philip Turner.' He said it hesitantly.

'Phil Turner?'

'Yes, owns a yacht called Fizzabout.If I could have a word with you..' His voice trailed away.

'All right, I'll come down.' Two years back I had skippered Fizzaboutin the Middle Sea Race and Phil had laid up with us the following winter.

It was dark on the stairs after the sunlight. The bell over the door rang as he entered the chandlery and Soo called out to me from the kitchen to check that I was answering it. Ramon usually looked after this side of the business, but I had sent him over to Binicalaf Nou with the materials for a villa we were repainting. 'So you're a friend of Phil's,' I said as I reached the trestle table that did service as a counter.

There was a long pause, then he muttered, 'No, not exactly.' He was standing just inside the door, his back to the light and his face in shadow. 'It was Graham Wade suggested I contact you. He and Turner, they both belong to the Cruising Association. Have you met Wade?'

'I don't think so.'

Another long pause. 'No, I thought not.' And he just stood there as though he didn't know how to proceed.

'You wanted some charts,' I reminded him, 'The large-scale chart of Port Mahon and Fornells also gives details of the passage between Ibiza and Formentera.' I knew the details of it because there was a regular demand for that particular sheet. I produced it for him, also Chart 1703 which covers the whole of the Balearics. 'Where's your boat?' I asked him. 'At the Club Maritime?'

He shook his head, and when I asked him where he was berthed, he said, '1 haven't got a boat.'

'You on a package tour then?'

'Not exactly.' He produced a wad of peseta notes and paid for the charts, but he didn't leave. 'Wade said you'd been living here quite a few years. He thought you'd be the best person to contact — to find out about the island.'

'What do you want to know?' I was curious then, wondering why he wanted charts when he hadn't got a boat.

He didn't give me a direct answer. 'Your wife, she's half Maltese, isn't she?' He said it awkwardly, and without waiting for a reply stumbled quickly on — 'I mean, you must know Malta pretty well.'

'I was born there,' I told him.

He nodded and I had the feeling he already knew that part of my background.

'Why? Do you know it?' I enquired.

'I've just come from there.' He glanced out of the window, his face catching the light and reminding me suddenly of Michelangelo's David in Florence, the same straight brows, broad forehead and the wavy, slightly curling hair. It was an attractive face, the classic mould only broken by the lines developing at the corners of mouth and eyes. 'Grand Harbour,' he said. 'It's not so big as Mahon.' His voice, still hesitant, had an undercurrent of accent I couldn't place.

'No. This is one of the biggest harbours in the Mediterranean. That's why Nelson was here.' I still thought he was connected with sailing in some way. 'It's not as big as Pylos on the west coast of the Peloponnese, of course, but more sheltered. The best of the lot I'd say.'

His eyes, glancing round the chandlery, returned to me. 'You've done a lot of sailing, have you? I mean, you know the Mediterranean?'

'Pretty well.'

He didn't pursue that. 'Wade said you rented out villas.'

'Depends when you want to rent. Our main business, apart from boats, is villa maintenance. We only own two villas ourselves arid they're fairly well booked. I'll get my wife down if you like. She looks after the renting of them.'

But he was shaking his head. 'No, sorry — I'm not wanting to rent.'

'Then what do you want?' I asked, glancing rather pointedly at the clock on the wall.

'Nothing. Just the charts.' I had rolled them up for him and he reached out, but then changed his mind, pushing his hand into his hip pocket and coming up with a photograph. 'Have you met this man — on the island here?' He handed me the photograph. It was a full-face picture, head and shoulders, of a big, bearded man wearing a seaman's peaked cap, a scarf round his neck and what looked like an anorak or some sort of dark jacket.

'What makes you think I might have met him?' I asked.

'Wade thought, if he was here, perhaps he'd have chartered a yacht from you, or he might have come to you about renting a villa.'

'We haven't any yachts for charter, only an old converted fishing boat,' I told him. 'As for villas, there are thousands here, and a lot of people doing what we do — care and maintenance.' The man in the photograph looked as though he had seen a lot of life, a very strong face with big teeth showing through the beard, eyes deeply wrinkled at the comers and lines across the forehead. There was something about the eyes. They were wide and staring, so that they seemed to be looking out at the world with hostility. 'What's his name?' I asked.

He didn't reply for a moment, then he gave a little shrug. 'Evans. Patrick Evans. Or Jones. Sometimes Jones — it varies. I thought he might be in Malta.' He shook his head. 'Wade said if he wasn't in Malta I'd probably find him here.'

'He's Welsh, is he?' I was still looking down at the photograph, puzzled by something in that hard stare that seemed vaguely familiar. Then, because of the silence, I looked up. 'A friend of yours?'

He seemed to have some difficulty answering that, his eyes slipping away from me. 'I've met him,' he muttered vaguely, picking up the charts and tucking the roll under his arm. 'Let me know, will you, if he turns up.' And he added, 'You can keep the photograph.'

I asked him where I could get in touch with him and he scribbled his address on a sheet of paper I tore out of our receipts book. It was in Fornells, a private address, not a hotel. And he had written his name — Gareth Lloyd Jones. 'Perhaps we could have a drink together sometime,' he suggested. Then he was walking out with an easy, almost casual wave of the hand, all the hesitancy gone as though relieved to get away from me and out into the sunshine.

I watched him drive off and then my gaze returned to the photograph. Soo called down that coffee was ready Weekdays coffee was all we had in the morning. Sunday was the only day we treated ourselves to an English breakfast. I went back upstairs, and when I showed her the photograph, she said without a moment's hesitation, 'I'm sure he didn't have a beard.'

I took it to the window, looking at it in the clear sunlight, trying to visualise the man clean-shaven. 'The eyes were different, too,' she said, joining me at the window, the bulge of her pregnancy showing through the looseness of her dressing gown.

'Who is he?'

'Es Grau, don't you remember?' And she added, 'You're not concentrating.'

'How the hell can I?' I gave her bottom a smack, caught hold of one buttock and pulled her close so that her stomach was hard against me. 'Any kicks yet?'

She thrust herself clear, turning quickly and pouring the coffee. 'He was in that little bar-restaurant where they haul the boats up. It was raining and we had a cup of coffee and a Quinta there after we'd looked at that villa out near S'Albufera. Now do you remember? He was with two or three Menorquins.

She poured me my coffee and I stood sipping it, staring down at the photograph. I remembered the man now, but only vaguely. I had been more interested in the other two. One was Ismail Fuxa. I had never met him, but I had recognised him instantly from pictures in the local press. He was a member of the Partido Socialista,on the extreme left of the party and very active politically. My attention, however, had been focused on the little man sitting with his back to the window. I was almost certain he was the fellow I had chased one evening out near Binicalaf Nou. It had been dusk and I had stopped off to check one of the two villas we had under care in that neighbourhood. As I let myself in through the front door he had jumped out of a side window. He had had to run right past me and I had had a brief glimpse of his face looking scared. I went after him of course, but he had a motor bike parked down the dirt road and he'd got away from me.

When I returned to the villa and went into the big downstairs room I found he had sprayed URBANIZAR ES DESTRUIERright across one wall, and below that the letters SALV… I knew the rest of it by heart, so many villas had been sprayed with it — SALVEMO MENORCA.'Yes,' I said. 'I remember now. But it was months ago, last autumn.' I was thinking of all that had happened since, the orchestrated build-up of hostility by the separatists 'That was the first,' I added, gazing out at the limpid harbour water where a cruise ship showed white against the far shore.

The first what?' Her back was turned as she filled her cup.

'The first of our villas to be daubed.'

'They've only sprayed two of them, and they're not ours anyway. We only look after them.' She turned, cup in hand, pushing her dog out of the way with a bare foot. It was a basenji so we called it Benjie and it slept on her bed, a pleasant little fellow all dressed in cafe-au-laitwith a long, serious head, a perpetual frown, spindly legs and a curlycue of a tail. It was barkless and I could never understand the purpose of a dog that was a virtual mute. 'I've got something in mind,' she said. 'I want to talk to you about it'

I knew what was coming then and turned my back on her, gazing out of the window again. 'Just look at it1'

'Look at what' You haven't been listening '

'The morning,' I said The sun on the water, everything crystal bright' And I began to sing, 'Oh, what a bootiful mormn'. Oh, what a bootiful dayRemember that moonlit evening in the courtyard of your mother's house, the old gramophone?' I tried to grab her, thinking to take her mind off her obsession with property But she evaded me, eyes gone black and suddenly wide, hands across her belly 'Go on,' she said 'Finish it, why don't you7'

'I got a bootiful feehn', Everything's gain' ma way 'She came back to the window then, gazing out, but not seeing the sunshine or the golden gleam of the water. That's the feeling I've got,' she said, and she was looking straight at me 'Miguel rang last night.' I could see it in her eyes. For weeks she had been on at me to take advantage of the rash of villas that had recently come on to the market. She put her cup down, then turned to face me again. 'It was just before you came in. I didn't tell you because we were already late for the Rawlings', and afterwards… Well, it wasn't the moment, was it?'

'What did Miguel want?' Miguel Gallardo was the contractor we used when there was maintenance work we couldn't handle ourselves. He was now building a villa out on Punta Codolar, a bare, bleak headland in the north of the island that was crisscrossed with the half-completed roads of a new wbamzacion.'He needs help,' she said.

'Money?'

She nodded. 'It's all this build-up of trouble in the Med, of course — Libya in particular. The American he's building for has suddenly got cold feet and wants out. He's offering Miguel the whole place in lieu of what he owes him.' She reached out, her fingers gripping my arm as though she had hold of the villa already. 'I had a look at it with Petra when you were delivering that boat to Ajaccio, and now he says we can have it, as it stands, at cost. We pay Miguel's account, and that's that — it's ours.' She gave me the figure then, adding, 'It's a chance in a million, Mike.'

'Miguel to complete, of course.'

'Well, that's only fair '

'It's barely half-completed, remember.' But it wasn't the cost of completion I was thinking about. It was the political tension building up locally. 'There's been windows broken, one villa set on fire, another smashed down by a runaway road roller '

'That's just a passing phase.' I shook my head, but she went on quickly 'It won't last, and when the panic is over, a lot of people will be cursing themselves for putting their villas on the market at knockdown prices I'm thinking of the future ' The cups and plaques on the shelves behind her glimmered bright with memories of days gone What future' She kept them so well polished I sometimes felt it was the crack shot, the Olympic sailor, the image she had of me, not myself, not the essential lazy, mediocre, ill-educated — oh hell, what deadly blows life deals to a man's self-confidence1 Maybe she was right, polish the mirror-bright image, retain the front intact and forget the human freight behind And now she wasn't thinking of us, only of the child She had less than two months to go, and if this was another boy, and he lived I hesitated, looking out to the bay She had a good head for business and a highly developed sense for property, but politically she was a fool politically 'It's too lovely a day to argue,' I said, thinking of the smell of cut grass on the Bisley Ranges, the whiff of cordite in the hot air, gun oil and the targets shimmering 'You're going sailing, is that it?' Her tone had sharpened A bit of a breeze was coming in, ruffling the water so that the surface of the harbour had darkened She had always resented the sailing side of my life, my sudden absences 'I'll take the dinghy, and if the wind holds I'll sail across to Bloody Island, see how the dig's going You coming?' She enjoyed day sailing, for picnics and when the weather was fine 'Petra's not there,' she said The phone rang and she answered it, speaking swiftly in Spanish A long silence as she listened Then she turned to me, her hand over the mouthpiece 'It's Miguel He's had a firm offer '

The bell sounded from below and a voice called to me urgently from the chandlery Tell him to take it then,' I said as I went down the stairs to find Ramon standing at the back of the workshop by the storeroom door, his teeth showing long and pointed as he smiled nervously He had picked up Lennie, the Australian who did most of our repainting, but when they had arrived at the villa near Binicalaf Nou they had found the patio door ajar It had been forced open and one of the bedrooms had been occupied Both beds had been used, sheets and blankets grubby with dirt, a filthy pile of discarded clothes lying in a corner, and in the bathroom a tap left running, the basin overflowing, the floor awash He had left Lennie clearing up the mess and had come back to pick up lime, cement and sand, all the materials they would need to replaster the kitchen ceiling immediately below We went through into the store, which was virtually a cave hacked out of the cliff that formed the back wall of the building I don't know what it had been originally, probably a fisherman's boathouse, but it was bone dry and very secure, almost like having a private vault As we went in Ramon said, 'No good, these people, senor They make much dirt' And he added, 'I not like ' His long face was tight-lipped and uneasy If only I had gone for a sail earlier But it would probably have made no difference There are days in one's life, moments even, when a whole series of small happenings come together in such a way that in retrospect one can say, that was the start of it But only in retrospect At the time I was just angry at the way Soo had acted Instead of telling Miguel to take the offer, she had called out to me as she put the phone down, 'I've told him we'll match it' She came halfway down the stairs then, clutching at the guard rope, her eyes bright, her mouth set in that funny way of hers that produced holes like dimples at the corners of her mouth, adding breathlessly, 'I'm sure we'll get it now I'm sure we will '

I was on my way out to the car with a cardboard box of the things Lennie would need and I stood there, staring up at her flushed, excited face, thinking how quickly one's life can be caught up in a web of material responsibilities so that there is no time left for the things one really wants to do. But it was no use arguing with her in that mood, her big, very white teeth almost clenched with determination, and in the end I went out, kicking the door to behind me.

My anger drained away as I headed out of Mahon on the San Clemente road, the sun a welcome change after weeks of cloud and blustery outbreaks of rain. The sudden warmth had brought the wild flowers out, the green of the fields a chequerboard of colour, yellow mainly, but here and there white splashes of narcissi. And there were kites hanging in the blue of the sky.

I passed the talayots by Binicalaf, my spirits lifting as they always did approaching this area of concentrated megalithic remains, the stone beehive-like mounds standing sharply outlined. The place where Lennie was working was on a track to the west of Cales Coves. It was about the nicest of the fifty or so villas we looked after. From the main bedroom you could just see the first of the coves, the cliffs beyond showing the gaping holes of several caves. He had cleared up most of the mess by the time I arrived, the sodden plaster stripped from the kitchen ceiling. It could have been worse, but it was unfortunate the squatters had picked on this particular villa, the owner being a man who argued over almost every item on his account. 'Where are the clothes they left behind?' I asked, wondering whether it was worth bringing the Guardiainto it.

Lennie showed me a dirt-encrusted bundle of discarded clothing. He had been over it carefully, but had found nothing to indicate who the men were. 'Looks like they been digging. Two of them, I reck'n.' He thought perhaps the rains had flushed them out of one of the caves. Some of the old cave dwellings were still used and in summer there were women as well as men in them, kids too, often as not the whole family wandering about stark naked. 'It's like snakes out in the bush,' he muttered, holding up a filthy remnant of patched jeans. 'Always discarding their old skin. There's usually bits and pieces of worn-out rag below the cave entrances.'

In the circumstances there didn't seem much point in notifying the authorities. Lennie agreed. 'What the hell can they do? Anyway, look at it from their point of view, why should they bother? It's another foreign villa broken into, that's all. Who cares?' And then, as I was leaving, he suddenly said, 'That girl you're so keen on, mate ' and he grinned at me slyly. 'The archy-logical piece wot's digging over by the old hospital..' He paused there, his pale eyes narrowed, watching for my reaction.

He was referring to Petra, of course. The huge, hulking ruins of the old hospital were what had given Ilia del Rei the nickname of Bloody Island. 'Well, go on,' I said. 'What about her?'

'Workmen up the road say they've seen her several times. I was asking them about these two bastards.' He tossed the bundle of rags into the back of my estate car. They couldn't tell me a damned thing, only that a girl in a Der Chevoh had been going into one of the caves. And this morning, just after Ramon and I got here, she come skidding to a halt wanting to know where she could find you. She was bright-eyed as a cricket, all steamed up about something.'

'Did she say what?'

He shook his head, the leathery skin of his face stretched in a grin. 'You want to watch it, mate. You go wandering around in them caves alone with a sheila like that and you'll get yourself thrown out of the house straight into the drink, I wouldn't wonder.'

'Soo wouldn't even notice.' I couldn't help it, my voice suddenly giving vent to my anger. 'She's just bought a villa and now I've got to go over there and sort out the details.'

'Don't push your luck,' he said, suddenly serious. He looked then, as he often did, like an elderly tortoise. 'You go taking that girl on your next delivery run… Yeah, you thought I didn't hear, but I was right there in the back of the shop when she asked you. You do that and Soo'd notice all right.'

I caught hold of his shoulder then, shaking him. 'You let your sense of humour run away with you sometimes. This isn't the moment to have Soo getting upset.'

'Okay then, muni's the word.' And he gave that high-pitched, cackling laugh of his. Christ! I could have hit the man, he was so damned aggravating at times, and I was on a short fuse anyway. I had been going through a bad patch with Soo ever since she'd found she was pregnant again. She was worried, of course, and knowing how I felt about having a kid around the place, a boy I could teach to sail..

I was thinking about that as I drove north across the island to Punta Codolar, about Lennie, too, how tiresome he could be. Half Cockney, half Irish, claiming his name was McKay and with a passport to prove it, we knew no more of his background than when he had landed from the Barcelona ferry almost two years ago with nothing but the clothes he stood up in and an elderly squeezebox wrapped in a piece of sacking. I had found him playing for his supper at one of the quayside restaurants, a small terrier of a man with something appealing about him, and when I had said I needed an extra hand scrubbing the bottoms of the boats we were fitting out, he had simply said, 'Okay, mate.' And that was that. He had been with us ever since, and because he was a trained scuba diver he was soon indispensable, being able to handle yachts with underwater problems without their having to be lifted out of the water. It was just after Soo had lost the child and she had taken to him as she would have to any stray, regarding him virtually as one of the family.

While the distance between Port Mahon in the east and the old capital of Ciudadela in the west is at least fifty kilometres, driving across the island from south to north it is only about twenty. Even so it always seems longer, for the road is narrow and winding and you have to go through Alayor, which is the third largest town and the central hub of the island. I toyed with the idea of dropping off at the Florez garage to see if I could get him to increase his offer for the Santa Maria.Juan Florez, besides being alcalde,or mayor of the town, ran the largest garage outside of Mahon and was a very sharp dealer in almost anything anybody cared to sell that was worth a good percentage in commission. For the past few months he had been trying to persuade me to part with the old fishing boat I let out on charter. But the sun was shining, so I drove straight across the main Ciudadela-Mahon road and up through the old town to the Fornells road.

Here the country changes very noticeably, the earth suddenly becoming a dark red, and away to the left, Monte 'For o, the highest point on Menorca, the only 'mountain' in fact, with its rocky peak capped by the white of the Sanctuary buildings and the army communications mast dominating the whole countryside, red soil giving way to gravel after a few kilometres, cultivated fields to pines and maquis, the scent of resin and rosemary filling the car.

It is the constant variety of the scene in such a small island that had attracted us in the first place, particularly Soo after living most of her life on an island that is about the same size, but solidly limestone with very little variation. Just short of Macaret, and in sight of the sea again, I turned left on to the road to Arenal d'en Castell, a beautiful, almost perfectly horseshoe-shaped bay of sand totally ruined by three concrete block hotels. Beyond the bay, on the eastern side, a rocky cape that had once been hard walking was now crisscrossed with half-finished roads so that one could drive over most of it. The few villas that had been built so far looked very lost in the wild expanse of heath and bare, jagged rock.

The villa Miguel Gallardo was now building stood right on the point, a little south and east of one he had completed two years before. There was a turning place nearby, but instead of swinging round it, I edged the car into the cul-de-sac beyond where it dipped steeply to the cliff edge.

A tramontana was beginning to blow and even before I had switched the engine off I could hear the break of the waves two hundred feet or so below. I sat there for a moment, looking out towards the coast of France, remembering how it had been two years ago when I had taken a boat over to Genoa and a tramontana had caught us, a full gale, straight off the Alps and as cold as hell. We had been lucky to get away with it, the boat leaking and one of the spreaders broken so that we could only sail on the port tack.

I put the handbrake hard on, turned the wheels into the rubble of rock at the roadside and got out of the car, the breeze ruffling my hair, the salt air filling my lungs. God! It felt good, and I stretched my arms. There were little puffs of cloud on the horizon, the scene very different from the quiet of the southern coast, no protection at all. The urbanization,when it was built, would be facing the open sea and the full brunt of the north winds, so why the hell buy a villa here? I tried to see it in summer, all white stucco and red tiles, cacti on the retaining wall, passion flowers and bougainvillaea, with trailers of morning-glory over a Moroccan-style facade. It would be cool in summer and a breathtaking view, the dreadful hotels of Arenal d'en Castell hidden by the headland and the rock coast stretching east all the way to the lighthouse of Favaritx on the dragon-toothed finger of land after which it was named.

The engine of Miguel's cement mixer started into life and I climbed back up the slope, making for the gaunt skeletal structure of the half-completed villa. He was waiting for me at the foot of a ladder lashed to the wooden scaffolding. 'Buenos dias.You come to inspect, eh?' He was a thickset man with a long, doleful face and a big hooked nose. He was from Granada, from the Arab district of Albacein, and claimed kinship with both Moors and Jews, his family going back five centuries to Ferdinand and Isabella and the Inquisition that followed their conquest of the last Moorish stronghold in Europe. 'Iss your property now.' He said it hesitantly, seeking confirmation, the inflexion of his voice making it a question rather than a statement.

'Let's have a look at it,' I said.

I saw the sudden doubt in his eyes, his dark, unshaven features solemn and uneasy. 'Okay, senor.' The formality was a measure of his unease. He normally called me by my Christian name. 'But you have seen it before, also the plans.'

'I didn't know I was buying it then.'

'And now you are?' Again the question in his voice, the dark eyes watching me, his broad forehead creased in a frown.

'Let's have a look at it,' I said again. 'Starting at the top.'

He shrugged, motioning me to go ahead of him. The scaffolding shook as we climbed to the first storey, the heat-dried wooden poles lashed with ropes. Everything — boards, scaffolding, ladders — was coated with a dusting of cement that only half-concealed the age-old layers of splashed paint. A younger brother, Antoni, and a cousin whose name I could not remember, were rendering the southern face of the building.

'It will be a very beautiful villa,' Miguel said tentatively. When we have finished it, you will see, it will look — pretty good, eh?' He prided himself on his English.

We climbed to the top, and he stood there looking about him. He was one of a family of thirteen. Back in Granada his father had a tiny little jewellery shop in one of those alleys behind the Capila Real, mostly second-hand stuff, the window full of watches with paper tags on them. I think his real business was money-lending, the contents of the shop largely personal items that had been pawned. 'Buena vista,eh?' And Miguel added, 'You can have a garden here. The roof is flat, you see. And the lookout… all that sea.' His tone had brightened, knowing I was a sailor.

'There is also a fine view of the water tanks on the top of those bloody hotels at Arenal d'en Castell.'

'You grow some vines, you never see them.'

'In tubs and trained over a trellis? Come off it, Miguel. The first puff of wind out of the north..'

He looked away uncomfortably, knowing how exposed the position was. 'It will be nice and cool in summer. It was good here when we make the foundations.'

We worked our way down to the ground floor, which was almost finished. He was using one of the rooms as an office and we went over the costings. I suggested certain adjustments, chiefly to the lighting, cut out the air-conditioning and one or two other luxuries I considered unnecessary, agreed a price for completion, and we shook hands on it.

There was never any need to have Miguel put anything into writing. His family had been small traders on the banks of the Darro and in the Plaza Bib-Rambla for generations. I had first met him when he was filling in as a guide to the Alhambra Palace and the Generalife. Then a few days later I had found him working on repairs to a building near his home, which was in the Cuesta Yesqueros, a stepped alley running steeply up the hillside opposite the old Puerta Monaita. I was staying at the Alhambra Palace Hotel at the time, waiting for an Italian to turn up who owed me quite a lot of money, and to this day I have no idea whether I was the cause of Miguel shifting to Menorca or not. He has never mentioned it, but I think it highly probable.

'Who was it made you the offer my wife agreed to match?' I asked him as he accompanied me back to the car. 'Or did you make that up?'

'No, of course I don't make up.' He glared at me angrily. 'You know me too long to think I play games like that.'

'Well then, who was it?'

'Somebody I don't trust so much.'

I got it out of him in the end. It was Florez. And then, as I was settling myself behind the wheel, he leaned forward, peering in over my shoulder at the hack seat, his eyes narrowed and a frown on his face. 'A friend of yours?'

I turned to find I had tossed the photograph Lloyd Jones had left with me into the back and it was lying there face-up. 'You know him, do you?' I asked.

He shook his head, the frown deepening.

'It was probably taken some time ago,' I told him. 'He may not have a beard now.'

'No beard, eh?' I saw the dawn of recognition in his eyes and he nodded. 'Si. No barba.'He looked at me then. 'Who is, plees?'

'You've seen him, have you?'

He glanced at the picture again, then nodded emphatically.

'When?'

'A month ago, maybe more. He come here and look over the work. Says he knows the owner and he want to see the progress we make in the construction of the villa as he is thinking he will make Senor Wilkins an offer.'

'Did he say how much he was prepared to offer?'

'No, he don't say.'

'What was his name? Do you remember?'

But he shook his head. He had been into Macaret that day to phone his suppliers and he had come back to find the man standing on the scaffold's upper staging staring eastward, out towards Favaritx. It was only when he had asked him what he was doing there that the man said anything about making an offer.

'And he didn't give his name?'

'No. I ask him, but he don't answer me. Instead, he speak of making Senor Wilkins an offer. I have not seen him since that day.'

He couldn't tell me anything else and I drove off after confirming that I'd get my lawyer to draw up something we could both sign. A bank of cloud was spreading across the sky, and as I approached the main Mahon-Fornells road the sun went in. The still beauty of the morning was gone and I gave up any thought of sailing. Instead, I headed westward through the pines to Fornells.

Ever since Lloyd Jones had given me the address where he was staying I had been puzzled as to why he had chosen the place. Fornells is a little fishing port almost halfway along the north coast. It has the second largest inlet, five of the best fish restaurants on the island and is the Menorquins' favourite place for Sunday lunch. Who had told him about it? I wondered. Since he wasn't staying at a hotel, and had clearly never been to Menorca before, Phil or Wade, somebody, must have told him about the private lodgings where he was staying in the Calle des Moli.

I kept to the main street through Fornells and asked my way of a waiter I knew who was leaning against the door of the restaurant that stands back from the harbour. The Calle des Moli proved to be a narrow little back street leading nowhere, except to the remains of a windmill and a bare hill topped by one of those stone round towers that dominate several of the island's headlands. The houses were small and stood shoulder-to-shoulder, their doors opening straight on to the street.

I left my car in the Plaza de Pedro M. Cardona. The address he had given me was near the top end, the door standing open and a little girl sitting on the step nursing a rag doll. The woman who answered my knock was big and florid. 'El senor Ingles?'She shook her head. I had just missed him. He had been out all morning, had returned about half an hour ago and had then gone out again almost immediately, leaving his car parked in the street. She indicated the small red Fiat parked a few doors up.

I glanced at my watch and was surprised to find the morning had gone. It was already past noon and since she said she didn't provide meals for her visitors, and he had left his car, I presumed he was lunching at one of the restaurants in the port. I asked her how long he had been staying at her house and she said he had arrived the previous afternoon about five-thirty. No, he hadn't booked in advance. There was no necessity since it was early in the year for visitors.

I produced the photograph then, but she shook her head. She had never seen the man, and she didn't know how long her visitor would be staying, so I left her and drove back to the harbour where I found him at a table outside the better of the two waterfront restaurants. He was alone, bent over one of the charts I had sold him, which was neatly folded and propped against the carafe of wine in front of him. He looked up quickly at my greeting, then half rose to his feet. I pulled up a chair and sat down, enquiring whether he had had a rewarding morning.

He nodded vaguely, telling me that since I had last seen him he had driven round Villa Carlos, then on to the little inlet of St Esteve immediately to the south, had had a look at the tunnelled redoubt known as Marlborough's Fort, and finally, before coming back to Fornells for lunch, he had been all round the small fishing port of Es Grau to the north of Mahon. He spoke quickly, giving me a very precise inventory of his morning's tour as though he were making a report, and all the time he was staring past me, out towards the light at the end of the eastern arm of the harbour. There was a girl in a wet suit board-sailing across the entrance, a glistening, statuesque figure, the orange sail bright in the sun. But I don't think he saw her. I had 2strange feeling he was talking for the sake of talking, as though he sensed what I had come to tell him and was putting it off.

The waiter appeared with a plate of four large mussels cooked with herbs and garlic. 'Will you join me?' The clouds were gone now and it was quite warm again sitting there in the sun, the town and the hill behind it sheltering us from the wind. I nodded and he said, 'Dos,' holding up two fingers in case he had not made his meaning clear. After that he didn't say anything, the silence hanging heavy in the air as the waiter filled a glass for me. When he was gone I produced the photograph. 'When was that taken?' I asked him.

He shook his head. 'Several years ago, I imagine.'

'Is he a seaman? He certainly looks like one with that peaked cap.'

He didn't say anything.

'What's he do for a living then?'

He gave a little shrug, his head turned towards the harbour entrance again.

'But you do know him?'

'Of course.' He hesitated, then he added, 'We were at school together, you see.'

'You know him quite well then?'

'Well enough.' The words seemed forced out of him. 'He saved my life not once, but twice.' His eyes were blank, his mind turned inwards.

'He hasn't got a beard now,' I said.

He turned his head then, a quick movement, his eyes staring straight at me, hard now and grey in the sunshine. 'You've seen him.' It wasn't a question. He knew, and suddenly he seemed a different man, no longer hesitant, his voice sharper, a note of authority in it. 'When? Recently? Within the last few days?'

'No. Several months ago.' And I told him about the three men Soo and I had seen that filthy wet day when we had gone into the bar-restaurant at Es Grau, and how Miguel had seen him more recently.

'Where?'

'On Punta Codolar.' And I told him about the villa Miguel was working on.

'Punta Codolar. Where's that? Show me.' He turned the chart towards me, but I pushed it away.

'It's only a few miles from here, the next headland to the east.'

'And he was at this villa. How long ago, did your builder friend say?'

'About a month.'

'He made an offer for it, for a half-finished villa?'

'So Miguel said.'

He opened the chart up, his stubby finger stabbing at the irregular shape of Punta Codolar. 'Why? Did he say why?' He didn't wait for me to answer, shaking his head — 'No. No of course not, he wouldn't tell you that. But the headland there is the western arm of Macaret and Port d'Addaia.' After that he didn't say anything. He seemed quite stunned, his eyes staring past me, seeing nothing.

'Better eat those while they're hot,' I said, indicating the mejillonesin the little dish in front of him. 'They're very good, but it's important they should be piping hot.'

He nodded, picking up the small spoon and digging a mussel out of its shell, the movement quite automatic, his mind still far away. 'And you haven't seen him since the autumn?'

'No.'

'But the builder fellow saw him about a month ago. Has he seen him at all since then?'

'I don't think so. Miguel would have said if he had.'

'A month ago.' He repeated it slowly, chewing over a mussel, his eyes screwed up against the sun. 'And he was clean-shaven.' He gave a long sigh as though I had saddled him with some impossible burden. 'And when you and your wife saw him in that bar, who were the two men he was with you said something about their being politically motivated. What exactly did you mean?'

I explained then about Ismail Fuxa, that he was supposed to be one of the leaders of the separatist movement.

'An activist?'

'I think so. But he keeps in the background.'

'And the other man?'

'1 can't be certain,' I said, 'but he looked very much like a man I had surprised paint-spraying a slogan on the living-room wall of a villa we look after.' I started to explain how I'd only caught a glimpse of him, but he interrupted me.

'Where was this? Where's the villa he daubed?'

'Between Binicalaf and Binicalaf Nou.'

'Those names mean nothing to me.' He opened the chart out. 'Could you show me please.' I pointed to the position of the villa and he said, 'That's on the south side of the island, the opposite coast to Macaret. There's an inlet there.' He turned the map sideways so that he could read the name. 'Cales Coves. Do you know it?'

'Of course,' I said. 'I've sailed in there quite a few times. There are two inlets in fact, that's why Cales is plural. Coves refers to the caves.'

'I suppose you know just about all the inlets round Menorca.'

'Well, not quite all. There are over a hundred and fifty of them and not all are suitable for a deep-draught boat.' He enquired what sort of boat I had and when I said it was an old fishing boat, he asked me whether I hired it out to visitors.

'In the summer, yes,' I told him. 'The Santa Mariais not the ideal craft for charter work, but the sort of yacht I need to make that part of the business pay calls for far more money than we can afford. It's a risky game, a lot of competition.' He seemed more relaxed now, as though he had got used to the idea that the man he was trying to catch up with had been seen on the island. More mussels arrived and another carafe of wine, and he began asking.me about other inlets to the south, particularly those closest to Mahon. Except for St Esteve he had only looked at the inlets to the north.

'How long have you been here?'

Two days.'

The first day he had spent taking over his hire car and having a look at the peninsula that forms the northern arm of Port Mahon, the land that provided the view from our office window.

'What about the megalithic remains,' I asked him — 'the taulas, talayots and navetas?'

But he hadn't seen any of that, and I don't think he took it in when I told him the whole of Menorca was more or less an open-air archaeological museum. All he wanted me to talk about was the little ports and coves. For a man who hadn't got a boat, and who wasn't involved in sailing, it struck me as odd. I got to my feet, telling him I was going to phone my wife. 'I'll join you for lunch if I may, it's too late to go back home.'

When I got through to Soo she said she had Petra with her. 'She's waiting for the boat, and, Mike — she wants to take you into a cave over by Cales Coves.'

'I know,' I said. 'Lennie told me. Said she was very excited about something. Has she told you what it is?'

'No. She can't explain it, you've got to see it, she says.'

I offered to return to Binicalaf and meet her there after lunch, but she said Petra had to get back to camp to get herself organised for the evening. 'You haven't forgotten we asked her to the Red Cross do tonight, have you?' There was the sound of muffled voices, then Soo added, 'She says she'll try and explain it to us this evening.' And then she was asking me about my meeting with Miguel.

When I got back to the table Lloyd Jones had refilled my glass and was sitting with his head in his hands staring fixedly out to sea. He didn't look up as I sat down. The girl was still balanced on her sailboard, gliding effortlessly in towards the steps. Even then he didn't see her, while I was thinking how nice it would have been to have had her as a pupil when I was running my sailboard courses. 'Have you ordered?' I asked. The mejilloneswere merely an appetiser.

He shook his head. 'You know the place. Whatever you advise.' He didn't seem to care what he had, his mind far away, lost in his own thoughts.

I ordered zarzuellafor us both, and because he didn't seem inclined to conversation, I began telling him a little about the megalithic remains and the hypostilic chamber Petra Callis was excavating by the fallen dolmen on Bloody Island.

The food arrived almost immediately, and because zarzuellais roughly a stew of mixed fish in a piquant sauce, we were too busy dealing with the bones to do much talking. He wasn't interested in Bronze Age remains anyway, and as soon as he had finished he pushed his plate aside and spread the chart out again. He thought he would have a look at the other side of the island after lunch. Somebody had told him about the Xorai caves above Gala en Porter.

'They're strictly for the tourists,' I told him. 'Anyway, they're not open at this time of year. If you want to see caves, you'd much better look into Cales Coves.' And because the track down to the first inlet isn't easy to find I gave him instructions how to get there.

He thought about that, concentrating on the chart. And then suddenly he asked me which of all the inlets on Menorca I would choose if I had to land something secretly from a boat, something to be delivered to Mahon.

It was so unexpected that I stared at him, wondering what the hell he had in mind. 'Are we talking about contraband?'

He hesitated. 'Yes, I suppose we are.' And he added, 'If you were going to land something secretly — ' His eyes were looking directly at me then. 'You ever run anything like that?'

I didn't say anything, suddenly wary. It was a long time ago, before I was married.

'If you had, I mean,' he said quickly, 'where would you have landed the stuff?' The tone of his voice had sharpened, so that it crossed my mind he could be a customs man attached to Interpol or something like that, his manner so abruptly changed to one of alertness, those grey eyes of his catching the sun again as hard as glass as they stared into mine. 'Well, where? I need to know.'

'Why?'

'That man you saw at Es Grau-' He stopped there. 'Well, where would you land it?'

By then I'd decided this was getting a little dangerous and I kept my mouth shut.

'I'm talking hypothetically, of course,' he went on. 'Let's say it's TV sets, something like that — something fairly heavy, fairly bulky… What about Cales Coves? You mentioned cave dwellings.'

I shook my head. Those caves are in the cliffs, at least all those that look directly out on to the water, so you'd have to haul everything up. And then you wouldn't be able to get the stuff ashore — I don't think any of them have a landward entrance. They're just holes in the cliff face or up in the sides of the ravine that leads down into the twin coves.'

'So where would you land it?'

He went on questioning me like that, claiming it was all hypothetical and the motivation nothing but his curiosity. At least it made for conversation. He no longer sat in silence brooding over whatever it was that filled his mind, and as he questioned me about the sparsely inhabited north coast to the west of Fornells, he made entries on the chart against each of the coves I mentioned, his writing small and very neat. In the end he shook his head. 'It would have to be closer to Mahon, wouldn't it — a short drive on a good road.' His pen shifted eastward across the great headland opposite where we were sitting. 'What about Arenal d'en Castell?' And when I told him it was overlooked by three large hotels, he asked about the two big bays south of Favaritx.

'Too rocky,' I told him. 'But Addaia — you go in there, almost to the end, and there's a new quay not yet finished, the place still quite wild and more or less deserted.'

'Not overlooked?'

'Two or three fishermen's houses converted to summer homes, that's all.'

'I don't see any quay shown on the chart.' I marked the position of it for him and he stared at it, finally nodding his head. 'I'll have a look at that after I've seen those cliff caves.' He called for the bill and got to his feet. That boat of yours. Has it got an echo-sounder?'

'Of course. VHP, too, a big chart table, bunks for six…'

'How much if I want to charter it — for a day, say?'

I told him it depended whether it was a bareboat charter or fully stocked and crewed.

'Just you and me.' And then he seemed to change his mind. 'Forget it. Just an idea.' He settled the bill, insisting I was his guest, and on the spur of the moment, as we were walking to the cars, I asked him whether he would care to join us at the Red Cross party that evening. 'It's run by a Menorquin friend of ours, Manuela Renato,' I told him. 'Usually it's at a dance hall and restaurant beyond Villa Carlos, but this year she's organised it in the Quarries just above where we live. Should be quite fun — barbecue, bonfire, dancing, fireworks, all in a huge great rock chamber that looks like something hacked out for the tomb of a pharaoh.'

Why I should have asked him, God knows. Curiosity, I suppose. The man was under pressure, I could see it in his eyes, something hanging over him. And the photograph. I tried to recall the scene in that bar, but Soo and I had been discussing the villa we had just looked over, and it was only when the three of them were putting on their coats and going out into the rain that I really took any notice of them.

We had reached my car and I stood there waiting for his answer, trying to figure out from the hard jut of his chin, the shape of that short neck and the solid head, the lines at the corners of eyes and mouth, what sort of a man he really was. What did he do for a living? Above all, why was he here?

'All right,' he said finally. 'I'll come.' He didn't thank me, his acceptance almost grudging, as though he felt he shouldn't be wasting his time on such frivolities.

'Good,' I said. 'That's settled then. Eight-thirty at our place.' And I got into my car, never dreaming that my casual invitation would be the catalyst to something that would get completely out of hand.

He wasn't looking at me as I backed away from the water's edge and drove off. He had turned his head towards the harbour entrance again and was standing there, quite sail, staring towards the horizon with an intensity that left me with the odd feeling that he was expecting some visitation from the sea.

The road from Fornells enters the outskirts of Mahon at the opposite end to where we live, and instead of heading straight along the waterfront, past the Aduana,the Customs House, and the commercial wharf, I turned left and drove out on to the naval quay where the boats we had laid up out of the water were parked. I drove straight up to the elderly Hillyard we were working on and called up to Carp. The Danish owner, who had picked the boat up cheap in Palma the previous autumn, had phoned me just before Christmas and I had promised to have it ready in time for him to leave for a family cruise in the Greek islands at Easter. We had left it a little late, particularly as there was a new engine to be installed.

I called again as I started up the ladder and Carp's tonsured head popped out of the wheelhouse. He was his usual gloomy self as he showed me another frame with its fastenings gone, also at least three deck beams that needed replacement. 'Won't ever finish in time, will we?' he Crumbled as he indicated one of the knees rotted where water had been seeping from the deck above. 'And the engine still to be fiddled in, all the rigging. I'll 'ave to take Rod off of the American boat for that.'

I told him that was impossible. He already had Luis varnishing the brightwork. With Rodriguez, that would make two of our locals, as well as himself, working on the one boat. 'Well,' he said, looking me straight in the face, 'd'you want 'er finished on time, or don't you?' And he added, 'Up to you. I didn't promise nothing.'

In the end I agreed, as he knew I would. And all the time we were talking I had the feeling there was something else on his mind. It wasn't until I was leaving that he suddenly blurted it out — That man outside the shop this morning — did you see him? A little red car. He was there just as I left. Did he come into the shop?'

I was on the ladder then, beginning to climb down, my face almost level with the deck. 'Yes. I sold him a couple of charts.'

'Did he say who he was?' I told him the man's name and he nodded. Thort so. He must have recognised me, but he didn't want to know me, did he, so I thort I was mistaken.' He leaned out towards me. 'If it wasn't for me that man would've died of cold. Well, not just me. There was four of us in the pilot boat, see, but it was me wot cut him down off the Woodbridge Haven buoy. Did he give you any sort of rank?'

'No,' I said, curious now and climbing back up the ladder.

'Mebbe he hasn't got one now. There was a lot of talk at the time.'

'About what?'

'Well, it was an arms run, wasn't it, and he was a Navy lieutenant.' And then he was telling me the whole story, how the Deben pilot at Felixstowe Ferry had seen something odd fixed to the Haven buoy and the four of them had gone out in the dawn to find a man fully clothed and tied to the side of the buoy with a mooring line. 'Poor bastard. We thort he were dead. Cold as buggery off the bar it was, the wind out of the north and beginning to whip up quite a sea. Then later, when he's out of hospital, he comes and buys us all a pint or two in the Ferryboat, so he knows bloody well I was one of those that rescued him. Funny!' he said. 'I mean, you'd think he'd come and say hullo, wouldn't you? I'd seen 'im before, too. When he were a little runt of a fella living with a no-good couple and their son on an old 'ouseboat in a mud creek back of the Ferryboat, an' I wasn't the only one that recognised him. That's what started tongues wagging.'

'How do you mean?'

'Well, you bin there, when you was looking for a boat that spring. You know wot it's like there, an' a couple of kids, no proper man to control them. They broke into a yacht moored back of the Horse Sand and got at the drink locker. No harm done, but later they had a go at the RAF mess over at Bawdsey — for a lark they said. People remember that sort of thing.'

I didn't see what he was getting at. 'What's that got to do with arms-running?' I asked. 'You said something about arms-running.'

That's right. But we didn't know about that at the time, did we? There was just a lot of rumours flying about on account of strangers poking around in the mud at the entrance to the King's Fleet. Then, after those terrorist attacks on police stations at Liverpool and Glasgow, and on that court in Clerkenwell, the papers were full of it. This Lieutenant Jones, he makes a statement, about how he'd been bird-watching an' had seen them unloading the arms at the King's Fleet, about half a mile inside the Deben mouth. It was an IRA gun run, you see, and they caught him watching 'em from the high bank of the river as they landed the stuff. That's how he come to be on the buoy. Didn't shoot him; instead, they threw him overboard out beyond the Deben bar, so he'd drown and it would look like an accident.'

He shook his head slightly, muttering to himself: 'Funny that — him not wanting to talk to me.' And then he brightened. 'Mebbe they sacked 'im. That'd account for it. There was a swarm of investorigaty journalists digging into his background, and some of the stories they ran…' He gave a little shrug and turned away. 'Well, better get on if we're ever goin' ter finish this job.' And without another word he went back to the wheelhouse and disappeared below.

Was that it? Was he now into some smuggling racket, having been forced to resign his commission? All those questions about coves and inlets… I was wondering about him as I drove home along the waterfront, wondering whether I would be able to get anything out of him during the evening.

CHAPTER TWO

He was punctual, of course, the bell of the chandlery sounding virtually on the dot of 20.30. I called down to him to come up, and introducing him to Soo, I said, 'Is it Mr Lloyd Jones or do you have anything in the way of a rank?'

'Gareth Lloyd Jones will do,' he said, smiling and taking Soo's outstretched hand. Some sort of a spark must have passed between them even then, her cheeks suddenly flushed and a bright flash of excitement in those dark eyes of hers as she said, 'I think you'll enjoy this evening. Manuela and her friends have done a great job of the preparations.' But I didn't take note of it at the time, still thinking about the way he had parried my question. If my suspicions were correct I wasn't at all sure I wanted to be seen entertaining a man who might land himself in trouble.

Petra was usually late and that evening was no exception. She was a large-boned girl with a freckled face and wide mouth that always seemed to be full of teeth. But her real attraction was her vitality. She came thundering up the stairs, that broad grin on her face and breathless with apologies. 'Sorry. Found I'd ripped my pants dancing the other evening and had to change.' She saw Lloyd Jones and stopped. 'I'm Petra Callis.' She held out her hand.

'Gareth Lloyd Jones.' And then, as I was getting her a drink, I heard her say, 'Soo will have told you what I'm up to, digging about in megalithic holes. I live out there on Bloody Island, a leaky tent among the ruins.' She jerked her head towards the window. Then she asked with blatant curiosity, 'What's your line of country? Yachts, I suppose, or are you a villa man?'

'No, neither.'

But Petra wasn't the sort of girl to be put off like that. She opened her mouth wide and laughed. 'Well, come on — what do you do? Or is it something mysterious that we don't talk about?'

I glanced back over my shoulder to see Lloyd Jones staring at her, a shut look on his face, mouth half-open and his eyes wide as though in a state of shock at the blatantness of her curiosity. Then he smiled, a surprisingly charming smile as he forced himself to relax. 'Nothing mysterious about it. I'm a Navy officer.'

As I passed Petra her gin and tonic Soo was asking him what branch of the Navy. 'Exec,' he replied, and she picked that up immediately. 'So was my father. Came up through the lower deck.' A moment later I heard the word Ganges mentioned.

'HMS Ganges?' I asked. 'On Shotley Point just north of Harwich. Is that the school you were referring to this morning, the one you and Evans were at?' And when he nodded, I said, 'It's called Eurosport Village now, or was when I was last there. I know it quite well. There's a commercial range and I used to practise there before going on to Bisley for the Meeting.'

'These cups, they're for shooting then, are they?' He couldn't help noticing them. He was standing right next to the pinewood cabinet I had purchased to house them and Gloria, our help, was a determined silver polisher. We talked about Shotley for a moment, then Soo butted in again, asking him how it had been when he was being trained there. From that they progressed to Malta. It was her mother who was Maltese. Her father had been a naval officer posted to Malta back in the days when there was a C-in-C Med and an old frigate fitted out as the Commander-in-Chief's yacht for showing the flag and entertaining. He had been the Navigating Officer on board and though she had been far too young to remember anything about it, she was always ready to talk of the parties he had described on the open lamplit deck.

It was past nine before we finally left, and though it was barely a mile away, by the time we had found a place to park the car and had walked through the quarry, somebody had already lit the bonfire. The effect was magic, the flames lighting the great square stone buttresses, flickering over the lofty limestone roof, shadows dancing on the moonlit cliffs, so that the whole effect was like some wild biblical scene. In the great rectangular cavern itself the dirt base of it had been levelled off to provide a makeshift dance floor round which chairs had been placed and trestle tables bright with cloths and cutlery and bottles of wine.

The band began to play just as we found our table. Manuela came over, and, while Soo was introducing Lloyd Jones, Petra and I were momentarily on our own. 'You wanted to talk to me,' I said.

'Did I?' Her eyes were on the movement of people towards the dance floor, her foot tapping, her body moving to the beat of the music.

'Now, what have you discovered?' I asked her. 'Another of those hypostilic chambers or is it an underground temple to the Earth Mother like that place in Malta?'

The Hypogeum?' She shook her head. 'No, nothing like that. Just a charcoal drawing. But it could be a lot older. I've only seen part of it. I don't know whether it represents a deer, a horse, a bison or a mammoth. I don't know what it is. A woolly rhinoceros perhaps.' She gripped hold of my arm. 'Come on, let's dance. I'll settle for a woolly rhinoceros and tell you the rest while we're dancing.'

But she couldn't tell me much. 'You'll have to see it for yourself. I think it's early man — cave-dwelling man — but of course I don't know. Not yet.'

'Then why consult me? I don't know the difference between the drawings of early man and a potholer's graffiti.'

She hesitated, then said, 'Well, it's not just that I've unearthed what looks like a section of a cave painting, it's the fact that people have been digging in that cave.'

'Archaeologists, you mean?'

'No, no. People who haven't the slightest idea they've uncovered anything. And if they did know, I imagine they couldn't care less. The charcoal drawing was only uncovered because they had been clearing a roof fall, and part of the drawing has already been sliced away when they were shovelling the rubble clear. They've dug out a hole I think I could have wriggled through, but I wasn't going to risk that on my own, it looked too unsafe.' And she added, I could hear water slopping around, Mike, and there was a draught of air. I think they've opened up a way through to the sea. But why?' She stared up at me, her body close against mine. 'Do you think that's what they were up to, cutting a way through to the sea?'

'How do I know?' I said. 'I'd have to see it…'

'Exactly. That's why I want you to come over there with me. Now. Before they have time to block it up, or do whatever it is they plan to do with it. They may be working on it this minute, so if we went now..'

'What — right in the middle of the party? I can't leave Soo, and anyway — '

'Well, afterwards. As soon as the party is over.'

I shook my head. 'It's quite out of the question.' And I told her the sensible thing would be to wait for daylight and then go back in with the curator from the museum or somebody from the Mayor's Office, one of the planning officials. It crossed my mind that this might have some connection with the squatters who had been sleeping in the villa Lennie was repairing, but I didn't tell her that. 'Wait till the morning,' I said again, 'and take one of the local authority officials in with you.'

'No.' She stopped abruptly, standing back from me in the middle of that dancing throng staring me in the face. Tonight. Please.' And then in a rush: 'You know how things work here, or rather don't — not always. It could be days before any official bothered to come out. They're not interested in caves and digs. A few people are, Father Pepito for instance, but none of the officials I know, not really, and I want somebody to see it HOW, before the charcoal outline of that figure is totally destroyed or the roof collapses again. Please, Mike. It's important to me.'

I'll think about it,' I said, and we went on dancing, which was a mistake with Soo in her condition. She had been watching us and she was furious, telling me I had humiliated her in front of everybody. That was after I had returned to our table and Lloyd Jones had taken Petra off to dance. It made no difference that we had only been dancing together because Petra had wanted to get me to visit the cave and see what it was she'd discovered.

'So you're going with her. When?'

'Oh, don't be so silly,' I said. 'She just wants to show me a bit of a charcoal wall painting, that's all. It won't take long.'

When?' she repeated, and there was a hot flush on her cheeks.

Tonight,' I told her. 'She wants me to go tonight.'

'I see.' Her tone was icy, and after that she wouldn't speak to me. hi the end I went over to the bar and got myself a large Soberano to chase down the wine I had been drinking. A hand gripped my elbow and I turned to find Manuela's husband, Gonzalez, beside me. 'You come to our table for a moment if you please. The Alcalde wish to speak with you about the opening of the new urbanizationnear the lake at Albufera next month. Jorge has been asked to make the opening and he wish you to take part in it, okay?'

I was not altogether surprised that Jorge Martinez should ask me to take part in the official opening of a new urbanization. Iwas one of the founder members of an unofficial association of resident English businessmen and I had on occasions acted as spokesman when the bureau crats in the ayuntiamentohad proved to be more than usually difficult over a planning application so that I knew Jorge in his official capacity as Mayor at the Mahon town hall as well as socially. In any case, since I was involved in property it was important for me to keep in with him.

In the post-Franco era, the political structure of what had become a monarchical democracy had steadily developed. The Baleares islands became one of the seventeen autonomous regions with its own elected parliament. The centre of this local government was at Palma, Mallorca. Foreign policy, finance and defence was, of course, still administered from Madrid through a Provincial Governor appointed by the ruling party. There was also a Military Governor. But Palma was over a hundred sea miles from Mahon and the comparatively recent introduction of this regional democratic autonomy had increased the importance of the local town halls and their councils, and in particular the power of the mayors who were elected by those councils. At least that's how it seemed to me, and I mention it here because I cannot help thinking that this dissemination of power may have had abearing on what happened later.

Jorge Martinez was a lawyer, a slim man with sharp features and a way of holding his long, narrow head that suggested a cobra about to strike. He was, in fact, a very formidable little man and quite a prominent member of the ruling party, the Partido Socialista Obiero Espanolor PSOE. He had only been Alcalde in Mahon a short time, but already he had his hands firmly on the local power reins, his political sense acute. He got up as I reached the table, shook me by the hand, holding my elbow at the same time, and waved me to an empty seat opposite him. His wife was there, a dark-eyed, vivacious woman, also another lawyer and Colonel Jimenez of the Guardia Civil.Gonzalez topped up my glass with more brandy.

The Alcalde not only wanted me to attend the opening, but would I make a speech? 'Five, ten minutes, what you like, Mr Steele.' And he smiled, his use of the English address rather than the Spanish senorquite deliberate. 'You are very much known in your community and you will comprehend that here in Menorca we have problems — political problems arising from all the villa people. Not those who come to end their lifes here, but the summer migration. It is a question of the environment. So you speak about that, hah?'

He stopped there, waiting for some acknowledgement, and when I made no comment he said brusquely, 'You speak about the regulations the developers are agreeing to. Also you say this urbanizationis a good developing; it is small, villas not too close, the environment of Albufera acknowledged, and it is good for our island. It brings work, it brings money, some foreign currency. Okay? You speak first in Spanish, then in English, so very short speaking, but the political point made very clear.' And he added, 'I am informed you always have good co-operation with my officials at the ayuntiamento.So you agree, hah?'

He had that explosive way of asking a question and insisting on agreement at the same time. In any case, when you have had a few drinks, and the commitment is over two weeks away, it is easier to say yes than to think up some convincing excuse on the spur of the moment. 'Bueno, bueno.'He smiled, a glint of gold teeth. 'So nice to talk with you, senor.' I was dismissed, and I left the table with the feeling that if I had declined his invitation he would have seen to it that next time I needed a permit for something from the Mahon town hall it would not be forthcoming. But a speech in Spanish — or did he mean the local Catalan, which is very different? In any case, my Spanish was a hybrid of the two, having been picked up quite haphazardly as occasion demanded.

Somebody had thrown a pile of furze on the fire, the band half-drowned in the crackle of the flames. Florez passed, light on his feet, the young woman in his arms glittering with tinsel, the button eyes in his round face fixed on the table I had just left as though watching for an opportunity to ingratiate himself. I went back to the bar and stood there watching the shadows of the dancers moving against the limestone roofing and the far recesses of the great cavern. The dancers themselves were a flicker of fire-red images, the whole scene so lurid and theatrical that it seemed almost grotesque, the band thumping out a brazen cacophony of sound that ricocheted off the stone walls, the beat so magnified it almost split one's ears.

'Manuela has a good idea, no?' a voice shouted in my ear. It was the Commander of the Naval Base. 'Why does nobody think to use this place before? It is magnificent, eh?'

The music stopped abruptly, the dancers coming to a halt. Floodlights either side of the cavern entrance were switched on, spotlighting white-capped cooks and the charcoal fires with their steaming pans of soup and steaks sizzling and flaming on the coals. Lloyd Jones had stopped quite near us and I hailed him over. 'I'd like you to meet Fernando Perez,' I said. 'He's Jefeof the Navy here.' I introduced him as Lieutenant Lloyd Jones of the Royal Navy, adding, 'That's right, isn't it?'

I sensed a moment's hesitancy. 'In fact, I'm now a Lieutenant Commander.' He laughed, a little embarrassed. 'I've just been promoted.'

We offered him our congratulations and Perez asked him what he was doing in Menorca. 'You are on leave per'aps?' He had a good command of English, particularly sea terminology, having had a short exchange posting to an RN carrier, though quite why they sent him to an aircraft carrier when he was a gunnery officer I don't know.

'Yes, on leave,' Lloyd Jones said.

'You have a ship, or are you posting ashore, like me?' And Fernando Perez gave a deprecatory little smile.

'No, I'm very lucky,' Lloyd Jones replied. 'With the promotion I've been offered a ship.'

'And where is that?' % 'I'll be joining at Gibraltar as soon as my leave is up.'

Fernando turned down the corners of his mouth. 'You are indeed fortunate. Except for the Americans, who have so many ships, like the Russians, all our navies are in the same boat, eh?' He smiled, looking pleased at having achieved a touch of humour in a foreign language. 'Myself, I do not have a ship since five, no six years now. Already I have been 'ere three, stuck on a little island where nothing ever happen.'

'But at least you have the biggest guns in the Mediterranean,' I said.

'That is true. But what use are they, those big guns? They belong to another age and we have so few ammunition… Well, you know yourself. We fire them once a year and everybody complain because windows are shaken all over Mahon, some broken.'

'Are these the guns out on the northern arm of the Mahon entrance?' Lloyd Jones asked.

'On La Mola, yes. If you wish I take you to look at them. It is a Zona Militar,a prohibited area, but there is nothing secret about those guns, they 'ave been there too long. Everybody know about them.'

They started talking then about the problems of island defence and after a while I left them to see that the girls were being looked after, Soo in particular. I didn't want her standing in the queue and maybe getting jostled. In any case, she was becoming a little self-conscious about her figure, I think because all our friends knew very well she had lost the first. But she was no longer at our table. She was at Manuela's. Petra, too, and they had already finished their soup and were tucking into steak and mashed potato, Gonzalez Renato sitting between them and everybody at the table flushed with wine and talking animatedly.

I went to get myself some food then and Miguel joined me in the line-up for the barbecue. He had his cousin with him, both of them in dark suits, their hair oiled and their faces so scrubbed and clean I hardly recognised them. They hadn't booked a table so I took them to mine. They had their wives with them, Miguel's a large, very vivacious woman with beautiful skin and eyes, Antoni's a small, youngish girl with plump breasts and enormous dark eyes that seemed to watch me all the time. I think she was nervous. I danced with her once. She moved most beautifully, very light on her feet, but she never said a word.

It was as I took her back to the table that I saw Soo dancing with Lloyd [ones. She shouldn't really have been dancing at all, but by then I'd had a lot to drink and I didn't care. Petra joined me and we danced together for the rest of the evening, and whenever I saw Soo she was with the Navy, looking flushed and happy, and talking hard.

At midnight the band stopped playing and Manuela lit the train that set the fireworks crackling. It was a short display and afterwards everybody began to drift off home. That was when Petra announced that I was going to drive her over to Cales Coves.

I should have refused, but the moon was high, the night so beautiful, and I was curious. I did make some effort to discourage her. 'It's almost midnight,' I said. Too late to go messing around in those caves in the dark. And you're not dressed for it.'

'That's soon remedied,' she said. 'Oh, come on. You promised.'

'I did no such thing,' I told her, but she had already turned to Soo, who was standing there with Lloyd Jones close beside her. 'Why don't you come, too — both of you?' And she added, 'It'll be fun, going there now. The moon's almost full. It'll be quite light. Anyway, it won't matter in the cave itself. If it were broad daylight we'd still need torches.'

I thought Soo would be furious, but instead, she seemed to accept it. Maybe the two of them had already talked about it when they had gone off together to the girls' latrine at the end of the meal. At any rate, she didn't say anything. She had hold of Lloyd Jones's arm and seemed in a much happier frame of mind, humming to herself as we walked down the grass-grown track to the road where I'd left the car.

There was no wind, the sky clear and the moon a white eye high in the sky as I turned the car off the Villa Carlos road on to the steep descent to Cala Figuera. 'Have you ever seen anything so beautiful!' Petra exclaimed. 'I love it when it's still, like this, nothing stirring on the water, and Mahon a white sprawl above it. Sometimes I wake up in the night and pull back the tent flap. It looks like an Arab town then, so white, and everything reflected in the water. It's so beautiful.'

'Malta is better,' Soo cut in. 'What do you think, Gareth? You've just come from there.' She was sitting in the back with him. The buildings are so much more impressive, so solid. You haven't seen Malta, have you, Petra? Compared with Valetta and Grand Harbour- well, you can't compare them, can you, Gareth? Mahon is just a little provincial port.'

'But still beautiful.' Petra's tone, though insistent, was quite relaxed. 'And from Bloody Island I can see the whole sweep of it.'

'I don't think beautiful is the right word for a port,' Lloyd tones said. 'Not for Malta anyway.' Out of the comer of my eye I saw him turn to Soo. 'Impressive now. I think impressive is the word. Those old strongholds, the great castles of the Knights that withstood the Turks and the German bombs.' And he added, 'But Gozo — Gozo is different somehow. I took a boat out to Gozo. That really is beautiful.'

I looked at them in the mirror. They were sitting very close together and she nodded, smiling happily. I think it was her smile that prompted him to say, 'I've been thinking, you know, about this visit to Cales Coves.' He leant forward suddenly, speaking to Petra and myself. 'I saw the inlets this afternoon, but I was only there a short while.

It would be nice to see them by moonlight. And it's not far off my way back to Fornells, so I'll join you if I may.'

We had reached the end of the road and I turned the car on to the raw gravel of our new car park. We were facing the water then, close beside his little Fiat, and there was a yacht coming in under motor, her mains'l a white triangle in the moonlight as she moved steadily across the crouched outline of the hospital ruins.

'If Gareth is going,' Soo said suddenly, 'then I'm going too.'

'It's your bedtime,' I told her. 'Remember what the doctor said. You shouldn't have been dancing really.'

'Well, I'm not going to be left behind on my own, that's definite.' And then, as Lloyd Jones helped her out, she was asking Petra whether she could lend her anything. But she had come ashore with all the clothes she needed. 'You never know,' she said as she retrieved her holdall from under the trestle table in the chandlery. 'It can blow up pretty fast here and you only get caught out at a party once with a full gale blowing and nothing to change into. I've never forgotten it. I got soaked to the skin and so cold…' She went with Soo up the stairs and into the bedroom.

Lloyd Jones followed them with his eyes, and when the door was shut he seemed suddenly ill-at-ease, as though unhappy at being left alone with me. 'I'll get you something more suitable to wear,' I said and went into the back premises, where I found him a spare sweater of mine and an old pair of working pants.

We made a quick change right there in the chandlery. 'You knew I was a Naval officer.' He was staring at me. 'The moment I arrived here, you knew. Do you have a rank? you asked.' I didn't say anything, an awkward silence growing between us. Then he went on, 'When I arrived here this morning — yesterday morning now — there was a man here, a short man in overalls and sweater. He was coming out of the door there.'

'Carp,' I said. 'His name's Carpenter.'

'An employee of yours? English, isn't he?'

'Yes.'

Where from?'

'A little place on the East Coast. Felixstowe Ferry.'

He nodded. Thought I recognised him.' He was standing quite still, staring at me. 'So you know the whole stupid story?'

'About your being found clinging to a buoy off the Deben entrance? Yes.' And I asked him why he had ducked his head inside his car to avoid speaking to Carp. 'He was one of the men who rescued you, wasn't he? In fact, he says it was he who cut you down.'

'Yes.' There was a long pause, and then he said, 'It sounds silly, you know, but it's not something I'm very proud of Navy officer found half frozen to death and roped to a buoy off a North Sea estuary. The media had a lot of fun at my expense, and seeing the man coming out of your door — it was a hell of a shock. I just didn't want to be reminded of the episode.'

Soo's voice called to ask if we were ready. 'Well, take Benjie out for a pee, will you, and Petra says to remind you about torches.'

I slipped a sweater over my head. 'I see your point,' I told him, 'but it's no excuse for not even saying hullo. He was very hurt.'

He shrugged. 'I'm sorry.'

The little dog had been shut in the store where he had a box to sleep in when we were out, and after I had taken him down the road to do his stuff, I went into the store with him and searched out the spare torches I kept with our boat gear. By the time I had found them, and some spare batteries, Soo and the other two were waiting for me out on the road. 'You take Petra,' she said as I locked the door. 'I'll show Gareth the way. We'll meet you on the track down into the cove. Okay?' And she took hold of Lloyd Jones's arm, steering him across to his Fiat, as though afraid I might object.

'Well, she seems quite happy about it, now we're all going,' Petra said as we got into the car. 'But you'd better tell Gareth to stay with her while we're in the cave. It's one of those entrances that are halfway up the side of the ravine and the last part is a bit of a climb.'

It was just past twelve-thirty by the dashboard clock as I took the old Jag through San Clemente and out on the four-kilometre straight to the Binicalaf turn-off, the moon so bright we could see the talayot to the left of the road very clearly, a huge cairn of interlocking stone blocks. Shortly after that I turned left, past the Biniadris development and another talayot, Petra talking all the time about the cave drawings she had seen when studying in France. The one we were going to see now reminded her of Font-de-Gaume in the Dordogne, the entrance to it similarly placed, halfway up a cliff.

'When they'd opened up Font-de-Gaume they found a series of chambers with pictures of animals on the walls, chiefly reindeer and mammoth. And there was another cave, Rouffignac, much longer, and older I think. The drawings there were of rhinoceros and bison as well as mammoths, and the floor was pock-marked with the pits of hibernating bears, like small craters.' She laughed at the recollection, and then, suddenly urgent again: 'Most of those drawings were from way back in time, Mike, at least 17,000 years ago, and if the little bit of a drawing I'm going to show you is really that of a woolly rhinoceros, then it'll be at least as old as those Dordogne paintings.'

I remember the way she said that, the intensity, the excitement in her voice. She really did believe she had found something important. And then we were at the start of the track that wound down the cliff-edged ravine to the first cove.

'You turn left in about a hundred yards,' Petra said. 'After that we walk.'

I stopped at the turn-off, waiting for the others, and after that we were on sand and gravel — not a road, nor even a track, just a piece of cliff-top country, a sort of maquis. Judging by the litter and the worn patches of thyme people came here to picnic, fornicate, or simply park their cars and sleep in the sun. It was tired, worn-looking country, but as I pushed on, driving carefully round the worst of the potholes, I realised that we had moved on to some sort of a track. A sharp turning to the right, a cave entrance marked by a sprinkling of tattered rags, then we were dropping down very steeply. 'You'll be able to park at the bottom,' Petra assured me. There's just room to turn there. Do you know this place?'

'Once or twice I've stopped at the top,' I said. 'But only for a bite to eat or to relieve myself before going down to the cove.'

She nodded. 'If you'd got out and walked around you'd have found quite a few cave entrances. There's one that looks almost like a house. It's got a painted front door, a couple of windows, a stove pipe stuck out of the side and a vine trained over an arbour of wooden posts. I'm told the man it belongs to visits it regularly right through the winter.'

We reached the bottom, the narrow gravel track petering out into what looked like a watercourse. There was only just room to turn the two cars and park them with their back ends in the shrubbery. I thought we had reached the bottom of the ravine then, but Petra said no, we still had a hundred yards or so to go, then there was a soft patch, almost a stretch of bog to cross before climbing up to the cave entrance. 'It will take us about ten minutes.'

By then we were out of the cars, all four of us standing in a patch of moonlight. The bushes were higher here, their shadows very black, and no sign of the cliffs that edged the ravine. 'How did you find it?' Soo asked her.

'I don't know really — some sixth sense, I think. The first time I came to Cales Coves was about six months ago. I've always been fascinated by natural caves. Most of them are in limestone and water-worn like these. And after I had explored several of them, I made enquiries and managed to locate a fisherman who uses a cave down by the water, just by the rock ledge that leads round into the other cove. He keeps his nets and gear there and it was he who told me there were several caves above here on the far side of the ravine. He thought it probable that very few people knew about them. The cave openings are mostly hidden by vegetation. At any rate, he hadn't heard of anybody visiting them, and though he thought I was mad, he very kindly came with me that first time. There are about half a dozen of them up there at the base of the cliffs. I came here several times after that, and then yesterday I found somebody had been digging in one of them. That's where the wall drawing is.' She started to move off. 'Come on. I'll lead the way.'

But Soo wasn't at all happy at being left on her own, and it was only when Lloyd Jones agreed to stay with her that she accepted the situation. I hesitated, suddenly uneasy at leaving her there. But Petra had already bounded off into the bushes. 'I'll tell you about it on the way home,' I said and followed her along what seemed to be the ghost of a path. The ground became damper, the light of my torch showing the imprint of soft-soled shoes.

We came to water, a shallow flow over gravel, the bright green of aquatic plants, and at that point we could see the moon shining on the cliffs above us, a grey, very broken curtain of rock splattered with the black of cave entrances. Almost immediately the ground began to rise and we lost sight of them. We were moving across the steep side of the ravine, still following traces of a path. It reached a point where we could see the waters of the cove entrance black in shadow, then it doubled back on itself, steeper now as we moved out on to the detritus caused by weathering of the cliff face above. Once Petra stopped to point the torch I had lent her at skid marks on the surface of the scree. 'Looks as though a bed or a crate, something heavy, has been hauled up here. Did you notice the imprint of feet down in the bottom?'

She scrambled up the steep bend, following the path across loose stone until it reached the base of the cliff here there were bushes growing, the entrance to the cave above screened by a dense thicket. Again there were indications of recent use, twigs snapped, small branches bent back, and in the black hole of the entrance itself the dry dust of the floor was scuffed by feet. 'That's not me,' she said, flashing her torch.. 'I've only been into this cave once.' Again there were skid marks as though a box had been dragged along the ground. 'Watch the roof.' She went on ahead of me, the height of the cave gradually lessening until I had to stoop. The sides of it were very smooth. 'I'm not sure,' her voice echoed back at me, 'whether this has been scooped out by surface water making its way to the sea or by the sea itself.'

There were any number of caves around the coast, most of them well below sea level, some reached only by water-filled sumps or chimneys. Looking back at the moonlit half-circle of the entrance, I realised we were striking into the cliff at an oblique angle. We were also moving downwards. 'You've got to remember,' I said, 'that when the ice-caps and the glaciers melted at the end of the last ice age the level of the sea rose very considerably.'

'I know. The best of the caves are thirty to sixty feet down.'

'Is that what your diving friend says?'

'Bill Tanner? Yes. He says there's a marvellous one by Arenal d'en Castell, a sort of blue grotto, enormous. He's promised to take me down, sometime when I'm not fossicking around, as he calls it.'

I switched off my torch, looking back up the slope. The entrance was no longer visible, only the glimmer of moonlight on stone showing ghostly pale. The roof was getting very low, though at that point the walls had pulled back as though this were some sort of expansion chamber. Like the other caves in the Cales Coves area, the walls here were water-worn and the upper entrance high above sea level. It must have been formed at some period when the island's rainfall was very much greater than it was now. The pounding of the sea so far below could never have done it by air pressure alone.

'Here's the roof fall.' Petra's voice came to me distorted and booming. 'I'm just about there. But mind your head.' And then I heard her swear.

'What is it? Have you hurt yourself?' I snapped my torch on, swinging it to send the beam lancing ahead down the tunnel.

'No. Nothing like that.' She was crouched down, her torch on the left-hand wall. In front of her the cave appeared to have collapsed, loose rock piled almost to the roof, rubble everywhere.

'What is it then?' I scrambled down the slope.

'Look! It's gone. The bastards have put their bloody shovels right across it. They've scraped it clean away. Why did they have to enlarge the hole?' She was leaning forward, brushing at the rock face with her fingers, the fine limestone dust sifting on to the stone below and almost white in the torchlight. She sat back on her haunches, cursing softly under her breath. 'If only I'd sent you a message and come straight back here and waited. When do you think they did it?'

She turned her torch on the fallen roof and the gap that showed between the broken rock and the rubble below was about three feet wide and not more than two feet at the highest point. There was air coming through it. I could feel it cool on my face and there was a smell of the sea. 'I should have come back,' she said again. 'Knowing somebody had been working on this fall, I should have stayed here to explain to them how important that drawing was.'

I tried to tell her not to worry about it too much. This is quite an extensive roof fall. Get this rubble shifted and you may find more drawings as you expose the rest of the cave walls.' It wasn't the cave drawing that interested me, though I realised the loss of it meant a lot to her, it was the fact that a passage had been cleared through the roof fall. It wasn't only that I could smell salt water, I could hear it, the slop of wavelets on the rocks in the cove or against the base of the cliffs. 'I'm going through,' I said.

'No.' Her hand gripped my arm. 'It's dangerous.'

Don't you want to know what's the other side, why they've been digging away at this roof fall?'

'Well, of course I do.' We were crouched together in what was clearly another expansion chamber, and as I circled it with my torch I saw that all the rubble they had cleared from the fall had been piled around the walls. Petra was straining at a large chunk of rock. 'Give me a hand, will you?' But when we had pulled it away, and she had cleared the rubble and dust that was piled behind it, exposing another foot or so of the limestone wall, there was nothing there, the surface completely bare. Her frustration and anger was something tangible. I could feel it as she shifted her body into the gap, kneeling now and working away at the rubble, dust rising in a cloud as she scooped the loose fragments of rock up in her hands and thrust them behind her.

'Leave it till tomorrow,' I said.

'No. I must know what's here.'

'In the morning you can come back again with the proper tools.'

'I must know,' she repeated, her voice urgent. 'If there are more drawings, then I'll have to stay here, make certain they don't start shovelling out more of this debris. If they come here again in the morning and begin enlarging the passage through this roof fall — '

'Listen!'

'What?'

'Just stay still for a moment.' She had been working so furiously, making such a clatter in the confined space, that I couldn't be certain I had really heard it. 'Listen!' I said again and she sat back on her haunches. Dust blew up into our faces, and in the sudden silence the slap of waves breaking seemed preternaturally loud.

'The wind's getting up,' she whispered. 'That's all.' And then, when I didn't say anything, all my senses concentrated on listening for that sound again, she asked, 'Did you hear something besides the wind and the sea?'

I nodded.

'What?'

'A voice. I thought I heard a voice.'

'Are you sure?'

'No. Of course I'm not sure.'

We stayed frozen for a while, listening. 'There's nothing,' she said. 'Just the wind. I can feel it on my face, much stronger now.'

I could feel it, too. It was as though a door had been opened and was letting in a draught. She bent forward again, working at a rock up-ended against the side of the cave. My torch, probing the hole through the roof fall, picked out a grey sliver of what proved to be bone. But when I showed it to her she brushed it aside. 'There are several bits of bone lying around. A sheep, or a goat maybe. Probably got trapped in here, or came seeking a dark den in which to die. It's drawings of animals, not their bones I'm looking for.' And when I again suggested that she leave it till it was daylight, she turned on me quite fiercely. 'Can't you understand? I must be sure there are no more drawings in danger of being destroyed.'

Five minutes later she was uncovering a mark on the wall that looked like discoloration. It was very faint, a faded ochre line sweeping upwards and stopping abruptly where the roof had fallen away. 'Could be the back of some animal.' Her voice was breathless with excitement. 'What do you think it is, Mike? The arch of the neck perhaps? A bull? At Lascaux there's a great bull right across the roof of the cave, and there are deer being hunted and plunging to their deaths over a cliff.'

She went on working at it, exposing more and more of the faded ochre line where it disappeared into the rubble. I was holding the torch for her and she was working so hard I could smell the warmth of her, dust clinging to her damp skin, her face a pale mask. Then I heard it again and I gripped her arm to silence her. 'Somebody called,' I said.

She turned, the piece of rock she had just prised loose still in her hand, her head on one side. Even her hair was covered with a grey film. 'I don't hear anything.' She brushed my hand away, thrusting the chunk of stone behind her.

'I'm going through,' I said.

She didn't seem to hear me, leaning forward again, brushing gently with her fingers at the section of wall she had just exposed.

I pushed her out of the way and crawled forward over the rubble, turning on my side. I was just starting to wriggle into the gap feet-first when, back up the slope of the cave, I saw a glimmer of light. It grew rapidly brighter, hardening into the beam of a torch, and a moment later Gareth Lloyd Jones was crouched beside us.

'Where's Soo?' I asked him. 'You said you'd stay with her.'

'Waiting in the car.' He was breathing hard. 'I came up to tell you.' He was kneeling now, his face close to mine as I lay with only my head and shoulders protruding from the hole. 'How far does it go, right through to the cliff face?' He thought I had already explored the continuation of the cave.

'I don't know,' I told him. 'I'm just going to find out.'

'But you've been here for a quarter of an hour or more.'

Petra and I started to explain about the mark on the wall of the cave, both of us speaking at once, but he brushed our explanation aside. 'Have you heard something? Anybody moving about?'

'I thought I heard somebody call out,' I said. 'And before that there was something like the murmur of voices. It could have been the sea. Or it could have been squatters.' And I started to tell him about the villa near Binicalaf Nou.

'Voices,' he said. 'That's what you heard. There's somebody in there. I came up to warn you.' Instead of waiting in the bush-shadowed dark of that track, he and Soo had decided to drive down to the cove. They had left the car and were walking down through the loose sand of the beach towards the sea when they had seen a light on the cliff face away to the left. 'We were just at the point where somebody had made a little trough in the rock and put up a notice to say the water in it was from a spring and good to drink. You know where I mean?'

'Yes, of course. But where exactly was the light? In one of the cave entrances?'

'Yes, and it wasn't there long. It wasn't very bright either, more like a hurricane lamp, or even a candle. A slightly yellowish light, and low down, only a little above the sea.'

I asked him whether it could have been the riding light of a ship, or perhaps the masthead light of a sailing boat, but he said definitely not. With the moon so bright it would have been impossible for them not to have seen a vessel if there had been one there. 'Even with the cliff face in shadow, the dark hole where we saw the light was plainly visible. And then suddenly it wasn't there any more.' He didn't know whether it had been snuffed out, switched off, or whether somebody had moved it away from the aperture. 'I was looking seaward at the time, so was Soo. We both thought somebody must be signalling a boat in through the entrance. But there was nothing coming into the cove. Then, when I looked back at the cave, it was gone. That's when I decided to come up here and warn you. They're in one of the caves, but whether it's this one, '

'Only one way to find out.' I started wriggling through again, using my elbows, but he stopped me.

'No. If they knew we were here…' I could see his face in the diffused light of our torches. It was shining with sweat and his mouth was moving uncontrollably.

What's the matter?'

'Nothing. It's just…' He reached out, gripping hold of my shoulder. 'Leave it till morning, man. Please. Then we can come back with one or two of your employees, or the police. If you go in now — ' He shook his head, his voice trembling.

Christ! The man was scared. 'They're only squatters,' I told him. 'Nothing to worry about. And if this is the cave they're in, then they'll have heard us. I'm going in,' I said again. 'Soon find out if there's anyone here or not.'

What about your wife? And Petra here? If they know you're in the cave…' He stopped there, the rest of his words bitten back and his face set. 'All right,' he said. 'I'll come with you.'

'You don't have to.'

'Yes, I do. I'll come with you,' he said again, his voice quite obstinate now. He seemed suddenly to have made up his mind, and when I suggested he go back to the car and wait with Soo, he shook his head. 'If you're going to try and reach the cliff entrance, then I'm coming with you. It's my duty.' It seemed an odd way of putting it, but I didn't think about it then. I was already working my way in over the roof fall and he was coming after me headfirst. The fall was only about ten metres through and then we were crouched low and moving down a steep incline, the breeze quite strong on our faces and our torches showing alow arched tunnel swinging away to the right. As soon as we rounded the bend we could see the cliff-face entrance, a pale rectangle of moonlight, and we could stand upright, for here, at the sea-worn end, the cave was much larger. There were camp beds ranged against the walls, four of them with sleeping bags, wooden packing cases for tables and seats and a paraffin stove that looked as though it had come out of some derelict fishing boat. The stove was for heating as well as cooking, and there were dishcloths, a couple of shirts too, hung on a line above the pipe that carried the fumes out to the cliff face. The whole place was equipped for living in, quite comfortably equipped, and propped against the wall was a heavy timber frame covered with plywood that had been tailored to fit the entrance. It had a little window and great iron bolts that slotted into sockets drilled in the rock so that even in a sou'westerly gale the place would be quite snug.

The noise of the sea was loud now, the dishcloths swaying in the wind. I went over to the entrance and leaned out. The cliff was sheer, a drop of about twenty feet or so to a narrow rock ledge that formed a sort of natural quay with deep water beyond, and the cave's entrance had been beautifully worked into scrolled pillars either side supporting a rather Greek-style portico. Inside, ledges had been carved out of both walls, a place for ornaments or household crockery. Whoever had originally fashioned the cave as a home must have been a real craftsman, a stonemason probably, everything so professionally done. 'All you need is a rope ladder,' Lloyd Jones said, peering down to the narrow ledge of rock below.

'And a yacht,' I added. 'Champagne cooling in the further recesses of the cave and a beautiful girl sunbathing down there in a bikini.' Or perhaps not in a bikini, just lying there on that ledge, nude in the moonlight.

He didn't laugh, and nor did I, for I found myself thinking of Petra, how well she would fit the picture in my mind. 'Nobody here,' I said.

'No.' He sounded relieved. 'But they've been here.' He had moved back from the entrance, his voice puzzled as he probed with his torch.

I was puzzled, too, the cave showing every sign of recent occupation and nobody there. The broken remains of an old cupboard full of cans of food. There were biscuits and cornflakes in a rusty cake tin, flour, rice, dried fruit, plastic containers with water, and those dishcloths and shirts hung up to dry.

'Where are the heads?' he asked.

The heads?'

'It's all right throwing the slops out into the cove. But if I want to shit, where do I do it?' He swung his torch back up the way we had come. That was how we found the offshoot cave. It was quite narrow, the entrance draped with an old piece of sacking so covered with dust it was virtually the same colour as the surrounding wall, and when we pulled it aside, there it was, a chemical loo.

We were both of us standing there, peering down the narrow passage that continued on beyond the old oil drum with its wooden lid, when suddenly there was a cry and Petra was calling my name, her voice high and urgent, reverberating down the save shaft — 'Mi-i-ke!' I was running then, crouched low. There was the sound of rocks dislodged, a man's voice cursing, and as I rounded the bend, the beam of my torch showed the soles of his canvas shoes disappearing over the rubble of the roof fall.

I must have been close behind him as I flung myself on to my belly, but by the time I had squirmed half through the gap, the tunnel beyond was empty. 'Two of them,' Petra said, her voice breathless. She was crouched against the wall. 'I thought it was you and Gareth, then my torch was knocked out of my hand and I was flung back, one of them cursing at me as they pushed past.'

'English or Spanish?' I was cursing too by then, my hands lacerated as I dragged my legs clear.

'I'm not sure.' She was on her knees, groping for her torch.

I glanced over my shoulder, struggling to my feet. 'Hurry!' He was right behind me and I was thinking of Soo, alone there in the car. Damn the man! Why hadn't he stayed with her? I ran, bent low, the beam of my torch following the curve of the cave until the gap of the entrance showed a pale oval. A moment later I was out into the cool of the night air, thrusting through the bushes to stand in the moonlight staring down the path where it ran steeply towards the cove.

There was nothing there.

I searched the hillside. Nothing moved. Then a car's engine started, down below, where we had parked, and a few moments later I saw it burst out on to the track where it crossed open country just before joining the road, its engine screaming. It was the red Fiat.

'My God!' Lloyd Jones, beside me now, had recognised it, too.

We went straight down the hillside then, moving as fast as we could in the tricky light, jumping from rock outcrop to rock outcrop, splashing through the water at the bottom. My car was still there, but no sign of Soo. Frantically I began searching the bushes, calling her name.

'They couldn't have taken her with them, surely.' He was standing there, staring helplessly about him.

'Well, she's not here. Nor is your car. Why the hell didn't you stay with her?'

I'm sorry, but you were so long… She asked me to go — ' He turned his head. 'What was that?'

It came again, high up the valley side from under the cliffs, and suddenly I knew what it was. 'Petra,' I said. 'It's Petra, and she's found her.'

We climbed back up the hillside, retracing our steps. 'Here,' she called, standing suddenly upright beside a patch of scrub. 'It's Soo. She's had a fall.'

I could hear her then, moaning with pain. Her body was lying twisted in a heap in the middle of a low clump of bushes, Petra bending down to her again, cradling her head as we reached the spot. 'I think she must have followed the path right up to the cave entrance, then lost her balance when they pushed past her.'

'Anything broken?' My torch showed her face badly bruised and shining with sweat. Her breath came in great gasps and she was moaning all the time.

'I've moved her limbs. They seem all right. But internally…'

'It's the baby then. If she's going to have it now…' I turned on Lloyd Jones. 'Why the bloody hell didn't you stay with her, man? If she loses the child…'

Petra silenced me, gripping my arm, as Soo murmured quite coherently, 'It's not — Gareth's — fault. I asked him…' Her voice trailed away, her right hand moving to her swollen belly, a bubble of saliva at her mouth as she cried out with pain. Then she passed out.

'We've got to get her to hospital.' Petra's voice was sharp. 'As soon as possible.'

Soo only screamed once as we carried her down the slope to the car. I think she was unconscious most of the time. And she didn't cry out all the time I was driving back to Mahon. I drove like a maniac, Petra said afterwards, my face set and anger taking hold. Anger at Lloyd Jones for being the cause of her leaving the car and climbing the path to the cave alone, above all, anger at those two bastards who had brushed her from their path as they rushed down the hillside to drive off in that hire car.

I took her straight to the Residencia Sanitaria, which is just up from the Port Mahon Hotel. This is the emergency hospital, and the night Petra and I spent there is not one either of us is ever likely to forget. Fortunately they did have a bed available in the maternity ward. Two women were in labour at the time and the place was something of a mad house. There were nurses rushing about, a nun in attendance, no sign of a doctor. They got Soo to bed and I left Petra with her and phoned the Guardia Civil.It was while I was telling them what had happened that Petra came down to say Soo was in labour. 'They've found a doctor. A very young man. I think he's scared. He's already lost one baby tonight. That's what one of the nurses told me.'

The time was 03.17, the words coming in a breathless rush. 'I'll go back now… No, don't come with me. There's nothing you can do. I'll let you know as soon as it comes.'

It's not due for more than a month.' I remember I said that, standing there, helpless.

'What's it matter when it's due? She's having it now. I just hope to God…' She turned abruptly, not finishing the sentence, and hurried back up the stairs.

I remember getting rid of Gareth Lloyd Jones and then I was going over it all for the benefit of a young sergeant of the Guardia.Since it had happened in the country, not in Mahon, it was their responsibility. He made some notes, then offered his sympathies and said he would make a report. Perhaps it was a matter for the Aduana.At my insistence he agreed to inform Inspector Molina of the national police. I knew him slightly and I thought it might be something the plain-clothes boys should know about.

After the sergeant was gone I was alone there in that cold little reception area. Sometimes I paced up and down. Nobody came and time passed slowly. Dawn began to break in the street outside. Then suddenly Petra was there, her face very pale under the freckles, her eyes dark-edged with weariness and worry. 'She's all right,' she said slowly. 'I mean she's come through it. She's conscious.' The words seemed dragged out of her. The doctor thinks it's just that she's badly bruised inside. She'll be okay. That's what he hopes — when she's had some rest.'

'And the child?' I asked.

'For God's sake, Mike, what did you expect? She must have fallen right on top of it. It was a breech, didn't you know that from the scan? Round the wrong way, the poor little thing's head was right against the wall of the stomach. It hadn't a chance.'

'What was it, a boy or a girl?'

'A boy.'

I went up to her then, feeling tired and very depressed, wanting a drink and not knowing what the hell I was going to say to her. She was lying on her back, her eyes closed, the olive skin of her face looking sallow, a deathly pallor against the tumbled black of her hair. They had cleaned her up, of course, but her hair and skin were still damp, her features so drained that I thought for a moment she was dead.

I don't think I said anything, but she must have sensed my presence for her eyes opened. They stared straight up at me, great brown pools in a white face. Her lips moved. 'I'm-sorry.' The words came faintly, then she was gone, the eyelids closing down, consciousness slipping away.

I bent and kissed her. Her skin was hot as though she were in a fever, her breathing so shallow it was hardly noticeable. Petra touched my arm, motioning me with her head to leave. The nun was hovering and a sister had arrived and was talking to her. 'She'll sleep now. They've given her an injection.' Petra led me out.

I don't remember driving home. We drank the remains of a bottle of brandy as the sun came up, both of us sitting in the office, and all I could think about was Soo's eyes staring up at me, huge brown pools of sorrow in the whiteness of her face, her hair still dank where it lay unkempt on the pillow, and her words, those sad words of apology for a miscarriage she couldn't help.

And after that I fell asleep, my head on Petra's shoulder.

CHAPTER THREE

When I next saw Soo she had been moved to a smaller room and her face was to the wall. I don't know whether she was asleep or not, but when it happened on both the visits I made the following day, it was clear she didn't want to talk to me. Apart from the bruising, she was in a state of shock. Even so, the doctor, as well as the nurses, said she was making quite good progress and should be home in a few days.

By then the Guardiahad recovered the stolen hire car. It had been found abandoned in Alayor, in one of the streets winding down from the church. They had also examined the cave, but had not been disposed to take the matter very seriously. Petra had been with them and she said they considered the two men who had been flushed out by our unexpected arrival to be cave squatters, and then, when they bumped into her at the roof fall and Soo outside, they had panicked and taken the car as a handy means of making their escape.

After the police had gone she had walked round to the second cove, past the sea-level caves. There was a small cottage at the far end, its cabbage patch clinging to the side of a steep ravine. The family there knew nothing about the two men. They hadn't even known the cave had been occupied. Remembering the light Lloyd Jones had seen, she had asked them if they had noticed any vessel entering the cove during the previous two nights. There had been one, they said, and they wouldn't have seen it but for the moonlight, for the boat was all dark, not a light anywhere, and it had looked like two ships rafted together. There had been an onshore breeze, quite strong at times, so the two vessels couldn't anchor and had left immediately. The only other boats they had seen during the past few days had been local fishing boats, mostly from Cala en Porter, which was the next cove to the west and one of the better tourist resorts with a big hotel and some plush villas.

This she told me when she came ashore the following day, hauling her inflatable out and parking it in our car park. She was on her way to Cales Coves, hoping to uncover some more of that cave drawing, and we were walking along the waterfront to where the Martires Atlante runs out past the Club Maritime to the old fort that marks the entrance proper to Mahon harbour.

The sun was shining again, an easterly funnelling up the harbour, rattling the halyards of the yachts moored at the Club pontoon, and Petra, looking wildly attractive with her auburn hair blowing about her face, suddenly said, That Navy man, have you seen any more of him?' She was wearing faded denims, an orange shirt open almost to the navel, no bra and her feet were bare.

'No, not since that night,' I told her.

'Did you know he'd been seeing Soo? He's been to the hospital several times.'

I didn't say anything, sullen in the knowledge of what she was trying to tell me. Her face was in profile, a strong race, the nose fine-boned and straight, the teeth white m a mouth that wore no lipstick. 'Did Soo tell you that?'

'No. Gareth told me.' She stopped then and turned to me. 'He's in love with her, you know that?'

I half shook my head, shrugging it off. What do you say to a statement like that? And coming from a girl you're half in love with yourself. What the hell do you say? 'How do you know he's in love with her? How the bloody hell do you know?'

Soo, of course. Soo must have confided in her. Hurt and lonely, it seemed reasonable, two young women together in the carbolic atmosphere of a hospital ward. But no — 'He told me himself.' And she added, 'You haven't seen him, have you? He hasn't tracked you down — to say he's sorry, offer his condolences, anything like that?'

'No.'

She nodded. 'Well, that's why. You don't go looking for a man when you've fallen head-over-heels in love with his wife. At least, I wouldn't think that's how they do it in the Navy. Cuckolding a fellow, if only in thought — well, not quite the thing, eh?' She gave me that wide grin of hers and began to walk on again. 'No need to worry about it, he says his leave will soon be over.'

'What about Soo?' I asked. 'How does she feel?'

She gave a little shrug. 'She likes him. I don't know how much more she feels.' She glanced at me quickly, a flash of something in her eyes and smiling now, quietly to herself. 'I'm not exactly in her confidence.'

I caught hold of her arm. 'Let's go for a sail.'

'No.' And she added, still with that little smile, 'That's your answer to every problem, isn't it? Let's go for a sail.'

'When did you see him?'

This morning.'

'Where?'

'Bloody Island. At the dig.' She nodded towards the grey sprawl of the hospital ruins looking quite distant now that the harbour was full of whitecaps. 'He hired a boat and came over to see me.'

'To say goodbye?'

She shook her head.

Then why?'

'I think because he wanted you to know. He also said he was sorry.'

'For leaving Soo on her own that night, or for falling in love with her?'

'Both, I imagine.'

We had stopped again and I was staring seaward, out beyond the fortress of St Felip to where the horizon lay, a dark line in a blue sea flecked with white. So his leave would soon be up and he'd be off to Gib to take command of his ship. A Navy man, newly promoted and on his way up the service ladder. No wonder she found him attractive, feeling as she did about her father. I thought of the wretched little house, one of a line of Victorian dwellings in a back street in Southsea. It was all her father had to show for almost forty years in the Navy, his pay mostly spent on good living, and what savings he had achieved thrown away on speculative investments that had never produced the fortune they promised him. That lovely little courtyard full of music from the old record player, the mellow limestone house overlooking the sea between Sliema and St George's Bay, it had all seemed a long way away when we had last visited her parents. That was just after the loss of her first child, which I had thought might be some weak-ness inherited from her mother. But after that visit I was convinced that if it was an inherited weakness then it had to be from her father.

Still thinking about that, I glanced at Petra, standing Junoesque in the sunshine, the curve of a breast showing in the V of her orange shirt, the skin tawny brown with wind and salt, the patched denims filmed with the dust of the dig she was working on. No weakness there, and if she were to let up on the pill and have a child, she'd probably deliver it herself, no trouble at all, and get right on with the dig next day.

She turned her head and caught my gaze, the flicker of smile back at the corners of her mouth. Something in her eyes made me wonder if she could read my thoughts.

Were we that close already, and nothing said, just an acceptance that there were moments when the satisfaction of our needs…? 'You go for that sail. It'll do you good.

I've got things to do.' She turned away then, a wave of the hand as she called over her shoulder, 'And don't fall in.

It's blowing quite hard out there.'

I watched her as she crossed the road and disappeared up the stone staircase leading to the upper road where she always parked her battered little Citroen. She moved with the grace of an athlete, taking the steps at a run, her hair catching the sun like a burnished helmet of bronze. She must have known I was watching her, but she didn't look back, and when she reached the top she didn't look down or wave, though I caught the flash of that helmet of hair for a moment above the ornate balustrade.

She was right about the wind. It would have been fine if she had come with me, but single-handed the Flying Dutchman I had picked up in lieu of an unpaid bill was quite a handful, more like board-sailing than cruising. I reefed, of course, before slipping from our pontoon and sailing out of the shelter of Gala Figuera, but the wind was funnelling down the length of the harbour approaches, and not much shelter to be had in the lee of the islands. It was very wet as I beat past Villa Carlos and out as far as the big island called Lazareto, and when I went about and freed the main for the run back, we were planing on the break of the waves and every now and then that powerful little dinghy took the bit between her teeth and tried to broach-to.

I was wet and tired by the time I got in. Instead of providing me with the opportunity of thinking things through, it had taken all my concentration just to keep the dinghy upright and avoid capsizing. Ramon was waiting for me with a whole string of queries, mostly about matters that Soo would normally have dealt with, and there was the mail. I hadn't dealt with the day's mail yet and I loathed typing letters. 'There is a telephone call.' He was hovering over me as I stripped and towelled myself down. 'About the Santa Maria.''You deal with it,' I said. 'You know the charter terms.'

'He don't want a charter.'

'You mean he wants to buy her…' I had been trying to sell the Santa Mariafor over a year now.

But Ramon shook his head. 'He already have a boat.'

I paused in the act of stepping into a dry pair of trousers. Then what the hell does he want? Who is he?'

'Senor Florez. He want you to phone him.'

Apparently Florez was acting for the owner of a catamaran lying at the commercial dock, in the area reserved for larger yachts and those on passage. 'He want to make some sort of exchange,' Ramon added.

A big cat had come in that morning. I had seen it running in under jib alone when I was talking to Petra, dark blue hulls with the paint flaking and a bad scrape along the port side. But she had still looked beautiful and very purposeful, a real thoroughbred.

I zipped up my trousers, pulled on a light sweater, Ramon still standing there and my mind in a whirl. The fishing boat wasn't worth much, not here in Menorca, and running it for charter was a lot of work with very little in it for us. It had never really paid its way. 'How big is this cat?'

Ramon shrugged. 'You phone Senor Florez, then he tell you everything you want to know.'

But when I rang Florez, all he said was, 'Come and see it for yourself.' He and the owner would be on board that evening. 'Then we talk about it, eh? I have a very good deal for you, Mr Steele.' And he had put the phone down, leaving me with all my questions unanswered and the deal not specified.

I would like to have driven over to the commercial dock right away. Looking through the yachting magazines, I had often thought what a perfect charter vehicle a big cat would be, and now I was being offered one, right here in Mahon. But the phone began ringing and I couldn't get away. There were two calls from England, as well as letters. Spring was in the air and people suddenly anxious to be sure their boats or their villas would be ready for the holidays.

I worked right through lunch, sending Ramon out to the restaurant at the corner for the fish-and-rice dish they often put up for us when Soo was too busy to Cook anything for herself. It was shellfish this time, arroz de marisco,with calamarestentacles finely chopped to give it body. All the time I was eating, and afterwards, I kept thinking about that catamaran, wondering what it would be like, what condition it would be in, what accommodation it would have, the navigation equipment and the state of the sails, excitement building though I knew bloody well the Mediterranean was a graveyard of shattered dreams.

It was late afternoon before I finally caught up with the office work and then it was time to visit the hospital again. I didn't mention the catamaran to Soo, even though I found her sitting up in bed reading a Spanish novel she had been lent. She looked much better, the dark patches under her eyes almost gone, some of the old sparkle back and her face more animated. The doctor had said she would be fit to leave the following day. 'Eleven o'clock. Will that be all right? Can you come for me then?'

I said 'Of course', and then she talked for a bit, about the friends who had been to visit her, the gossip they had passed on, and particularly about the Renatos' Red Cross party in the Quarries. 'What will you say when you speak at the opening of that Albufera development? You never told me the Alcalde had asked you. Am I invited?'

'I imagine so.'

'But he didn't ask me, did he?'

'I'm sure he will. When they send out the official invitations.'

She was silent then and I feared she was going into one of her sulky moods. But after a moment she brightened and began asking questions about the business — how Lennie was getting on with the villa out at Binicalaf, whether the equipment for the extra bathroom in another of the villas in our care had been flown in yet, had I remembered about completing the forms for customs clearance, and the accounts to settle with two of our suppliers. 'You know, I'm really looking forward to being back. Lying here with nothing to do but read and listen to the radio and think.' And she added darkly, 'I've had all the time in the world to think these past few days.' And almost without a pause: 'Did Gareth come and see you before he left? No, of course — I remember. He said it was bad enough seeing me, feeling it was his fault I'd lost the child, and though I told him I might have lost it anyway, he still said he couldn't face you. You told him it was his fault. I have a distinct memory of that. Why the hell didn't you stay with her?you shouted at him, and accusing him like that Her voice trailed away. Then suddenly she said, 'Did you know, he came up through the lower deck — Ganges,Dartmouth, the Fleet Board. Just like Papa. It makes a difference, doesn't it? You're more vulnerable then. Everything that bit harder. No admiral ever came up through the lower deck that I can remember. And it wasn't his fault. It wasn't anybody's fault.' Tears welled. I went to comfort her, but she pushed me away. 'I know what you think. And you're probably right. I'll never have a child now.'

I didn't know what to say. Life doesn't make sense. There was Petra who didn't want a child, but would almost certainly have no difficulty if she did find herself with a bun in the oven. And Soo's mother, she had had five, one every two years, regular as clockwork. Then, being a devout Catholic, she must have gone on strike. That was probably why Soo and her father had been so close.

It was almost dark by the time I left the hospital and cut down the little hairpinned gut that led to the waterfront. I could see the catamaran before I had even parked the car, a broad cabin top spanning the whole width of the twin hulls, her single mast standing very tall and overtopping the dock sheds. She was moored outside of a big yawl, and when I asked permission to cross over to the catamaran, an American in a blue jersey, half-glasses perched on his nose, poked his head out of the doghouse. 'Sure. But there's nobody on board. They're over at the cafe-bar across the road.'

I asked him where he was from and he said, 'Newport, Rhode Island, via Gibraltar and Ibiza.'

I swung my leg over his guardrails, crossed the foredeck to stand by the shrouds looking down on the long, slim line of the two hulls, their bows poking out from the broad foredeck platform, a safety net slung between them.

'Good trip,' he went on. 'We made it across the ditch in just over sixteen days, almost all of it under sail.'

A woman's head appeared in the hatch, grey-haired like the man. That cat belong to you?' she asked.

'I wish it did.' I jumped on to the cabin top, moving aft across the top of it to drop down into the cockpit. There was a swivel chair for the helmsman immediately aft of the wheel and a console full of dials — engine revs, speed through the water, true and apparent wind speeds, just about everything anybody could want, and though the door was locked, I could see through the glass panel that the whole arrangement was repeated in the saloon, which was broad and spacious, running across the ship with a semi-circular settle, a big folding table and steps leading down into the hulls on each side. Compared with the old Santa Mariathe accommodation was so grand it was more like a house, and around the chart table, on the starb'd side, there was everything a navigator could wish for, radar, sat-nav and Decca, ship-to-shore radio telephone…

'Quite a machine, eh?' the American said.

I nodded, laughing ruefully. To own this sort of a vessel I'd have to sell both our villas. They were in our joint names, and even if Soo agreed and we succeeded in selling them on the present market, it would probably not be enough. The ship needed painting, of course, and the scrape along the outer curve of the port hull was deeper than I had thought. It looked as though some frames might be broken. But otherwise she seemed in remarkably good shape. There was even a big semi-inflatable moored alongside with wheel steering, spray screen and remote controls to the outboard engine.

I hauled myself back on to the American's deck. 'You came through Gib, you say. Did you see a Royal Navy frigate in the harbour there?'

'Not that I recall. It's a big place, all those high stone quays, and anyway we were round in the marina.' And he added, 'We saw some US Navy ships though. They were powering through the Straits as we came in from Cape St Vincent. Destroyers by the look of them. More watchdogs for the Sixth Fleet's carriers, I guess.'

I was back on the dock then, wondering why anyone should want an old fishing boat like the Santa Mariain place of that cat. I could see her name now. It was on the flat, sloping stern of each hull — Thunderflash.If I owned a machine like that… I turned back to the American. 'What made you think I was the owner?'

He smiled and gave a quick shrug. 'Something in the way you were moving about her. Thought maybe it was a delivery job.' There had been four of them on board, he told me, when they came in that morning. One he took to be the skipper, two were obviously crew, and there had also been a short, 'dark man dressed in a suit who looked and behaved like a passenger. They had had to clear immigration, as well as health and customs, so he presumed the boat had come from France or Italy, which could of course mean Corsica or Sardinia. The passenger had gone ashore immediately afterwards, the skipper about an hour later, while the others just sat around drinking wine and listening to the radio. The skipper had returned about half an hour before I had arrived with a man who was obviously Florez and the four of them had then gone across to Anton's for a drink.

The cafe-bar was almost opposite the Estacion Maritima, just back of the Customs House. Above it loomed the older part of Mahon, clouds scudding over a moon-dark sky. As always at this time of night, the bar was dark and very crowded. They were at a table at the far end, heads close together, coffee cups and glasses at their elbows, a bottle in the centre. They were talking in English and as I approached I heard one of them say, 'Fifteen minutes, and that's not driving fast.'

Florez saw me then, and as he switched on a smile and got to his feet, the man sitting with his back to me raised his hand as though for silence. 'You want a drink with your coffee, Mr Steele?' Florez called the order to the barman and pulled up a chair. 'Later we go over to the ship.' He didn't introduce me to any of the others, merely saying I was the man he had been talking about.

There was a short, awkward silence after I had sat down. I was between Florez and the man I took to be the skipper. He wore an old reefer and his neck stuck out of the collar of it like a column running straight up into the long, narrow head. His face, what little I could see of it in that light, was weathered to a dark brown, a strong, flamboyantly handsome face with a powerful jaw line and a nose that hung straight and sharp over a narrow, tight-lipped mouth. It was an almost Gallic face, the eyes very bright, the brilliance of the whites under the thick head of black hair giving them a wide-eyed look that was almost a stare. A little black moustache, turned down over the comers of the mouth, seemed to split his features in two, dividing the jaw and the mouth from the sharp, pointed nose and staring eyes. If it hadn't been for the moustache, I think I might have recognised him at once.

That fishing boat of yours…' he said. 'Senor Florez took me to see it this morning, fust what I and my two friends here are looking for.' His two friends, seated across the table from me, nodded. One of them was small and sharp-featured, the other much larger, a big barrel of a chest, broad shoulders, his crumpled features reminding me of a boxer from Dublin I had picked up one time in Gib and delivered to Tangier. 'We got to earn a living.' He smiled an engaging, friendly smile. 'Nice place, Mahon.

Fishing good, too.' There was a softness in his voice, the accent faintly Irish.

'What he means is we're just about broke,' the man beside me went on. 'We need a fishing boat and somewhere ashore where we can live and store our gear. You happen to have what we want. I saw that villa you're building this afternoon. I also had a look at Port d'Addaia. If we had the villa we'd keep the boat there. Nice and handy. Well sheltered, too.' He wasn't looking at me now, his eyes on his coffee as though talking to himself and his hands flat on the table. They were big, fine-boned, very capable-looking hands. 'Now tell me something about this fishing boat of yours — speed, range, charts on board, sails, etc. I've read the details, of course, and one of your men showed me over her, but I'd like to hear about her from you, okay?'

My coffee came as I began to run through the inventory and the performance, and all the time I was thinking of that catamaran and trying to build up the value of the Santa Maria,knowing that the exchange was heavily weighted in my favour. To build a cat like that at the present time good God, it would cost a fortune.

A glass had come with my coffee. He reached for the bottle and filled it for me. 'Salud!'We drank, raising our glasses as though the deal were already completed.

'I saw you come in this morning,' I said. 'Where were you from?'

He stared at me, and there was something about the eyes.. but then he had turned away. 'Fishing,' he said. 'We'd been fishing.'

'You had a passenger on board, so I naturally thought..'

'I tell you, we'd been fishing.' He looked at me again, his eyes coldly hostile. 'There was a friend of mine with us. We enjoy fishing. All of us.' He stared at me hard for a moment. 'Don't we?' he said to the other two, and they nodded. 'Okay.' He knocked back the rest of his drink and got almost violently to his feet. 'If you're interested in the deal, then we'll go over to Thunderflashand you can poke around down below. But — ' and he leaned suddenly over me, prodding my chest with a hard index finger, 'don't go asking stupid questions, see. One of the reasons we're all here is because Florez said you were discreet — when it was to your advantage. Right?'

I didn't say anything. Looking up at him and seeing those eyes staring down at me, I suddenly realised who he was. This was the man Gareth Lloyd Jones had been looking for. Evans. Patrick Evans. Slowly I got to my feet, the others too, and we all went out and across the road to the dock. The American was below as we clambered across his boat and dropped on to the deck of the catamaran. Evans unlocked the door, ushering me below in a way that left me in no doubt that he was the owner, and the moment I stepped down into that great saloon, with its breadth and comfort and the fabulous view for'ard, I was hooked. I had never been in this type of craft before. Even at the Boat Show in London, the last time I had been there, I hadn't seen anything like this, so immaculately designed, so perfectly suited to cruising in the Mediterranean.

He showed me round himself, double beds in each of the hulls with washbasin, loo and shower for'ard, hanging lockers aft and two single berths, the steps down from the saloon built over the port and starb'd engines, and all the time my mind racing, thinking what I could do with it, a different charter clientele entirely — San Tropez, Monte Carlo, Capri, the Aegean. We went back to the saloon and he produced a bottle of whisky. 'Well?' He was smiling. He knew from my comments, from the look on my face, that he'd be able to get what he wanted. And I? — with luck I would get what I wanted, what I'd always wanted — oh my Cod yes. We drank, smiling at each other, and then I nearly ruined it. 'I don't think I got your name.'

'Lloyd,' he said.

Not Evans or Jones, but the first part of Gareth's surname — Lloyd. 'Do you know a man named Gareth Lloyd Jones?'

His eyes snapped wide, suddenly wary, his face gone hard again and quite expressionless. 'He was here on leave,' I said, floundering slightly as I explained. 'He was looking for somebody — somebody rather like you. And I thought I saw you — in Es Grau, a bar there, three, four months ago. Were you here then?'

He glanced at Florez, half rising to his feet, those powerful hands of his clenched so tight the knuckles showed white. But then he smiled at me and sat down again, forcing himself to relax. 'Yes,' he said. 'That's when I decided on Menorca. I was looking for somewhere to settle, you see.' He picked up his whisky, swallowed some of it, staring at me all the time, hostility gradually giving way to curiosity. 'How well do you know Gareth?' he asked me. And when I explained how we had met, he leaned back against the cushions of the settle. 'He's still here, is he?' he asked.

'No,' I said. 'He left yesterday.'

'How long was he here?'

'About five days, I think.'

'Did you see much of him?'

I shook my head. 'We had lunch together at Fornells, that's about all, and that same evening he came to the Red Cross barbecue with us. I think my wife saw more of him than I did.'

He sat there for a moment, quite still and apparently lost in thought, his eyes fixed on a shelf full of bottles at the end of the bar. 'That night,' he said slowly. 'He was with you, wasn't he? Florez says there was some trouble. You flushed a couple of squatters out of a cave and they pinched his car. Right?'

I nodded, wondering at his interest.

'Did you see them? Would you be able to recognise them?' And he added quickly, 'I'm sorry about your wife. I believe she was hurt.'

'No, we didn't see them,' I said. And I told him briefly what had happened. But he didn't seem interested in the details, only in the fact that Gareth Lloyd Jones had been there. 'You say he was looking for me?' he interrupted. 'Did he say why?'

'He said you were at school together, that you saved his life.' And because I wanted to get back to the business in hand and clarify the ownership details, I said, 'He also told me your name was Evans.'

I saw him hesitate. But it was only momentary. 'Lloyd Evans. It's a double name, see, like Gareth's.' And he added, 'Said we were at school together, did he?' He was smiling now, seemingly at ease again. 'HMS Ganges.That's what he was referring to.' He gave a little laugh. 'Yes, I suppose you could call it a school. It was a training establishment for naval ratings. It had a flagpole. Still there, I believe — a bloody great pole about a mile high, and some stupid sod of a PO makes him go up to the top almost his first day. A punishment, he called it, but it was straight bloody sadism. Christ! the poor little bastard had only just arrived, raw as a cucumber and scared out of his wits. I had to go up and talk him down. Practically carried him.'

He nodded his head, still smiling to himself. 'Got plenty of spunk, I'll say that for him. He was a town boy, East End of London, mother owned a greengrocer's, something like that. Don't reck'n he'd ever been up a mast before in his life. I remember watching, a squad of ten nozzers we were, and that bastard of a PO orders him over the futtock shrouds, wot we called the Devil's Elbow. It was all of a hundred feet up. Somehow he made it, and up the rope ladder. After that it was bare pole and he'd been told to touch the button at the top.' He looked at me quickly. 'Difficult for you to imagine what it's like. Most people never seen a mast that high except in the distance on one of the Tall Ships.'

I nodded, the picture of it clear in my mind. 'I've seen that mast,' I said. 'You don't have to tell me about the height of it.'

'Seen it?' He looked surprised, and when I explained, he nodded. 'I heard it was turned into a sports centre. Best thing for it with all those messes and officers' quarters with polished wooden decks. And the ranges, of course. So you're into competition shooting, are you?' He was looking at me hard as though that somehow made a difference. 'Bisley?'

'Yes,' I said. 'Until a few years back.'

He nodded. 'I know somebody who practises at Shotley on the old ranges we used as kids. That's how I know about the commercial range facilities.'

'Who was that?' I asked him, but he was already back to the story of Gareth Lloyd Jones climbing that mast. 'Poor little bugger, he got himself to the top of the ladder and it was at that point he made the mistake of looking down. I know what it feels like, looking down from that height, because I was the cadet chosen to stand point, right on top of that fucking button. There's a lightning conductor there and that's all you've got to hang on to, standing to attention with the others manning the yard and some bloody admiral inspecting the school.' He leaned back, his eyes half-closed, and still that smile. 'Hadn't thought about it till now, but yes, I suppose he'd feel I'd saved his life.'

The way he had told it, such relish in the recollection, and now going on to explain how he had got Gareth down, talking to him all the time. 'You get pretty close to a boy when you've been through an experience like that together. It wasn't easy for either of us.' There was a flamboyance about the man. It was as though he had an urgent need for self-dramatisation. I think this is often the case with men who are preternaturally handsome, perhaps because their looks make things appear so easy at first, and then suddenly they begin to realise looks are not enough. 'Still in the Navy, is he?' And when I told him Lloyd Jones had just been promoted and had left Menorca to take command of a frigate waiting for him in Gibraltar, he nodded. 'Of course. He was cut out for it, real Navy material. But Lieutenant Commander, and a frigate of his own…' He swirled the whisky round in his glass. 'You sure he didn't say anything about why he was looking for me?' He raised his eyes, staring at me.

'I don't think I asked him,' I said. 'I presumed, when he.said you were at school together, that you were close friends, is that right?'

'Yes, I suppose so. We're certainly close.' And he smiled as though at some private joke. He smiled a lot during that meeting on Thunderflash,but the smile never reached his eyes, and his face wasn't a smiling face. When he smiled it was a conscious stretching of the mouth that revealed teeth so white and even they might have been false. And it wasn't only his face that was hard. His body was hard, too. Even then I was conscious that he was a very fit, very tough man.

'You saved his life twice,' I said. But he wasn't to be drawn on that, his mind already back to the subject of the Santa Mariaand the villa up on Punta Codolar. He wanted to start fishing right away. And he added with a thin, rather wry smile, 'Silly, isn't it? Here I am with this boat that's worth a small fortune, and I'm short of money and nowhere to live.' He wanted to make the exchange right away. Tomorrow. I'd like us to be free to shift our gear on to the fishing boat tomorrow. You're not using her for anything. I've looked her over and she's ready to go. So's Thunderflash.A quick clean round the ship after we've gone and you could have a charter party on board by the weekend. What do you say?'

What I said, of course, was that I'd have to talk it over with Soo and she wouldn't be out of hospital until next morning. 'Exchanging boats is one thing,' I told him. 'But that villa was my wife's idea. I don't know whether she'll agree.' For a moment I toyed with the thought that I might force through an exchange on a boat-for-boat basis, perhaps with a small cash addition, but he wasn't that much of a fool.

In the end he agreed to leave it over until I had had a chance to talk to Soo. 'Ring Senor Florez here. He'll know where to find me. But I want that fishing boat by Saturday at the latest, tanked up with fuel and ready to go. That gives you two days, okay?' He got to his feet then, and when I asked him whether he needed anybody local to show him the best fishing grounds, he looked at me sharply and said, 'Don't bother. I know where I'm going.'

'What about charts then?'

'Not your problem. I got all the charts.' And he added, 'You ring Florez, eh? Tomorrow, right after you pick up your wife from the hospital.'

I told him that might not be long enough to talk her into the deal, but in fact Soo proved much easier to persuade than I had expected. She was more interested in the man's friendship with Gareth Lloyd Jones at Gangesthan in the future of the villa she had so recklessly acquired the day before she lost the child. 'But didn't you ask him?' she demanded almost angrily when I told her I had no idea what the relationship of the two men had been after the flagpole episode. 'I'm certain there was something between them, an intimacy — I don't think it was sexual. You don't think Gareth's in any sense gay, do you? I mean, he doesn't behave like one.'

'No,' I said. 'I don't think he is.' In fact, I hadn't given it a thought.

'Hero worship?' She was sprawled on the old couch we had picked up in Barcelona, her head turned to the window, staring at the sea. 'Was that why he was looking for this man?' Her smooth, darkish forehead was slightly puckered, her eyes half-closed, her body slim again, no lovely curve to her belly and the madonna look quite gone from her face so that it was now pinched, even a little haggard.

I think she was quite glad not to have to cope with the problems of overseeing the completion of that villa. At any rate, she accepted the situation. But later, much later, she was to insist that if I hadn't been so obsessed with my 'new toy' I would have known what was going on. She was, of course, much closer to the people of the island than I was. She had a lot of friends, not only in Mahon and Ciudadela, but out in the country among the farms, and she did pass on to me some of the talk she picked up about the growing popularity of the separatist movement. It was backed by the two communist parties, the Partido Communista de Espana,or PCE, and the Partido Commu-nista de los Pueblos de Espana,or PCPE, and appeared to be gaining ground. Menorca,the Diario Insular orlocal paper, and even La Ultima Horaof Palma in Mallorca had carried the occasional article on the subject. But now I had no time any more to read the local newspapers. I was fully stretched getting Thunderflashready for sea.

Once I had agreed the deal with Patrick Evans and checked the share ownership certificate, which showed him to be the sole owner, with sixty-four-sixty-fourths of the shares, I had pictures taken of the catamaran, some with the sails up, others of the saloon with the table laid, a vase of wild flowers and a large Balearic crayfish as the centrepiece. These I mailed off to a dozen of the most up-market agencies specialising in Mediterranean travel, together with a plan of the layout and full details. Three of them I actually phoned, and within a week two of these had expressed interest, and one of them, representing an American agency, had their representative fly in from Mallorca to inspect the boat and cable a report direct to Miami. Two days later I received a cable offering a two-week charter if I could pick up a party of eight Americans at Grand Harbour, Malta, on May 2. There was no quibble about the price, which would mean that in just one fortnight Thunderflashwould earn more than the Santa Mariahad made the whole of the previous season.

Moments like this make one feel on top of the world. I didn't stop to wonder why Evans had gone fishing instead of chartering the cat himself. I simply cabled acceptance, asking for twenty per cent deposit, and when this came through by return, I hardly thought of anything else, my energies concentrated on getting Thunderflashrepainted and in perfect condition, the hulls white, not blue, and the boat in tip-top condition.

We finished her just three days before I was due to speak at the opening of the Albufera urbanization,and when I got back that night Soo was almost starry-eyed, not because Thunderflashwas back in the water and moored right outside, but because she had received a note from Gareth Lloyd Jones in Gibraltar. 'He says he was piped aboard at fifteen thirty-two on Wednesday afternoon.' And she added, the letter clutched in her hand, 'It's there in the log — Captain piped on board HMS Medusa.'She looked up at me then. 'Medusawas one of Nelson's ships, wasn't she?'

'Ask Carp,' I said. 'There's a Medusabuoy off Harwich. I sailed past it once on a navigational course.'

'But you were Army.'

'The outfit I was in, they expected you to be able to find your way at sea.'

'It made me feel good- that's all he says.' She folded the letter up. 'What a wonderfully exciting moment it must have been for him — the piercing whistle of the bo's'n's pipes, his salute to the quarterdeck, and thinking all the time that he'd made it, from Gangesand the lower deck right up to the command of a frigate.'

I went through to the office and checked the mail. Another charter — that made two lined up for the summer. Things were beginning to look real good. At least the boating fraternity weren't to be put off by the threat of bombs following the Libyan raid, or the fall in the dollar. Not even the information that another of our villas had been paint-sprayed could dampen my spirits. It was the usual slogan — URBANIZAR ES DESTRUIER SALVEMO MENORCA,and Miguel had written me a long letter of complaint in Spanish. I told Soo to deal with it, my mind still on Thunderflash.The weather was set fair for the moment and next morning, standing at the open window in the blazing sun, drinking my coffee, I could hardly believe it, the twin hulls so beautiful, such a thoroughbred, lying there to her reflection, no wind that early in the morning, the surface of Mahon harbour absolutely still.

I called Soo to come and look at her. 'We'll take her out under engines as far as La Mola, wait for the wind there.' But she had promised to pick up one of the Renato girls at their vineyard farm beyond St Luis and picnic on the limestone rock ledges of Gala d'Alcaufar. Carp appeared with the semi-inflatable from the direction of the naval quay, the aluminium bows half-lifted out of the water as the big outboard thrust the tender close past the Club Maritime, the metal masts of the yachts alongside the pontoon winking in the sun as they bobbed and swayed to the sharp-cut wake.

East Coasters tend to keep their emotions under control, but though he didn't show it, I sensed Carp's excitement as the two of us scrambled aboard and got the engines started and the anchor up. He had never skippered anything like this before and the fact that I had put him in charge of the boat had done wonders for his ego. He had bought himself one of those baseball-type hats with a long America's Cup peak and he couldn't stop talking as we motored out past Bloody Island, rounding the northern end of it, bare earth showing where Petra had trenched beyond the great stone capping slabs of the hypostilic chamber she had been excavating. The water was so still we could have nosed in for her to jump on board.

She would have loved it, but two days after Soo had left hospital I had had the unpleasant task of taking a telex out to her camp with the news that her father had been badly injured in a car crash. A vacant seat on a charter flight had enabled her to leave that same afternoon. We had not heard from her since, and now, sitting there at the wheel, driving the big catamaran close-hauled past the La Mola fortifications, I missed her. It was such a perfect day for trials, the wind coming in from the south-east and building up through the afternoon, so that the B and G instruments showed us touching fifteen knots as we ran back into the harbour under full main and spinnaker, the spray flying, the sun shining, the wind hard on the side of my face. And the boat behaved perfectly. Nothing more to do to her, except a few replacements to the rigging, a little fine tuning.

'I've talked to Miguel on the phone,' was Soo's greeting as I came in, tired and elated. 'He'll have a word with you on Monday, after the Albufera ceremony.'

'What's his problem?' I asked, pouring myself the Balearic version of a horse's neck. 'We've paid him for the work to date.' I was thinking of the speech I had promised Jorge Martinez I would make. In the excitement of getting Thunderflashready I had forgotten all about it.

'It isn't the money,' Soo said.

'What is it then?'

'It's the work. He's short of work.'

'What does he expect?' With the vandalism that was going on, builders were finding life difficult. 'He's lucky to have a villa to complete.'

That's the trouble. Evans has told him to stop work. He and his two mates have moved into the ground floor and Miguel's been told to clear the site. Anything still to be done they'll do themselves. The agreement, you remember, was that we'd employ him to finish the building.'

'You may have told him that. I didn't.' I went over to the window, propping myself on the desk top and enjoying the ice-cold fizz of the brandy and ginger ale, my mouth still dry with salt. The lights were coming on, the old town showing white above the steps leading up to the Port Mahon Hotel and the Avenida Giron. 'He's got no claim on us at all.'

'He thinks he has.' And Soo added, 'A matter of honour, he said.'

'Oh, bugger that,' I told her. There's nothing in writing. I saw the lawyers early last week.' But in the end I agreed I would have a talk with him. 'It's not far from Albufera to Codolar Point. We could easily run over there either before or after the ceremony and see what Evans has to say about it, if he's in residence. Do you know if he is?'

'Miguel says not. He moved in with his two mates, did a quick do-it-yourself job making the lower half habitable, then brought the Santa Mariaround into the bay at Arenal d'en Castell and the following morning they were gone.'

'When was that?'

'Last week. Friday, I think.'

Then they should be back by now. Nobody stays out fishing off Menorca two weekends at a stretch.'

But they did. At any rate, there was no sign of them on the Monday morning when I drove out to the point just before the opening ceremony. This was due to start at twelve-thirty followed by a buffet lunch in the hospitality pavilion on the Addaia-Arenal approach road. The villa was deserted, some of the windows covered with sheets of plastic, the scaffolding still there and the whole place a mess of builders' rubble. People I spoke to on the approach road to the development said they had seen no sign of anybody there for more than a week.

The site for the ceremony was a newly completed villa standing on a rise a little back from the road and close to the entrance to the Albufera development. A white tape had been stretched across this road and a little crowd was already gathered on the villa's terraces and by the shrubbery that covered the hillside. The sun was shining and there was a magnificent view across Arenal to the Fornells peninsula. There was a guard of honour provided by the military, also a band, which began to play just after Soo and I had taken our seats. The Renatos were there and several other friends, the atmosphere that of a provincial function almost anywhere, except for that view and the ever-present Menorcan wind.

The Mayor arrived, only eight minutes late, accompanied by a Guardiamotor-cycle escort. His car drove straight up to the tape and Jorge Martinez jumped out. Waving and smiling, he came running up the steps, his body slim in a sky-blue suit, his face dark in shadow and full of vitality. 'You speak after Senor Alvarez,' he said to me as he shook hands. Mario Alvarez was the construction engineer for the project. 'First in English, then in Spanish — just a few words. Okay? I speak last.'

I nodded and he took his place, sitting quickly down and signalling for the band to stop. In the sudden silence the voices of the children playing hide-and-seek among the shrubs seemed startlingly loud, and I could hear the gulls calling as they planed above the cliffs.

Alvarez spoke for perhaps five minutes, a very flowery speech, both in his reference to the project and to the Alcalde, who looked pleased. So did the workmen, who were also complimented, the faces of all those present wreathed in smiles suitable to the occasion. Then it was my turn, and since I made a point of referring to the activities of the separatists, the smiles disappeared. Jorge Martinez understood English better than he spoke it. He was not amused, but a reference to the involvement of the PCE and PCPE had him nodding his head vigorously. He was a right-wing socialist and detested the communists. And when, after I had repeated my remarks in Spanish, I sat down, he was smiling again and nodding as he clapped his hands, and everybody did the same, apparently happy at what I had said.

Abruptly, he jumped to his feet, and just as abruptly, the clapping ceased and everybody fell silent, except the children. As always, he spoke very fast, not reading his speech, but talking as though straight from the heart. His line was that Menorca was a small island with few natural resources. But it had the sea and it was warm. Tourism and the foreigners who purchased villas such as this one, bringing much-needed foreign currency — hard currency so that the life of the people could be improved and made less hard…

It was as he was saying this, his arms outflung as though embracing the island and all its people, his face lit by that broad political smile of his and his voice carrying conviction across the little gathering to the rock outcrops of the cliff line beyond, it was then that a sound cracked like a whip over the proceedings. His head jerked forward, the smile still there, a rictus in a spreading welter of blood and grey matter, his whole body toppling forward, a staggering, headlong fall that took him down the flight of six steps that led from the upper terrace where he had been standing.

I remember my eyes recording with a sort of instant paralysis of horror the neat round hole in the back of his head as he fell sprawling forward. Then his body hit the lower terrace and rolled over, the eyes seeming to hang loose in that dreadful, bloody mash-up of a face. Manuela let out a stifled cry, Soo was retching, her face white and her eyes closed. From shocked silence, the little crowd was suddenly in an uproar of noise, women, and some men, screaming, soldiers moving forward as their officer shouted an order, the Guardiaabandoning their motor bikes, drawing their pistols and looking about them in bewilderment.

Somebody shouted for a doctor. But there was no doctor, no need of one anyway, forge Martinez was patently very dead, killed instantly by a single bullet, and no sign of the killer who must have been an expert marksman. The soldiers were running now, up over the terraces and round the back of the villa, sealing it off. But though the shot had obviously come from behind us, perhaps from one of the villa windows, the gunman could equally have fired from the shrubbery on the hill above.

The minutes passed in a seemingly aimless search, the official guests and the little crowd of local people all beginning to talk as the initial shock wore off. A small boy was brought to the Guardiacorporal, his little face white and creased with tears, his mouth hanging loose, his eyes large. Word spread in a sea of whispering — the child had seen the gunman as he went into the bushes behind the villa. No, he wasn't playing with his friend. We could hear the child's voice now, high and very frightened. He had gone to have a pee and had found the man lying there with a gun. The kid had been right there when he had fired, only feet away, and then the killer had scrambled to his feet and disappeared up the slope.

Soldiers and bandsmen fanned out, climbing the slope behind us, and Alvarez in a shaken voice asked us all to go down to the pavilion where there would be some wine and something to eat. Would we go now please, then the authorities could take any statements they might need. He glanced down at the body of the Mayor. A soldier was covering it with a plastic sheet encrusted with cement. Alvarez made the sign of the cross and turned abruptly, walking stiffly erect down to the road. I watched Gonzalez Renato stand for a moment, head bowed over the body, then go to his car. Most of the guests did the same, and watching them pay their respects to the inert bundle that only a moment before had been so full of vitality, I had the feeling they were not thinking about Jorge Martinez, but about themselves, and wondering what would happen now. Politically he was the nearest to a strong man the island had known since the end of the French occupation in 1802. Now he was dead and nobody to replace him, nobody who had the charisma and the public appeal to guide a volatile, insular and basically peasant people into an increasingly uncertain future.

We were held in the hospitality pavilion most of the afternoon. Plain-clothes police arrived, noting down names and addresses, interviewing those nearest to the murdered man and anyone who might have had a glimpse of the gunman. The food disappeared almost at a gulp, the wine too, the babble of voices on a high pitch as speculation reached the verge of hysteria. Who had done it — the extreme right, the extreme left, Eta? Or was it a delayed reaction to events in Africa? Salvemo Meaorca.For myself, and the scattering of other ex-pats attending the ceremony, it was not a pleasant experience. We might not be directly responsible, but you could see it in their eyes — we were to blame.

There was something quite primitive in the way some of them looked at us, as though we had the Evil Eye. And the Guardiain particular reacted in a similar manner, their manner of questioning increasingly hostile. It was almost as though they had convinced themselves that one of us, one of the extranjeros,must know who had done it and be connected with it in some way. You could see it from their point of view. This was an island. To kill like that, in cold blood, it had to be somebody from outside — a terrorist, some representative of a foreign organisation, not one of their own people. It was a gut reaction. They were looking for a scapegoat, but the fact remained that all of us who were being questioned, all except the children and a mother who had gone looking for her little boy, we were all of us gathered there in full view, so that in the end they had to let us go.

Soo and I didn't talk much on the drive back. It was late afternoon, the air full of the clean smell of pines and everywhere the fields massed with colour, the predominantly golden carpet of flowers patched with the startling white of wild narcissi, the sun blazing out of a blue sky. What a lovely day for a killing! What the hell was wrong with Man that he couldn't enjoy the beauty of the world around him? Politics. Always politics. I felt almost physically sick. There was so much here in Menorca that I loved — the sea, the sun, the peace. And now it was shattered. Martinez had been much more than just the Alcalde of Mahon. He had been a power throughout the island.

That evening several of us met in a restaurant near the square in Villa Carlos. But though we talked late into the night we achieved nothing except a fragile sense of solidarity. There were men there who had been in the island many years, but though they tried to kid themselves they were now Menorquins, they knew in their heart of hearts they were still foreigners. We were all of us extranjeros.I was not in a happy frame of mind when I finally returned home. Soo, thank God, was already in bed and asleep. I undressed in the dark, a breeze blowing the curtains. Lying there, eyes closed, my mind went over and over the events of the day, the talk at that crowded restaurant table. Too much brandy, too much coffee. And then the phone rang.

I thought it might be America. Sometimes Americans forget the time difference. I rolled over, reaching blindly for the receiver, but Soo was before me. 'Yes?' She switched on the light. And then, after a moment: 'For you.' She passed it across to me and turned over, away from the light, as a man's voice spoke in my ear: 'Wade here. We've just got the news. You were there, I gather.'

I came awake then, wondering who the hell he was. 'Who is it? Who's speaking?'

'Wade,' he repeated. 'Commander Wade.'

I remembered then. 'Where are you speaking from?'

'London,' he said. 'Where did you think?' He had a quiet, crisp, well-educated voice. 'Did you see him?'

'Who?'

The man who shot Martinez, of course. Did you recognise him?'

'I didn't see him. How should I? Nobody saw him, not to recognise him.' And I asked him, 'What's it got to do with you, anyway?'

But he ignored that. 'We have a picture here. It's just come in. It shows you seated right beside the Mayor. You must have seen what happened.'

'Of course I did. But the shot came from the villa behind and I was looking at Jorge Martinez, we all were, watching him as he pitched forward down the steps on to the terrace below. The police have full information, they took statements — '

'Yes, yes, we've got a telex copy of your statement here.'

Then why the hell are you phoning me? It's after one in the morning.'

'I'm well aware of the time.' His tone was slightly weary and I guessed he had been at some Navy office most of the evening.

'What are you, Intelligence?' I asked. But all he said was, 'This is an open line, so let's keep to the point. I'm phoning you because Lloyd Jones reported you'd been very helpful in locating a friendof his.' His emphasis on the word friend made it clear he didn't want the man's name mentioned. 'I understand you have now exchanged an unfinished villa and an old fishing boat for his catamaran. Where is he, do you know?' And when I said I had no idea, that he was away fishing somewhere, he asked when I had last seen him.

'Almost two weeks ago.' And I added, 'What business is it of yours? Anyway, you have my statement. You've just said so.'

'Yes, but there's nothing in it about your dealings with this friend of Lloyd Jones. We need to know where he is now, and where he was at the time the Mayor was shot. Hullo, hullo! Are you still there?' His voice had sharpened 'Yes, I'm still here.'

'You didn't answer.'

'Why should I?' I was fully awake now and wondering what his real purpose was. I've no intention of acting for your organisation.'

'What organisation?'

Intelligence,' I said. 'I want no part of it and I'm going to hang up now.'

'No. Don't do that. Not for the moment.' He said it as though he were giving an order on his own quarterdeck.

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'Goodbye.'

'Ahmed Bey. Remember? And the Mattarella brothers.'

'What do you mean?' The receiver was back at my ear, a quite involuntary movement.

'Kenitra,' he said. 'On the coast of Morocco.' And he added, 'You see, I've had a few enquiries made about you. I don't think I need say any more. Now answer my questions please.' There was a coldness in his voice that hadn't been there before, a certainty that I would do what he asked. 'Have you seen our friend since you handed the Santa Mariaover to him ten days ago?'

'No,' I said.

'Have you asked the police where he is?'

'Why should I? A man out fishing…'

'You think he's fishing?' He didn't wait for an answer. 'So you don't know where he is now or where he's been?'

'No.'

'Well, kindly find out.'

'I'm busy,' I said. 'I have clients…'

'fust find out for me. Understand? I'll ring you tomorrow night.'

I opened my mouth to tell him I wouldn't be in, that there was no point, but instead I heard myself say, 'When?'

'Eighteen hundred hours.'

I started to say I would be out then, but the line went suddenly dead.

I lay back, my eyes closed. Ahmed Bey! Jesus! that was more than ten years back. The Jedida-Marseilles run.

'What did he want?' Soo was propped up on one elbow, her large, dark eyes staring at me. 'Who was he?'

'A client, talking about boats.'

'At this time of night?'

'Go to sleep,' I said. I needed to think.

'He said his name was Commander something or other. Was it about Gareth?'

God almighty! She was still thinking of Lloyd Jones. 'No, of course not.' But I could see she didn't believe me.

'Why did he ring then? It's almost half past one. Was it about this man who persuaded you to part with the villa? You shouldn't have done it, Mike. A lovely villa like that, the Santa Mariatoo, and all you've got for it is that bloody catamaran. What did he say? What did he want?' She was leaning forward, ringers gripped urgently on my arm. 'Is it to do with — what happened today?'

'Yesterday,' I said. Already it was yesterday and Wade in London, the man who had told Lloyd Jones to contact me… No, ordered more likely. Ordered him to check with me in the hope of discovering Evans's whereabouts… Wade was concerned enough about what had happened here in Menorca to ring me in the middle of the night.

'Patrick. That's what Gareth called him.' She let go of my arm, slumping back on the pillow. 'What's he been up to now?'

'Now?' My mind shifted from my talk with Wade to Lloyd Jones sitting across from me at that table on the Fornells waterfront. Had he told her more than he had told me? 'What do you know about Patrick Evans?' She shook her head quickly, her eyes sliding away from me. 'What did he tell you?' I was leaning over, shaking her, but all she did was stare at me blankly. 'Nothing — only that he'd saved his life.'

'I know that. Anything else?'

She hesitated, and then she said, They're related.'

'In what way?'

'Just related, that's all. He was explaining why he was so anxious to find the man. A message, I think it was the man's mother. She had asked Gareth to take a message.'

She didn't know what the message was. She thought it might be something to do with a cottage they owned in a place called Gwenogle. 'I remember the name because it sounded so odd, and yet the way Gareth said it…' She was smiling to herself. 'I think maybe he was born in that little Welsh hill village.'

'Who — Gareth or Patrick Evans?'

'Patrick. They're both of them Welsh, of course.' She reached out and switched off the bedside light. I closed my eyes and in the silent darkness I saw Ahmed Bey's face as I had seen it that last time, the bullets slamming his thickset body backwards into the wake of the Italian boat ranging alongside. That was the last trip. They dumped us in an inflatable, no food, no water, the west coast of Africa more than twenty miles away and all desert when we reached it. We were lucky to get out of it alive.

How the hell did Wade know about that? We'd never been caught by the authorities. Was there some sort of a Hie on me at Naval Intelligence? And then I began thinking about Patrick Evans. There had to be some connection — first Lloyd Jones searching for him with out-of-date pictures, then the man himself, and now Wade.

It was in the very middle of the night, still half awake, my mind drowsily running over the possibilities, my imagination working overtime, that I suddenly had an ugly thought. If Wade knew what I'd been up to as a kid, there might be others, Evans, for instance. In which case…

The feeling was so strong, so frightening, I nearly got up there and then in the middle of the night. I didn't sleep after that, waiting for the dawn, certain now that Evans would have retained a key to the catamaran.

At first light I slid out of bed and dressed in the office across the stairhead. I was just searching my pockets for the car keys when Soo emerged, a pale shadow in her cream nightdress, her face still flushed with sleep. She didn't ask me what I was up to or where I was going. She simply said, 'I'll make you some coffee.'

I could have hugged her then, all the love we'd felt for each other surging back in that moment. She knew. That intuitive sense between those who have shared several years of their lives, the sense that at times is pure telepathy, had communicated my fears to her. She knew where I was going, and why. The terrible thought that was in my mind was in hers.

She brought me my coffee, then stood by the window to drink her own. She didn't say anything. There was no need. The sun shining through the thin nightie limned the dark outline of her body, her face, her breasts, the long legs, all in silhouette. She looked infinitely desirable.

I drank the coffee quickly, urgent to be gone, to set my mind at rest, alternatively to… But the alternative didn't bear thinking about. If a search of the boat confirmed my fear, what would I do about it — where would I take it? Out to sea? Come back with it here and take the dinghy?

I put down the cup and walked over to her. I didn't put my arms round her, and she just lifted her face to me, our kiss without passion, gentle and understanding. After all, we had both been there, we had both heard the crack of the gun, no silencer, had seen the poor devil's face explode in a red mash as he had fallen. 'I may be some time,' I said, and she nodded, still not saying anything, but I knew she would be here, waiting for me when I returned.

CHAPTER FOUR

The sun was just rising as I drove round the end of Cala Figuera and on to the Levante, the harbour water still as glass, not a breath of wind, and as yet hardly anyone about. At the harbour end I turned right, then right again on to the approach road to the naval barracks. The naval quay is a large open space used occasionally as a parade ground. Yachts are allowed to be lifted out and laid up there, and there was still quite a line of them not yet in the water. The cat was lying stern-on just next to an old wooden yawl, the paint of her starb'd hull a-glint with the sun's reflected light as the wash of a harbour tug brought ripples slapping against the concrete walls. Beyond her, the city shone red and warm against a blue sky.

The tug hooted as I jumped on board. Aft, by the wheel with its swivel chair, I stood for a moment looking the vessel over, trying to sense whether anybody had been on board during the night. No footmarks and the lock on the saloon door had not been tampered with. But that didn't mean anything. He had given me two ignition keys, but only one for the saloon door. Some fool had dropped the other overboard, he had said.

I must have stood there for several minutes, thinking it over, trying to put myself in his shoes. But then the trouble was I was jumping to too many conclusions, and in the end I said to hell with it, opened the boat up and went below into that big saloon with its repeat bank of instruments, large chart area and semi-circular banquette behind the table on the port side. There were some overalls bundled up on the ledge below the low sweep of windows. They hadn't been there last time I had been on board, nor the long-peaked cap. That would be Carp's, probably the overalls, too. There was a cardboard box full of paint tins and brushes, and the steps to the left that normally led down into the port hull had been folded back so that he could get at the engine. A steel tool box stood open on the floor nearby.

I had brought a couple of torches with me, for this was a bilge-and-hidden-cranny search. A rummage, in fact, and however long it took, I had to be sure the ship was clean.

I started on the starb'd hull, cupboards, lockers, drawers, mattresses, then finally the bilges, remembering the one time I had experienced a customs rummage. It was in Juan-les-Pins where I had run for shelter, six officiers de douaneturning the whole ship inside out, body searching myself and my crew. I think they would have liked to beat us up, but I was Morocco-registered, flying the Moroccan flag, and there were political reasons why, having found nothing, they should respect that flag.

It took me a good half-hour to go through that one hull, despite the floor being well supplied with inspection covers, each with a brass ring for ease of lifting. All I found in the bilges was a pair of glasses in a slipcase, some dirty overalls and a couple of bottles of Mistra, a Maltese wine, that looked as though they had been there some time.

The saloon didn't take long. If he had hidden it somewhere it was unlikely he would have chosen such an obvious place, unless of course he was willing to take his time and unscrew the panels housing the electrics. And the port hull was as clean as the other, odds and ends of equipment, a half-empty bottle of Gordon's in the bilges, nothing else, and both engine compartments I could see at a glance were clear.

I returned to the saloon, sat on the helmsman's swivel chair and tried to think what I would have done in his place. He had had the boat for some time, that much had been clear at our meeting. If I had known the boat as well as that, where would I have hidden it? Fuel or freshwater tanks were the obvious places for small packets, but there was no way he could have introduced such a large object into any of the tanks without dismantling them. Sails? But I had checked the sail bags. They were in the bows, in lockers for'ard of the loos on both sides that held chain, anchors, rope, paint. My eyes, roving round the saloon, fastened on the up-ended steps of the port hull, the exposed top of the port diesel engine. Engines! It was always engines that caused trouble.

I went over to it, bending down again and directing my torch below the shock-absorbent bedding bolts and aft along the line of the drive shaft to the propeller, sure that he or his engineer would have known every detail of the compartment. There was an area below the prop shaft that the beam of my torch could not reach. There was nothing for it but to strip down and wriggle in there. I got thoroughly dirty, of course, and it proved to be wasted effort, though the slope of the bilge underneath the shaft was fully long enough and deep enough. I came out of that painful exercise cursing, the room for manoeuvre in that restricted space soi limited that I damn nearly got myself stuck. Nobody, I was certain, would have attempted to hide anything in such an awkward place, not if he were in a hurry.

I stood there, naked except for my pants that were now streaked black with oil. I was staring at the steps down into the starb'd hull that concealed the other engine. And then there was the panelling. I was already scratched and bleeding in a couple of places, but I knew if I didn't check out that other cavity I would never be really certain. I lifted the steps. The compartment was exactly the same as the other, just room for me to wriggle my way headfirst between the outboard side of the hull and the cold metal of the engine. The torch was dimming, but rather than go back for the other, I squirmed further in, feeling down below the shaft with my outstretched hand.

That's how I found it — a hard, chunky package wrapped in plastic.

It took some ingenuity and some juggling to extract it from the confined space, working my way backwards at the same time. But when I was finally out, standing in the sunlight streaming through the saloon windows, and the thing in my hand, there was no doubt what it was. The only question was the type and where it had come from.

I turned quickly to the open cockpit door, feeling suddenly furtive as I slammed it shut and bolted it. Christ almighty! If somebody saw me holding this… My hands were trembling as I unwrapped the package. It had been zipped into one of those plastic travelling cases for suits, rolled into a tight bundle, then taped. I had to get a carving knife from the galley to rip it open.

By then I hadn't much doubt, the shape of the telescope and the folding butt apparent through the stiff red plastic. It was that most common of guns, a 7.62 mm Kalashnikov. But not the ordinary assault rifle. What I unwrapped from the plastic was the sniper's version of the AK-47. In addition to telescopic sights it had a double strut folding metal butt. The struts were in the folded position. Automatically, almost without thinking, I unfolded them, bringing the rifle to my shoulder and sighting through the for'ard window of the saloon at a gull on a mooring buoy out by the naval jetty. It felt snug and workmanlike, and I could imagine how it had been to the killer, the back of forge's head there in the magnified field of vision, dead-centred on the cross wires.

I glanced at the maker's stamp on the side of it, Czechoslovakian, not Russian. Then I checked the firing mechanism. The safety catch was on and it was set at single shot. I sniffed the muzzle. It still smelt faintly of gun smoke, so did the inside of the plastic, and when I took the magazine off I found one round was missing.

My worst fears confirmed I stood there in a sort of daze, appalled at the evil of the man. To kill for political reasons, yes, maybe that could be justified by somebody deeply committed to a cause — that was a matter between him and whatever god he accepted. But Evans could have no possible commitment to a Menorquin, or even a Spanish political faction. To kill in cold blood as a mercenary, and then to plant the weapon on somebody else, on a man he didn't know, had only just met…!

I felt the chill of it in my guts. Man might be a rogue species; Petra certainly thought so and had discussed it with me in one of her more serious moments. But this — this was quite abnormal, quite outside of my experience. Once, and once only, I had undertaken an arms run. Explosives, detonators, some land mines, Kalashnikovs and Birettas — we had landed them in a deserted cove just south of Finisterre, handing the whole cargo over to Basque separatists. At least the Eta boys who took delivery had had a cause. But this…

I sat down in one of the chairs that stood by the saloon table, wondering what to do now. Go to the Guardia?Tell the plain-clothes detectives of the national police who had been put on to the case? But I could see the expression of disbelief on the face of the Inspector Jefe.I had met him once, a small, very dark man with eyes too close together and a sharp, suspicious face.'They would be looking for somebody they could pin the atrocity on and I had a feeling I would do just as well as anyone else, so long as it was a foreigner and local politics not involved. The fact that I had been standing beside Martinez didn't mean I couldn't have organised the whole thing. And now, with the killer's weapon in my hand, what the hell was I to do with it? Dump it at sea, I suppose. Take it out in the dinghy and dump it, somewhere out beyond Bloody Island, and hope nobody would have their binoculars trained on me at the time.

Carp arrived just as I put the kettle on. I heard his motor bike splutter to a stop on the quay and I called out to him to ask if he would like a cup of tea. By then I had cleaned myself up and dressed, everything more or less normal, except for the rolled-up bedding on the settle by the cockpit door. I told him I had spilled some oil on it and was taking it ashore to be cleaned.

He wasn't surprised to find me on board at that hour. The boat was due to leave for Malta in a few days' time and everything was in the last-minute-rush stage. We sat around for ten minutes or so, drinking our tea and talking over all the things that still had to be done.

It was when I was in the car and actually driving back along the waterfront, the gun in the back, that the idea came to me. I eased up on the accelerator, my mind racing as I glanced in the rear mirror. It was such a neat counter-thrust, but was I sure? Was I absolutely certain it was Evans who had planted that thing on board? But who else? And even if it was one of the others, then it didn't make any difference. I eased into the parking space just past the commercial wharf, swung the wheel over, making a U-turn that headed me back, past the turning to Cala Rata and Mesquida, past the connecting road to the main Mahon-Ciudadela Highway and out along the Fornells road. A quarter of an hour later I had reached the crossroads and had turned right on to the side road heading to Port d'Addaia and Arenal d'en Castell, the sun higher now and the air warm as it blew in through the open sunshine roof.

The headland running out to Punta Codolar was brown against the blue of sea and sky. It was just after nine and everything bright and fresh. Bougainvillaea flashed purple on the wall of a villa. A beautiful morning, one of those days it was good to be alive. I should have been singing at the top of my voice. Instead, all I could think about was that bloody rifle and whether I would find Evans back from his voyage in the Santa Maria.What the hell did I do if he, or one of his mates, was in residence?

The villa rose slowly above the flat, scrub-clad rock of the headland like the rusty hulk of a ship coming up over the horizon. There were still vestiges of Miguel's scaffolding clinging to the breeze-block sides and as I drove up to it I thought how ugly it looked in its half-finished state, its upper windows gaping squares that looked like the gun embrasures of a coastal defence blockhouse.

I parked the car and got out, standing for a moment, staring up at it, thinking about what I would say if there was somebody there. I could have left something behind. Any excuse would do. But there was no vehicle anywhere around and it looked empty enough. I went up to the door and hammered on it. Nobody answered. I tried it, but it was locked, or more probably bolted from the inside, for when I went round to the back, I found a hasp had been screwed on to the rear door frame and there was a brand new padlock to secure it.

The villa, isolated there on the very point of the headland, was several hundred metres from any other building. Looking round, I counted seven villas within sight, all of them only just visible, and all of them apparently deserted, no sign of any movement of either people or vehicles. The garage window was the one I finally chose, bunching an old dinghy sail I had in the car against one of the four panes and slamming my elbow into it until the glass cracked. Only one piece fell on the floor and that I cleared up later,' the rest I was able to pull out by hand, leaving a neat empty square through which it was easy to reach the latch. There was always a chance that the absence of that one pane might go unnoticed for a time.

It took me several minutes to find what I wanted, a loose section of flooring where the electrician had been at work. It was in the kitchen and I prised it up with two of the knives lying among a pile of unwashed plates in the sink. Underneath, between the concrete base and the wood floor, grey plastic-coated wires followed the copper piping that carried water to the kitchen taps and the water heater above the draining board. I took the wrapping off the gun, wiped it over carefully with my handkerchief, then thrust it as far into the cavity as I could and hammered the shortened section of floorboard back into place with my feet.

Looking at it, I felt a certain sense of satisfaction. There was nothing to indicate that it had been tampered with, but police officers searching the building would certainly want to see underneath. I left by the way I had come, gathering up the little pile of broken glass and latching the window after me. It was only when I was driving back to Mahon that I began to wonder where Evans and his two men were now, how long it would be before they returned to the villa.

Back at Gala Figuera I found two plain-clothes detectives waiting for me, their car parked outside the chandlery. They were in the office, an inspector and his assistant, both of them drinking coffee while Soo, her dressing gown over her nightie, sat across the desk from them, looking pale and angry. 'I keep telling them where we were sitting we couldn't possibly have had anything to do with it. They came just after you left. They wanted to talk to you, but I didn't know where you'd gone, how to get in touch with you, so they started asking me questions, then this man — ' she jerked her head at the inspector — 'said they must search the house and they have been over everywhere, including the store.' All this she said in a rush, the words tumbling over themselves. 'Now they're waiting for you, so I gave them some coffee.' And she added, 'They want to search the boat, too. They seem to think we're hiding something.'

By then they were on their feet, their behaviour very correct. 'Some questions please. Then we go to this catamaran you have acquired.' The inspector was the taller of the two, a dark, hook-nosed man, his Spanish markedly Catalan. 'You have been down to this catamaran this morning?'

'Si.'And I told him why. 'It is due in Malta shortly to pick up some American tourists.'

'So you are getting it ready.' He nodded. 'You go with it, or you stay here — which?'

I hesitated. It hadn't occurred to me until then. 'I'm not sure,' I said. 'Senor Carpenter may take her with just one other man, but if the weather is bad — ' I left it at that and he began questioning me about where I had been, what I had done after we had been allowed to leave the Albufera hospitality pavilion the previous afternoon.

'I've already told him,' Soo said.

He understood English, even if he did not speak it, for he said, 'Si, si,but, senor, I wish to hear it from you.'

So we went over it all again, an interrogation that took about quarter of an hour. Then suddenly he seemed to get bored with it. 'Now we go and inspect your ship please.' He called it a barco,so avoiding the word catamaran. 'You want to come, senora?' He turned politely to Soo.

She smiled. 'Not unless you insist.'

'No, of course not. I do not insist.' He bowed politely as she took her cue and left the office. 'May I use your telephone please?' He lifted the receiver and when he got through he spoke to somebody who was obviously his superior, reporting that he had discovered nothing new and telling him that they were on their way now to search the boat. 'Si, Jefe.Senor Steele will be accompanying us.'

It took them a good hour to search the boat, and when they had finished, having failed to find what they were looking for, they settled themselves at the saloon table, the inspector taking out a notebook and beginning to scribble a report. Knowing from the phone call he had made in the office that they would stay here until their chief, an inspector Jefe,arrived, I asked them whether they would like a drink. The inspector hesitated, then declined somewhat reluctantly. I told him I had work to do and would he excuse me, but he shook his head, becoming suddenly quite excited and making it very clear that I was to stay here on board.

'For how long?' I asked him.

'As long as is necessary.'

'And if I go ashore now?'

'I shall be forced to stop you.' He used the word detention.I went up on deck then and gave Carp a hand. He needed to go up the mast to reeve a new spinnaker halyard and wanted somebody else besides Luis on the winch. It was while we were hoisting him up in the bo's'n's chair that the Inspector Jefearrived. As soon as Carp was at the top, we made the hoist fast and I went aft to welcome him.

'Garcia Menendez.' He gave a little bow as we shook hands, his manner polite, but at the same time assertive, his sharp eyes, almost black in the sunlight, staring at me full of alert curiosity. 'Inspector Molina, is he still here?… Good. Then we go inside where there are no distractions.' He made a gesture with his hand that seemed to embrace the sunshine, the water, all the movement of Mahon harbour at noon on a fine spring day. He had an engineer with him. He did not introduce him to me, but he did ask my permission before telling him to go ahead with a search of the engine compartments.

We went below and I offered him a drink. He shook his head, taking the inspector's place on the banquette and waving me to a position opposite him. The engineer was already slipping into a pair of white overalls. I watched him as he folded back the steps to the starb'd hull accommodation and probed the interior of the engine compartment with his torch. I felt slightly sick, knowing that somebody must have told them where to look. 'Some questions please,' the Jefesaid. 'Matters that have arisen in the course of our investigation. First, the ownership of this yacht which arrive here from Marseilles. There is a passenger on board. You know him?'

'No.' And I explained about the deal Evans and I had agreed on, all the time conscious of the engineer working his way into the afterpart of the engine compartment. Like I

so many engineers he was not a small man and I could hear him grunting with the effort of squeezing his way to a point where he could check the whole length of the prop shaft and the bilge cavity below it. There was no doubt about it — they had been told exactly where to look. If I hadn't got there before them… 'I would like to see the documents please.' Menendez's words, sharp and official, cut across my thoughts. 'The documents of exchange,' he added. 'You have exchanged a fishing boat and an uncompleted villa on Punta Codolar, you say, for this big catamaran yacht. Who is your lawyer?'

'Martin Lopez.'

'Ah si.And he has the documents I suppose?'

'He is drawing them up,' I told him. 'It was all done in rather a hurry.'

'The ship's papers then. I would like to see the Certificate of Registry. Or are they also being prepared by your lawyer?'

That was when I realised how complete the trap had been, how cleverly prepared, for I couldn't produce the ship's papers, and all I could tell him was that I had seen them, but Evans had told me he had had to lodge them with the Banca Espagnol as security for a small overdraft he had requested after opening an account with them. 'He is arranging for a copy to be sent to my lawyer.'

'I have already spoken to Senor Lopez and he does not have it. He has sent it to England for the boat to be registered in your name.'

The engineer had emerged from the engine compartment, his overalls no longer white. He was breathing heavily and reported he had found nothing. Then it is in the otherengine,' Menendez said. The engineer nodded and crossed to the port side of the saloon beyond the chart table and lifted the steps that covered that engine. Menendez watched me, waiting for some sign of panic. 'Also,' he said, speaking slowly, 'there is some problem about the exchange document.'

'What problem?' I asked him. It was the first I'd heard that there was any difficulty over the paperwork and from what he was saying it was obvious he had known every detail of the arrangement between Evans and myself before coming on board and asking me questions. But then in a place like Mahon, where everyone of importance knew everyone else, I suppose it is inevitable, particularly as I was an extranjero.That's the first I've heard that there's any difficulty over the papers,' I told him. 'Did you gather what the trouble was?'

'Only that Senor Lopez was unable to contact this man Evans.'

'He is away fishing. That's why he wanted the Santa Mariain a hurry, so that he could earn some money fishing.'

The Jefenodded. 'Of course. He is apescador.'And then looking straight at me — 'Do you think he is a good one?' The thick lips under the hooked nose gave me a little crooked smile.

'I've no idea.'

'But you let him go off with your boat, the Santa Maria,and with no proper security. You are a businessman, Senor Steele. Does it surprise you that I find that a little strange?' He stared at me a moment, then switched his gaze to the torch-lit cavity of the open engine compartment, waiting for his engineer to report that he had found what they were looking for. 'It is a question of dates,' he added, his eyes still fixed on the starb'd side, the fingers of his right hand tapping impatiently at the table top. 'The precise date when you take over this boat.'

I sat there, feeling numb, the trap springing shut, and seeing the way they had planned it, the devilish simplicity of it. He was watching me again now, pulling out a packet of cigarettes. He offered me one, and when I said I only smoked a pipe, he laughed, and then in the act of lighting his own, quite casually, he said, The Cruz Rojo.You remember? And after, when the fireworks are over, where do you go then?' And when I didn't say anything, wondering what his question was leading up to, he went on, 'It was the night of the gala Manuela Renato arrange in the Quarries above Figuera. We were both there. Remember?'

I nodded, wondering what Petra had said, or Soo, talking to the sisters, babbling under anaesthetic? Had they dreamed up a scenario in which I was involved in running contraband into the island?

'No,' he said. 'You don't forget because in the early hours of the morning your wife gives birth prematurely and your baby is dead.'

'Have you found the men?' I asked him. The two men who pushed her down the slope in their haste to get out of that cave?'

He shook his head. 'No. I don't think we ever will. They are not Menorquin and we think they almost certainly leave the island very soon after.' And he added, 'Unless they go to the mainland of Spain, it is very difficult for us to trace their movements. Even in Barcelona, if they take the ferry, it is simple for them to disappear across the French border. No,' he said again, 'we do not know anything about them. What we do know, however, is that the night before there is a boat in Cales Coves and it is tied up against the rocks below the cave you were in that night. We have a description of that boat, a description that is indicative of a single mast and two hulls. We have checked with the harbour authorities and there is no boat of such description in either Mahon or Ciudadela, not in Fornells either — only this one.'

'So,' I said. 'What is the significance of that?' But I knew bloody well what was in his mind.

He was smiling now. 'Did you know there is a landward exit from that cave?' And when I explained we had been solely concerned with the two men who had rushed out from that passage, he nodded. 'Of course. And it is unfortunate about the father of Senorita Callis, that she is not here to answer some questions.'

'You're checking, I suppose, that her father really does exist, that his car accident did happen?'

'Of course. It takes time, and meanwhile you are here to answer all our questions. Let us suppose,' he said, his eyes almost closed. 'It is just a thought, eh? Suppose it is this yacht that is in Gales Coves the night before she take you to that cave. What do you think it might be doing there?'

'Sheltering, I suppose.'

'Why? Why Cales Coves and not Mahon or Ciudadela?'

'If they'd had a longish passage, from Mallorca or Corsica '

'Or Tunis,' he said softly. 'Somewhere along the shores of North Africa.'

'If there'd been a passage like that,' I told him, 'with poor weather conditions you can get awfully tired, even in a stable boat like this. Then you just put in to the first shelter you find, head down and lights out.'

He nodded, still with that little smile. 'Of course. I understand. But no navigation lights when coming in. Also there is a light in that cave mouth for a full hour before the boat appear. That is what attracted the attention of this witness we interview.' He paused, watching me. 'The boat has no lights all the time it was tied up under the cliffs, and there is no light any longer in the cave mouth. But there is the occasional flash of torches. There was a moon, you see, and some cloud in the sky.' He sat back, suddenly relaxed. 'Well now, you are a businessman, Senor Steele, you have a position in Menorca, Spanish friends. But it was not always like that, eh? Before you come to Menorca, before your marriage. So, what does the description I have given you of what our witness saw suggest to you?'

If I said it suggested smuggling, he would think I was involved. If I said it didn't suggest a damn thing, he'd know I was lying and be even more suspicious.

'You don't say anything?'

I shrugged, stretching my face into a smile. 'Your guess is as good as mine.'

'You have been to Bisley?' The question took me by surprise. But of course, somebody would have told him about the cups. The inspector might have taken a note of them and reported. 'You are a good shot I think.' He was smiling again, the eyes bright like a bird that has seen a particularly succulent snail.

I nodded. 'Why? What's that got to do with it?'

He sat there, smiling still, and not answering, everything so quiet I could hear the distant chime of the cathedral clock. 'Look, for God's sake! I was there, right beside Jorge Martinez, sitting in front of a whole crowd of people. However good a shot I was at Bisley, there's no way I could have done it.'

'No. But there is somebody else. Antonio Barriago. You know him? A Spaniard who live in Algiers.'

Barriago! We stared at each other. Had he been the passenger that American yachtsman had said was on Thunderflashwhen she arrived in Mahon? Had Evans sailed the boat from a North African port, merely calling in at Marseilles on the way? 'What about him?' I asked. Barriago had been in the final shoot-off for the Oporto Cup, which was almost the last event I had taken part in.

'You don't know him?' It was put subtly, an invitation to deny all knowledge.

'No, I don't knowhim,' I said. 'I've shot against him. That was three years ago and I haven't seen him since. Why?' And when he didn't say anything, just sat there staring at me, I asked him why he was searching the boat.

For a moment I thought he wasn't going to tell me that, but in the end he gave a little shrug and said, 'Suppose it is Barriago who kill the Alcalde. And suppose — just suppose, Senor Steele — he has been on board this boat — '

But I stopped him there. 'I tell you, I haven't seen the man for three years.'

'All right then. Suppose he is on board when Senor Evans is the owner of it.' He nodded at the engineer's protruding feet. 'That is why we are searching your boat. It has been in your possession since more than two weeks before the Alcalde is killed and we have been advised where is the most safe place for him to have hidden it.'

'Who advised you?' I asked him.

But he had turned away, watching the engineer again as he began to wriggle backwards. 'Now I think we know whether you are involved or not. 'Bueno?'he asked.

The engineer grunted something unintelligible, and when he finally emerged, switching off his torch and standing there, wiping his hands and face on a bit of cotton waste, Menendez repeated his question, his voice sharp and urgent — 'Bueno y bueno, que has encontrado!'

'Nada.'

The engineer pulled up the steps, slamming the engine compartment shut. It was clear he had had enough of clambering round in the confined space of the yacht's engines.

Menendez turned to the inspector, checking the details of their earlier search. Then he gave a little shrug. 'Eh bueno,it seems this boat is now clean.' He was staring at me, a hard look in his eyes as he emphasised the word now.

'Barriago,' I said. 'Why do you think he killed Jorge Martinez?'

'You do not know?' Still that hard stare as he waited for an answer. 'A man answering his description, but with a different name, took an Aviaco flight out of here for Mallorca less than two hours after the shooting. At Palma he changed planes and flew on to Tunisia. The police in Tunis are endeavouring to trace him for us.'

I told him I didn't see what this had to do with me, but all he said was, 'He is a crack shot — ' He used the words tirador experto 'and you knew him. That is all. Nothing more.' He reached for an ashtray and stubbed out his cigarette. 'Eh bueno,'he said again and got to his feet, the others following him. 'When you wish to make a statement..' Those sharp little eyes were fixed on mine. 'A full statement, then you come to my office. Okay?' He was suddenly smiling again.

'You really think I had something to do with Martinez's death?'

He shrugged. That is between you and your conscience. When you are ready to talk…' He said this over his shoulder as he went up the steps to the cockpit, his two officers behind him. The truth, that is all I am interested in.' He was standing like a cut-out against the blueness of the sky, his hair very black in the sunlight.

'I wonder you don't ask for my passport?' It was a silly thing to say, but he could have arrested me if he had been sure enough to charge me with anything.

He turned as he reached the quay. 'I already have your passport,' he said. 'It was the main reason I sent my officers to search your premises. In fact, your wife was kind enough to give it to them.' He raised his hand, a little gesture of farewell. 'Adios.'His driver was holding the car door open and he stepped in and was driven off. The other two lingered for a moment, staring at the boat as though trying to remember everything about her. Then they, too, drove away and I was left alone with Carp, his craggy features more puckered than usual. He didn't speak Spanish, but he understood enough to know I was in trouble. 'Come the next few days reck'n you'll find out who your real friends are,' he said, his Suffolk accent broader than ever. That was all and he turned away. That spi rope's rove, but Luis an' I gotter coil down the port anchor warp. Be for'ard if you want me.' And then, as he crossed the coachroof, heading for the port bow, he said over his shoulder, 'I'll be ready whenever you say — just in case you're coming too.'

I went back into the saloon then, standing there alone and trying to think things out. Antonio Barriago. That was three years back, the thousand-yard range and the two of us lying side by side shooting it out, a crowd gathered behind us, the smell of gun oil and cordite hanging on the still air and the targets shimmering in the haze. And afterwards, in one of the messes — I couldn't remember which — the two of us professing our friendship and promising to meet again. We never had, and the next I heard of him he was a mercenary captured by SWAPO on the Zaire border.

That was all I knew about him. He might well be Basque and a member of Eta, but why risk a terrorist attack so far from the political centre of Spain? In any case, a mercenary was hardly likely to be a committed political activist.

Either his departure from Menorca so soon after the shooting was purely coincidental, or else, if he really had killed Martinez, then he had been hired to do the job. In which case, hired by whom, and for what purpose? Did the Chief Inspector really think I had hired him? In that case, he must think I had a reason. What? What possible reason could I have for wanting Jorge Martinez killed? And Wade, where did he fit in? Or Lloyd Jones, or Evans? If the police were tapping my phone…

I got myself a glass of iced coffee from the ship's fridge and sat there thinking about it, conscious all the time of Carp and Luis moving about the deck. I should be up there with them, helping prepare the boat for sea, not sitting alone at the saloon table wondering what the hell to do. Ring the lawyer, check about the exchange documents, contact some of the people who might know where Evans was. But what I was really thinking about was Soo giving them my passport. She might at least have told me. And Wade phoning me again this evening.

I finished my coffee, then drove back to the office. Soo was out. She had left a note to say she would be back around four. I phoned Martin Lopez, catching him just as he was going to lunch. He confirmed that the catamaran's certificate of registration had been sent to England for alteration. And yes, there had been a little problem with the exchange contracts, nothing serious, just a matter of dating it. Evans had signed it all right, but he had dated it the previous month. Intentionally? No, just a mistake, it happened quite often.

Like hell it did! Not if you knew the purpose behind it. For a moment I was tempted to take him into my confidence, tell him about the Kalashnikov. But that meant telling him what I had done with it, and anyway a lawyer who handled the affairs of some of the most prominent people in Menorca would hardly relish the thought that he might be acting for a foreigner who had got himself involved in the murder of a politician so universally popular as Jorge Martinez. I kept my mouth shut, and in doing so made myself not only accessory to an act of terrorism, but also to all that followed.

How was I, yachtsman, charterer, small-time businessman, an escapee if you like into the lotus life of the Mediterranean, to know, or even to understand, the machinations of those far removed from the little Balearic island of Menorca? There was Wade, of course, and Gareth Lloyd Jones, Patrick Evans with his two toughies and a lovely catamaran with which to tempt me. I should have known. At any rate, I should have guessed. But that is hindsight. God almighty! I couldn't possibly have known, not then, sitting at my desk with a gin and tonic and staring out of the open window, not a breath of air stirring, the water mirror-calm and the shimmering hulk of the hospital riding to its upside-down reflection like one of those great floating batteries the French and Spanish navies had used against Gibraltar at the end of the eighteenth century.

If only Petra were still here. I could have talked it over with her — practical, matter-of-fact, and that bouncing, vital body of hers. I had a sudden picture of her lying naked on top of me, that last time, the day after Soo had lost the baby. If only she'd been out there in that tent on the far side of the island. No breeze at all and the air outside almost as hot as midsummer.

I got suddenly to my feet, finished my drink and drove round to a little restaurant I often used near the Club Maritime. I had gazpachoand gambas planchawith half a bottle of Campo Viejo, sitting there in the darkened interior, shocked to find myself eating alone as though I were some sort of pariah. In the old days I'd done that quite often. I'd had to. But since I had come to Menorca… since then, of course, there'd always been Soo and the host of friends we had made — people we knew, anyway. Never the need to be alone.

Back in the office I.began ringing round to discover whether Evans had put in anywhere. I think if I had phoned Florez he might have told me right away. But Florez was the last person I wanted to contact in the circumstances. It took me three calls before I thought of Felipe Lopescado who ran a little tabernaon the Ciudadela waterfront. 'LaSanta Maria? Si — un senior Ingles.'He even knew the name. 'Pat Eevanz.' The boat had come in to the puertoat Ciudadela late the night before last. There had been three men on board and they had come ashore for a drink about ten-thirty. 'Si,at the Taberna Felipe.'

'Is the boat still there?' I asked him.

'Si.'

'Was it there yesterday?'

'Si, all day.' And he assured me the men were still on board, all three of them.

'Do you know where they were at midday yesterday?' I had to ask him straight out like that, there was no alternative.

'They were here in the taberna.''For how long?'

'About three hours. You have eat here, senor. You and the senora. You know how long it takes.'

'They had lunch at your place then, all three of them?'

'Si. They have mejillones.The mussels are fresh in that morning, very good, very beeg. Then the capitanhave rabo de toroand there is one polioand one escalope.Also my tabernaRioja and some Quinta with the coffee.'

'And the captain's name?'

'I tell you, he is Pat Eevanz.'

I had him describe the man then, but it was Patrick Evans all right, and after leaving the taberna,Evans, with one of the others, had taken a taxi into the centra,while the third man returned on board. Felipe couldn't tell me when Evans had returned, but he assured me the man had been there this morning, because he'd seen him talking to the harbour master on the quay, and the Santa Mariawas still anchored in the same position. He thought it likely that their catch had been off-loaded at some other port. Certainly, no fish had been landed from the vessel in Ciudadela.

I was left wondering when Evans had planted that gun in the starb'd engine compartment, even whether he had.

I cleared my desk, then drove out to the airport just south of the San Clemente road. I thought Alejandro Suarez, the assistant manager and one of the few islanders who really enjoyed sailing, might be able to produce somebody on the airport staff, or at the Aviaco desk, who had actually spoken to Tony Barriago, somebody who could give me an idea of the man's state of mind. It would have taken him no more than half an hour at the outside to clock in at the airport, which would mean perhaps half an hour of waiting before actually boarding the plane. Plenty of time for his nerves to become ragged.

But Alex said the police had already interrogated everyone who might have spoken to him and the only person who had been able to recall him was the Aviaco woman who had dealt with his ticket. She remembered him because he had come back afterwards to enquire whether the plane had arrived yet, and when she said it was due in almost immediately, he had thanked her and turned away, apparently quite satisfied. He had appeared relaxed, not in the least nervous or upset. 'Do they think he is the killer of Don Martinez?'

'Possibly.' We were standing in the airport lounge, which was packed with people. The PA system suddenly broke into life, the hubbub rising to a crescendo as friends and relatives said their goodbyes to passengers on a Barcelona flight.

'Pardon. I have to go now. If there is anything else..' Alex smiled at me apologetically and went through into the departure area where, in addition to immigration and customs officials, security officers were screening the passengers before embarkation. Would Tony Barriago have been sweating as he went through the last stage before boarding the plane? But the security officer on duty now might not be the same as yesterday, and anyway, it was such an obvious line of enquiry that the police would have covered it already.

The crowd in the main lounge had thinned to a few people sitting at tables drinking coffee or wine and waiting for another flight. I wandered out into the long passageway that led to the arrivals area. This was what Tony would have done, mingled with the crowd from an incoming flight, even taken a stroll outside, anything rather than sit in the main lounge, boxed in and too conspicuous until it had filled up. I had a word with Maria at the stand that sold magazines and postcards, and then it occurred to me that he might have had a taxi waiting for him outside, just in case.

I went out and began checking with the drivers. A British charter flight was due in and there was quite a line of taxis waiting. It was about the ninth or tenth I spoke to, a fat man with a Panama hat perched on his head, who said he'd been there the previous afternoon when the Guardiadrove up to the airport, and yes, he had seen a taxi waiting in the car park opposite. He had noticed it because normally taxis waited in the line. They did not park with the private cars. And when the police arrived, a short, hook-nosed man, who had presumably hired the taxi, went across and spoke with the driver. He had stayed there talking to him for several minutes, right up until the time his flight was called. Then he had hurried back into the airport.

'And the taxi?' I asked him.

He come out of the car park and join us in the taxi line.'

'He had paid him off then?'

'Yes, the man pay him before going back into the airport.'

Did the taxi leave the car park immediately?'

'No, he wait there until the plane take off. Then he join us.'

I asked him the driver's name then and he said 'Gonzalez.' He did not know his other name, but he thought he came from Villa Carlos.

I thanked him and went back to my car, convinced now that Menendez had been right. The description fitted and Tony Barriago had got away with it. At the time he flew out to Palma, and then on to Tunis, the police had had no idea who they were looking for.

Soo had returned by the time I got back. She had been to see Manuela Renato's sister, Maria, who was married to Hernando Pons, the most successful of the local property developers. 'They're very worried,' she said. 'Jorge's death leaves a vacuum and they're now getting together with their friends to fill it. The problem is they don't have any one man in mind, so that already there is a danger they'll split up into factions, each advancing their own candidate. The effect may well be that a man nobody wants will be elected.'

'Who?' I asked.

'Maria couldn't say. Florez perhaps since he has a garage m Mahon as well as in Alayor, and of course business friends in both towns. Even Ismail Fuxa's name was mentioned. Those were the two worst possibilities, of course, but it shows what a problem this thing has created, and what she was saying to me was that it was time to be out of property in Menorca, at least until things have settled down. I saw Carmen, too. She was in one of her tense moods, a little scared I thought, and she had that wicked little woman, Mercedes, with her. Mercedes said we should leave now, go back to England, or wherever it was we came from, that it was all our fault — Thatcher, Reagan bombs, new development… She was quite rude.' And Soo added, as though it were all part of the gossip she'd picked up, They took your passport, by the way.'

'Menendez said you gave it to them.'

They asked where it was, so I told them.' And she added a little defensively, They'd have found it anyway.'

'Possibly.'

She flared up at that. 'Not possibly — inevitably. You can't pin the loss of your passport on me. They'd have turned the whole place inside out if I hadn't told them.'

I went through into the kitchen, got some ice and mixed a strong dry martini. Damned if I was going to have a row with her over it, but just to give it to them without argument or even any sort of protest.. 'Do you want one?' I asked her.

She nodded, standing by the window with Benjie in her arms.

I took down two glasses, and when I had poured the drinks, we stood there, not saying anything, just drinking in silence. And all the time I was conscious of her staring at me, her dark eyes big and round, the question she dared not ask on the tip of her tongue. In the end all she said was 'Your passport wouldn't be any use; they'll be watching the airport, the ferry terminal — '

'They know who did it,' I told her.

'Who?'

'A Spaniard. He left immediately afterwards — by plane Then why — '

'I knew him, at Bisley.'

She turned to glance at the cups, then gulped down the rest of her martini, her eyes very wide and fixed on me The weapon then? Where is it?' Her face had a pallid frightened look.

I gave a little shrug. The closeness that had once beer Between us was gone now and I was no longer willing to share my thoughts and actions with her the way I had. It wasn't that I didn't trust her. It was just that the links that had bound us close were no longer strong enough, so that I felt instinctively it was best for her not to know what I had done with the gun, or even that I had found it hidden cm board.

'So you'll be taking the boat yourself.' She was still staring at me, holding herself very stiff, her small body almost quivering with tension.

I hadn't made up my mind, and the way she said it I knew what she must be thinking. But I wouldn't be running away from anything, only giving myself time and room for manoeuvre. The boat was just about ready, and in Malta I could probably produce some reasonable excuse for being without a passport.

'I'm right, aren't I? You'll go with the boat to Malta.' She had put the dog down, holding her glass tight with both hands and gazing out across the water.

'Perhaps,' I murmured. I can remember the way I said it, flatly, without feeling, and looking back on it now, I realised it wasn't fear, of arrest that was driving me to get away on my own for a time. Even if Menendez did decide to accuse me of smuggling arms, the knowledge that I was completely innocent made me certain Martin Lopez would be able to sort the whole thing out, given time. No, it was Soo. If she had slept with the man, had an affair with him, that was something I could have lived with. But love, a real passion — that is something that strikes at the heart of a man. It leaves him nothing — nothing to strive tor, no purpose. Both pride and practicality dictated a break.

'Are any of the people you knew still there? Have you kept in touch?'

I shook my head. 'Mintoff and the new man will have made it impossible for them.'

'There's my mother's relatives.'

'Your mother hasn't been back since your father retired.' I took her glass and refilled it, then mixed some more and went back to the window. Flurries of an onshore breeze were darkening the water. This was the view I had looked out on ever since we had married and settled down to build a business on this island.

'Gareth might be useful.' She said it tentatively.

'How do you mean?'

'In addition to showing the flag in the Balearics and one or two of the Italian islands, he thought it possible Malta would be included in his orders. He asked if I had any messages.'

'Did he say when he was leaving Gib?'

'No. His letter was written the day after he went on board. There was no mention of his having received orders only that he looked forward to seeing us again when Medusavisited Mahon.'

'Wade may know his movements.' I stood there, sipping my martini, staring out of the window and thinking about the future. Malta was over six hundred miles away and even if we averaged ten knots, which was just possible with a favourable wind, it would take us the better part 01 three days.

We didn't say much after that, our thoughts locked in on ourselves, and as the shadows lengthened and six o'clock approached, I asked her to leave me so that I could talk to Wade on my own. I remember I shut the door behind her and in doing so it seemed as though I was shutting myself out from the past.

Wade was late. Only a few minutes, but expecting bin: to come through prompt at 18.00, waiting, it seemed an age. The sound of the phone when it came was startlingly loud, his voice even more upper-class English, more clipped than when he had phoned me in the early hours 'Wade here. Did you locate him?'

'Yes.' And I told him where Evans was and how he had been having a meal in the Taberna Felipe on the Ciudadela waterfront at the time of the shooting. 'He couldn't have done it,' I said.

'Of course not.' And he added, 'Yesterday the Spanish police asked Interpol to locate an Italian from Naples who was booked out of Menorca on two consecutive flights, the first to Mallorca, the second to Barcelona. The name on his passport, which was forged of course, was given as Alfredo Geronimo. In fact, they now discover he is Spanish and his real name is Antonio Barriago. I believe you know him.'

'I've met him,' I said cautiously. 'Three years ago.'

'You fired together in the finals for the Oporto Cup. Had you met him before that?'

'Once,' I said. 'When I was shooting in Spain.'

'He wasn't one of the men with you when Ahmed Bey was killed?'

'No.'

'Or on the Italian boat?'

'Not as far as I know.'

The police in Mahon seem to think the connection is a lot closer than just competition shooting. They've asked both Interpol and the Yard people over here for all the information they have on you, a dossier in fact. You and Barriago.'

'And Evans?' I asked. 'What about Evans?'

'I don't think so.'

'He's involved,' I said. 'I'm sure of it.'

'Why? You say he was at Ciudadela.' His voice was sharper now. 'What makes you think he's involved?'

But I was already regretting my attempt to involve Evans so directly. 'I just feel it,' I answered rather lamely, wondering how my words would be interpreted when they searched the villa and found the gun. 'Lloyd Jones,' I said. 'Where does he fit in? He came out here with a picture of Evans in his pocket.' I was remembering what Carp had told me, that odd incident on the East Coast of England. He said he was on leave, a holiday before taking up his new appointment. But his sole object seemed to be to find Evans. Why?' There was no answer. 'Are you still there?'

'Yes.' And then he said, They were at HMS Gangestogether, almost the last batch of youngsters to go through before the school was closed.'

'I know that. But they are related in some way.'

'Who told you that?'

'My wife.' And I added, 'Is it true? Are they related?'

I thought he wasn't going to answer that, but then he said, 'They both have the same father. No reason you shouldn't know that.'

'But why send him to me?' I asked. 'He said it was at your suggestion he was contacting me.'

'Not my suggestion. Philip Turner's. He put us on to you.' And he added, with something near to a smile in his voice, 'When we checked your background, it was obvious you were just the man we were looking for. Malta, Menorca, Gibraltar, you know them all — all the Western Med, that is.'

He was covering himself. Phones are funny things, very-revealing. You pick up nuances of expression, the hint of hidden meanings. I had the sudden sense of a void opening up, certain he had let something slip, that he hadn't meant to be so specific. 'I'll be in Malta a week from now,' I said.

'Malta. Why?' And when I told him I had a charter fixed for the catamaran, he said, 'I know that, but you can send somebody else. There are things I want to know and you're the man who can tell me. The new mayor, for instance. Who is it going to be? Who are they going to elect?'

'I've no idea.'

'Well, find out for me, will you?' And when I told him I wouldn't have time, that I needed to get away tomorrow night, he said, 'What's the hurry? Has something happened I don't know about?' I told him then how the police had searched the office and my home, then rummaged the boat. 'Are you under house arrest?'

'No, but they took my passport.'

'Under surveillance?', 'I don't think so.'

'But they suspect you?'

'How can they?' I said. 'I' was sitting there in full view when it happened.'

'Yes, but the gun. I take it they haven't found it yet.' And he added, 'You see, they don't know how Barriago came by it. He couldn't have entered Menorca with the thing tucked under his arm. And what did he do with it afterwards? Do you know?'

'Of course not.'

He didn't say anything then, and I wondered whether he believed me.

'Has Lloyd Jones left Gib yet?' I asked him.

'I can't answer that.' And when I persisted, he said he was not privy to the detailed movements of ships. That was when I asked him what department of the Navy he was. He hesitated before answering. 'Planning. Forward Planning.'

Then perhaps you can tell me if Medusawill be putting in to Malta.'

'I think she may.'

'Before or after she visits Mahon?'

'Before probably.' And then he asked me what my ETA Grand Harbour would be. 'You're leaving tomorrow, you say?'

'No, not tomorrow.' I couldn't do that. I couldn't just sail out of the port here and head straight for Malta. 'It'll have to be the early hours of the following day,' I said. Carp could motor the catamaran round to Es Grau, or Port d'Addaia, one of the smaller inlets, then we could slip out when everyone was asleep.

'And your ETA?' he asked again., 'Five days from now,' I said. 'If we're lucky and the weather holds.'

'I see.' He seemed to be thinking something out. Then to my surprise he said, 'Well, good luck!' He said it in quite a cheerful, friendly voice, and with that he rang off.