Wildtrack

Sycorax looked much smaller now she was in the water. She floated high so that a wide belt of her new copper shone above the river.

Jimmy had tears in his eyes. “She’s a beauty, Nick.”

“We’ll go somewhere in her together, Jimmy.”

“Maybe.” I think he knew he was dying, and that he would never sail out of sight of land again.

Angela did not come for the launching, which was why we enjoyed it. After the ceremonial throwings-in we all went swimming, then finished the champagne as we dried in the late-afternoon sun. We stole strawberries and clotted cream from Bannister’s fridge, then more champagne, and that night I sat on the river bank and stared at my boat in the water. I admired her lines and I dreamed the old dreams of far-off seas that were now so much closer. Sycorax still had no masts, rigging or sails, but she was afloat and I was happy.

I could afford to forget Angela’s insistence that I sailed in Wildtrack’s crew; I had my own boat in the water again, and that was enough.

I slept aboard Sycorax that night. I’d cleared my room in Bannister’s house and carried my few belongings down to the wharf. I made a space on the cabin sole where I could spread the sleeping bag. I cooked soup on the primus and ate it in my own cockpit. It did not matter that Sycorax was a mess, that her decks were a snake’s honeymoon of tangled ropes, or that her scuppers were cluttered with tools, timber and chain; she was floating.

I woke the next morning to the good sound of water slapping my hull. I went topsides to see Wildtrack’s gleaming white hull with its broad and slanting blue streak moored in the channel. She must have come upriver on the pre-dawn tide, and Mulder and his crew were stringing flags up the forestay, doubtless ready for the night’s party. Mystique was still off her mooring.

Later that morning Bannister and Angela arrived with the first of their house-guests. Angela ignored me, but Bannister strolled down to look at Sycorax. He brought two of the guests with him, which was perhaps why neither of us mentioned the St Pierre, nor my eviction from his house. This was the first time I’d seen Bannister since his holiday, and he looked very fit, suggesting that freedom from the studio programme had been good for him. He treated me with a jocular familiarity, though I noted that he took pains to mention my VC to his two friends and the medal went some way towards redeeming my reputation that had been spoilt by my raggedly stained appearance. Bannister stared up at Sycorax’s mainmast which I’d stood against the boathouse wall so that the linseed and paraffin in which I’d soaked it could drain down to the heel. “You wouldn’t feel happier with a metal mast, Nick?”

“No.” I said.

“Nick’s a traditionalist,” he explained to his friends; a London couple. The woman told me she was an interior designer and thought my boat was ‘cute’. The husband, a stockbroker, opined that Sycorax was a splendid sort of boat for knocking about the Channel. “Just the ticket for a jaunt to Jersey, what?”

I explained that I’d crossed the Atlantic twice in Sycorax, which somewhat damped down the hearty atmosphere of bonhomie that Bannister had tried so hard to create. He looked at his watch as though he had urgent business elsewhere. “We’ll see you at the party tonight, of course?”

“Am I invited?” I asked disingenuously.

“And do bring a friend, won’t you? Drinks at six, end time unknown, and tomorrow will be celebrated as Hangover Sunday.” I promised to be there and, once they’d gone, I spent a happy day fixing the bowsprit against its oak bitts, then bracing it with a bobstay made of galvanized chain. It was hard work, and therefore satisfying.

At around four o’clock, when I was tightening the gammon iron’s last bolt, Mystique returned.

I finished the job, washed off the worst of the dirt, then rowed myself out to the anchorage. The American girl had gone down into her cabin so, as I approached, I hailed her. “Mystique! Mystique! ”

“Wait a minute.” The voice was sharp. “Who is it?”

“A neighbour.”

“OK. Wait.”

I was quite ridiculously apprehensive. I wanted to like her, and for her to like me. She must have been washing for when she appeared she had a big towel wrapped round her body and a smaller towel twisted about her hair. She seemed very suspicious of me.

“Hi.”

“Hello.” I was holding on to Mystique’s starboard guardrail and the setting sun, reflecting from the polished aluminium hull, was blinding. I was stripped to the waist. “My name’s Nick Sandman.”

“Jill-Beth Kirov. Kirov like the ballet.” Close up I saw that Jill-Beth Kirov had a tanned face, dark eyes, and the strong American jawline that my father always claimed came from chewing too much gum.

My father always had a theory for everything and I remembered him explaining the gum theory as we sat having tea in New York’s Plaza Hotel. He’d liked to take his children on his travels, and I thought how much the old goat would have liked this girl. I looked to see if she had a wedding ring. She did not. “Do you mind if I don’t shake hands?” she asked.

If she had offered a hand then the towel round her body could have fallen. I solemnly excused her the politeness, and said there was a party at the house tonight and I wondered if she’d like to come as my guest.

“Tonight?” She seemed somewhat taken aback by the immediacy of the invitation, but I noted she did not immediately refuse. Instead she looked up at Bannister’s lavish house. “He’s a celeb, right?”

“A celeb?”

“Famous,” she explained. “A celebrity.”

“Oh! Right.”

“Are you his boatman?”

“No.”

“OK.” She was clearly unimpressed with me, despite my denial of servant status. “What time’s this party?”

“Drinks at six. I gather it goes on most of the night.”

“Formal?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Remind me what the guy’s name is?”

“Anthony Bannister.”

She clicked her tongue in sudden recognition. “The television guy, right? He was married to Kassouli’s daughter?”

“That’s the fellow.”

“That was kind of messy.” She stared up at the house again as if expecting to see blood trickling down the neatly striped lawn. I watched her. It would be foolish to say I fell in love, but I wanted to. “It might be fun,” she said dubiously.

“I hear you’re writing a book?” I asked in an effort to prolong the encounter.

“Maybe we’ll have a chance to talk about it.” She did not sound as if she was looking forward to the opportunity. “Thanks for the invitation. Can I leave it open? I’m kind of busy.”

“Of course.”

“Thanks again.” She stayed on deck to make sure that I pushed my dinghy away from her boat. “Hey! Nick?”

“Yes.” I had to turn round on the dinghy’s thwart to see her face again.

She was grimacing. “What did you do to your back?”

“Car accident. Front tyre blew out. No seatbelt.”

“Tough.” She nodded to show that as far as she was concerned the encounter was over.

I rowed back to my wharf, disappointed. I asked myself what I had expected. An invitation to board Mystique? An adolescent sigh and a melting of two hearts into one? I told myself that I was not in love, that all I had done was focus my frustrations on a girl who was a symbol of freedom and release, yet, even as I tried to persuade myself of that good sense, I failed. I tried to turn her wary words into an acceptance of my invitation, and I failed at that too.

“Gone fishing, Sandman?” It was Fanny Mulder who lounged in Wildtrack’s centre cockpit and who must have been watching me talk to the American girl. “Catch anything?” he asked mockingly.

“Lost any masts recently, Fanny? Gone drifting in the night again, have you?”

“Not since we left you, Sandman.”

I rowed past him, watched all the way by his knowing and cun-ning gaze. But I was thinking of other things, of a girl with a strong face and a name just like the ballet. My boat was in the water, and I was ready for love.

Over two hundred people arrived for the party. Cars blocked the driveway and two helicopters drooped their rotors on the upper lawn. It stayed blessedly fine so drinks were served on the wide terrace that looked down on the river. A rock band played loudly enough to inflict a physical punch on the belly with their sound waves. Chefs carved at joints of beef and ham, the bar was frantic, and the party an evident success from its very beginning. A lot of the faces were famous: actresses, actors, television people, politicians—all enjoying being recognised. Behind the band was a giant chart of the North Atlantic on which a notional route for Wildtrack’s assault on the St Pierre was marked. Matthew’s film crew had lit the podium ready for Bannister’s announcement. Wildtrack herself was dressed overall with flags and coloured lights, and guests were invited to cross a rickety gangplank to inspect the boat.

Melissa, in a dress of silk that swirled and floated like gossamer, glimpsed me across the terrace. She greeted me with an affectionate kiss. “Tony wants me to look at his ghastly boat, but I told him I suffered quite enough of boats when I was married to you. How are you?” She did not wait for an answer. “We’re staying in some frightfully twee hotel up on the moor. A hundred and fifty pounds a night, and with spiders in the bath. Can you believe it? Did you know I was coming?”

“Yes. It’s nice to see you. Are you with the Honourable John?”

“Of course I am. He’s found a socialist MP so they’re agreeing on just how ghastly the miners are. Is that your boat?” She peered down at Sycorax, which huddled a hundred yards away against my wharf.

“It looks very dinky. Where are its thingummybobs?”

“Masts?”

“Don’t tell me, I’d only be bored.” She stepped back and looked me up and down. “Haven’t you got anything better to wear?” I was dressed in flannel trousers, a washed but un-ironed white shirt, and was using an Old Etonian tie as a belt. I was wearing my only pair of proper shoes, valuable brogues, and thought I looked fine. “I think I look fine.”

“A trifle louche, darling.”

“I don’t have any money for clothes. I’m paying it all in child support.”

“You’d better go on paying it, Nicholas. I told my lawyer you were planning to sail round the world and he says we might have to nail a writ to your mast. Are you going to do a scarper?”

“Not immediately.”

“You’d better get the mast ready, anyway. And that reminds me, your cheque hasn’t arrived for the children’s summer outfits.”

“I can’t think why. It was sent by native runner.”

“It had better arrive soon. Oh, look! Isn’t that the bishop who wants us all to be bigamists? It’s going to be such a lovely party. Just like old times. Doesn’t it seem odd to be back in the house? I keep expecting your father to pinch my bum. Would you be a treasure and get me some more champagne?”

I was dutifully a treasure. There was no sign of Jill-Beth Kirov coming, and every time I glanced down at the anchorage I saw her dinghy still moored to Mystique’s transom. I saw the Honourable John deep in conversation with a bearded MP who seemed to be nodding fervent agreement. Anthony Bannister was having an animated conversation with a young and pretty actress whom I recognized but could not name. As Melissa had said, it was just like one of my father’s old parties; nothing had changed, and I felt just as out of place as ever. I knew very few of the guests and liked even less of them. Matthew was present, but was tied up with his prepar-ations for filming Bannister’s announcement.

Dusk came. The last guest had evidently inspected Wildtrack, and the gangplank, which had precariously rested on two inflatable dinghies, was dismantled. A pretty girl accosted me, but when she discovered I was not in television she abandoned me for a more hopeful prey. The bishop was introduced to me, but we had nothing in common and he too drifted away. Jill-Beth Kirov had still not arrived. I saw Melissa teasing Bannister.

Angela Westmacott, seeing the familiarity with which Melissa treated her man, waylaid me. “Do you mind your ex-wife being here?”

“I’ve been pleasurably feeding her champagne. Of course I don’t mind.”

Angela edged towards the balustrade and, out of courtesy, I followed. “I’m sorry we had to ask you to move out of the house,” she said abruptly.

“It was time I moved out.” I wondered why Angela had suddenly become so solicitous of my comfort. Her long hair was twisted into a pretty coil at the back of her narrow skull and she was wearing a simple white dress that made her look very young and vulnerable.

I supposed that such a simple white dress probably cost more than Sycorax’s mainsail.

She looked at her diamond-studded watch. “Tony’s going to make his announcement in forty-five minutes.”

“I hope it goes well,” I said politely.

Angela looked at me coldly. “I should have spoken to you before, Nick, but things have been very busy. Tony will make the announcement, then introduce Fanny. I’d like you to be next. You won’t have to say anything.”

“Me?” I glanced towards the dark shape of Mystique and saw that Jill-Beth’s dinghy was no longer there, which meant she must have left her yacht, but I could see no sign of her on the terrace.

“Tony will introduce you after Fanny,” Angela explained pedantically.

I looked back to her. “Why?”

She sighed. “Please don’t be difficult, Nick. I just want to have on film the moment when you’re named as Wildtrack’s navigator.” She saw I was about to protest, and hurried on. “I know we should have talked earlier. I know! That was my fault. But please, tonight, just do as I ask.”

“But I’m not going to navigate.”

She kept her patience. Perhaps, as she claimed, she had overlooked the small matter of my agreement, but I suspected she had preferred to try and bounce me into Bannister’s crew. By catching me in company and presenting me with a fait accompli she gambled on my spontaneous acceptance. She clearly feared my refusal, for she fed me a passionate argument about the advantages of ending the film in the way she wanted; how it would knit the two programmes together, and how it would offer me a double appearance fee as well as the fame of being on a winning team. She then painted an heroic picture of Nick Sandman, victorious navigator, encouraging the handicapped by his achievement.

I shook my head. “But I’d be about as much use to Bannister as a pregnant pole-vaulter.”

That checked her. She frowned. “I don’t understand?”

“I told you before; I’m not a tactician navigator, and that’s what you need. You need someone who’ll hunt down every breath of wind and trace of current. You need a ruthless taskmaster. I hate that sort of sailing. My idea of sailing is to bung the boat in front of a convenient wind and open a beer.”

“But you’re a brilliant navigator,” she said in protest. “Everyone says so.”

“I can generally find the right continent,” I agreed, “but I’m not a racing tactician. That’s what Bannister needs. For me to be in his crew just wouldn’t be honest, or fair.”

“Honest?” She bridled at that word.

“I really hate making yachts go fast for no other reason than to win races. So it would be excessively dishonest of me to pretend that I cared about the St Pierre. I don’t. And I fear I don’t really care about your audience ratings, either.”

The last comment touched her to the quick, perhaps because it attacked the holy grail of television producers. “You’re so goddamned righteous!” There was anger, almost hysteria, in her voice that had been loud enough to attract embarrassed looks from the nearer guests.

“I just like to be truthful,” I said gently, thereby hoping to deflect the threatening storm.

But Angela’s patience snapped like a rotted hawser. “Do you really want my film to be truthful? Because the honest truth, Nick Sandman, is that you’re nothing but a privileged public-schoolboy who chose the mindless trade of soldiering because you didn’t care to exert yourself in the real world. You were wounded in an utterly pointless war, fighting for a quite ridiculous cause, and you probably went down there like an excited puppy with a wet nose and a wagging tail because you thought it would be fun. But we won’t say that in our film. We won’t say that you were a vacuous upper-class layabout with a gun, and that if it hadn’t been for a stupid medal you’d be nothing now, nothing! And we won’t say that you’re too proud or too stubborn or too idiotic to make a proper living now. Instead we’ll applaud your sense of adventure! Nick Sandman, eccentric rebel, refusing to recognize life’s misfortunes. We’ll say you were a war hero! Doing your bit for Britain!” Her passion was extraordinary, unleashed in a corrosive flood of emotion that lacerated the evening and appalled the terrace into an awed silence. Even the musicians ceased playing.

“And the real truth, Nick Sandman, is that you can’t even be an eccentric rebel without our help, because you haven’t got a boat. And when you do get it, if you ever get it, you’ll be finished inside six months because you’ll run out of money and you’ll be too lazy to earn any more! Is that the truth you want my film to tell?” A very embarrassed Bannister appeared at her side. “Angela?” She shook him off. There were tears in her eyes; tears of pure rage.

“I’m trying to help you!” She hissed the words at me.

“Good-night,” I said to Bannister.

“Nick, please.” He was every bit as excruciated as his guests.

“Good-night,” I said again, then backed off from the two of them.

The guests were turning away in the clumsy pretence that nothing had happened. I saw that Jill-Beth Kirov had arrived, but she too turned abruptly away from me. Everyone was awkward, looking away from me. The evening, which had been such a success, was suddenly foully soured, and I was the focus of the embarrassment.

Then Melissa knifed through the crowd. “Nick, darling! I thought you were going to dance with me?”

“I’m leaving.” I said it quietly.

“Don’t be such a bloody fool.” She said it just as quietly, then turned imperiously towards the rock group. “You’re paid to make a noise, not gawp at your betters. So strum something!” A semblance of normality returned to the terrace. Melissa and I danced, or rather she danced and I rhythmically disguised my limp.

I was furious. Angela had disappeared, leaving Bannister with his actress. A whispered rumour that Angela was suffering from overwork circled the terrace. I forced myself to dance, but was saved from the indignity by the sudden collapse of my right leg that spilt me sideways to clutch desperately at the flagpole.

“Are you drunk?” Melissa asked with amusement.

“My leg’s still buggered up.”

“We’ll sit.” She took my arm and steered me to the terrace’s edge where she lit a cigarette. “I must say that loathsome girl was quite right. You did go off to the Falklands with a wet nose and a wagging tail. You were frightfully bloodthirsty.”

“I got paid for being bloodthirsty, remember?” I was massaging my right knee, trying to force sensation back into it.

Melissa watched me. “Poor Nick. Was it an awful little war?”

“Not awful, just unfair. Like playing soccer against a school for the blind.”

“It was awful, I can tell. Poor Nick. And I was beastly to you. I thought your leg was cured?”

“It is, most of the time.” But not now. My back felt as if it was being harrowed by fire, while my leg seemed nerveless. I felt the old panic that I would never be functional. I knew I’d never be fully fit again; I’d never run uphill with a heavy pack or step down a wicket to drive a ball sweetly through the covers, but I did want to be functional. I wanted a leg that would hold me on a pitching foredeck while I changed a staysail. It didn’t seem much to ask, and for days it seemed possible until, quite suddenly, like now, the damned knee would disappear beneath me and the pain would start tears to my eyes.

Melissa blew out a stream of smoke. “Do you know what your problem is, Nick?”

“An Argentinian bullet.”

“That’s just self-pity, which isn’t like you. No, Nick, your problem is that you fall in love with all the wrong women.” I was so astonished that I forgot my knee. “I don’t!” I protested.

“Of course you do. You were quite soppy about me once, and you’re just the same about that sordid little television tart who’s just clawed you.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

Melissa laughed at my shocked expression. “I saw you fancying her before she exploded in your face. You always fall helplessly in love with pale blondes, which is extremely silly of you because they’re never as vulnerable as you think they are.”

“Angela isn’t vulnerable.”

“But she looks it, which triggers you. I know you, Nick. You should settle for some sturdy girl with whacking great thighs. You’d be much happier.”

“Like that one?” I said, rather ungallantly, for Jill-Beth hardly fitted Melissa’s prescription. The American girl was dancing with Fanny Mulder and, to my chagrin, seemed intensely happy to be in his arms.

Melissa watched till Jill-Beth and Mulder were swallowed up by the other dancers. “She’d do,” she finally said, “except you prefer your women to look like wounded birds” She sighed. “Lust is so frightfully inconvenient, isn’t it? Do you remember when we first met? You were positively festooned with weapons and smothered in camouflage cream. You looked endlessly glamorous; not at all like the sort of man who’d ever worry about a mortgage.” We’d met at the Bath and West Show where my regiment had staged a display.

Melissa’s father, a retired brigadier, had insisted on giving the officers a drink in his hospitality tent where I’d been dazzled by Melissa. Who now shrugged. “I don’t understand lust at all. That bishop probably does.” She waved her cigarette towards the bishop who, in clerical purple, was dancing with a girl who seemed to be wearing nothing but a sequinned fishing net. “Do you know he groped me?”

“The bishop did?”

“It was a positive and ecclesiastical fumble. Do you want to dance again?”

“I don’t think I can. My back still hurts.”

“So long as it isn’t your pride. You should have slapped her silly face.”

“I’m not into hitting women.”

“Good old chauvinist Nick.” She kissed me. “Do you mind if I slither off?”

Melissa had generously salved my pride after Angela’s mauling, and I was grateful for it, yet I still felt foully awkward. Jill-Beth, dressed in a simple shirt and white trousers, was ignoring me, preferring Mulder’s company, while the other guests treated me as though I had smallpox or the plague. It was clearly not to be my evening. I saw Matthew’s cameraman setting up his gear ready for the announcement, and, wishing no more part of it, I gingerly stood and limped down the garden steps. I kept my leg stiff so the knee could not buckle.

As I peglegged down the last few steps Mulder and Jill-Beth came arm-in-arm to the terrace’s balustrade. They leaned there, heads close together, and the American girl’s laughter struck me like a jealous dart. I limped down the long lawn to where the reflected lights shimmered on the black water. I flinched with pain as I stepped down on to Sycorax’s deck, and again as I huddled down in the cockpit among the heaped stores that would soon go into the rebuilt cabin lockers. I could smell the linseed from the spars which lay on trestles on the bank, and the tar varnish which I’d smeared into the bilges.

I sat for a long time as the pain ebbed away from my spine. The moonlit sky seemed almost luminous above the black trees which edged the river. The Romans had seen this river thus, and they must have stared into the dark deep woods and wondered what strange misshapen creatures moved like wraiths among the leaves. It must have seemed a weird, hostile place, and I wondered if some Roman officer had been wounded here and then gone back to Rome where he fell in love with a dark-haired girl who rejected him for a hairy Phoenician sea-captain. Damn Jill-Beth, and damn Mulder, and damn the fact that I could not slip my moorings on this high tide and take Sycorax to sea. I straightened my right leg and pressed my foot against the bridge deck hard enough to stab a lance of pain up my thigh. I went on pressing, welcoming the pain as evidence that the leg would mend. I pressed till there were tears cold on my cheeks.

Applause sounded from Bannister’s house and I knew he must be announcing his entry for this year’s St Pierre. I opened a beer and drank it slowly. Bannister could sail without me. From this day on I wanted sailing to be a whim, dictated only by wind and sea. I wanted to wander and drift through a busy world, freed of tax and bills and the loud voices of politicians and pompous men.

Perhaps Medusa was right, and perhaps I was a layabout, and perhaps I was too stupid to make a proper living, but, God damn it, I was not a piece of television slime.

I drank another beer. Silver-edged clouds were heaping above Dartmoor to make aery and fantastic battlements that climbed higher and ever higher as the ocean winds were lifted by the slopes above the Tamar. I decided I would rig the boat with my last savings and I would sail south, penniless, just to escape Bannister and Angela. I would strap my right knee, lay in a stock of painkillers, and disappear.

Jill-Beth Kirov’s voice stirred me from my morose thoughts. I raised my head over the cockpit’s coaming and saw her walking down the lawn on Fanny Mulder’s arm. “I won’t see anything!” I heard her say.

“You’ll see fine, girl.”

She stopped at the river wall and stared at Wildtrack. “It’s so beautiful!”

Mulder pulled a dinghy to the garden steps. Jill-Beth laughed as she stepped down into the small boat and I felt the sting of jealousy.

She’d preferred Mulder to me, or to any other man at the party for that matter, and my pride was offended. A daft thing, pride. It had once driven me up a hill on an Atlantic island to meet a bullet.

I heard Jill-Beth’s soft laughter again as Mulder rowed the dinghy the few strokes to Wildtrack. He helped Jill-Beth on to its long rakish deck, then gave her the full guided tour of the topsides. He turned on the deck lights that were mounted beneath the lower spreaders and their brilliant light showed me Jill-Beth’s dark hair and strong jaw and bright excited eyes. I stayed still, a shadow within a shadow, watching.

They stood in the aft cockpit and I could hear every word they said because water carries sound as cleanly as glass carries light.

And suddenly, very suddenly, I forgot my misery because Jill-Beth was encouraging Mulder to tell the story of Nadeznha Bannister’s death. “I’d gone forward, see?” Mulder pointed to the mast. “The kicking-strap had worked loose.”

“And Mrs Bannister stayed here?” Jill-Beth asked.

“She liked being aft in a big sea, and that sea was a bastard. But nothing we hadn’t seen before. Then one broke and pooped us. She just disappeared.”

Jill-Beth turned and looked at the array of lifebuoys and Danbuoys that decorated Wildtrack’s stern. “She wasn’t wearing a harness?”

“She could have taken it off for a moment, you know how you do? Maybe she wanted to go forward? Or maybe it bent. I’ve seen snaphooks bent straight in a gale. And it was a crazy night,” Mulder said. “I didn’t see she’d gone at first, you know, what with being busy with the kicking-strap and the water everywhere and the boat bucking like a jack-hammer gone ape. Must have taken me five minutes to get back to the wheel.”

Jill-Beth stared up at the masthead where the string of lights was bright above the floodlights. “Poor girl.”

“Ja.” Mulder pulled open the aft cabin hatch. “A drink?” Did I sense a hesitation in Jill-Beth? I prayed for her to say no. I didn’t want to watch her go into that aft cabin with its wide double bunk. She said no. “I’ve got an early start in the morning, Fanny, but thanks.”

“I thought you were interested.” He sounded hurt. “I mean I’ve still got that night’s log down here if you want to see it.” She hesitated, but then her curiosity about Nadeznha Bannister’s death swayed the issue. “Sure.”

It was like that moment when, during a calm, the water shadows itself beneath the first stirrings of a killing wind. For these last weeks, as I had lost myself in the restoration of Sycorax, I had forgotten the stories of Nadeznha Bannister’s death. But other people had not forgotten. Harry Abbott had warned me off the stories, but here was an American girl stirring up the dangerous rumours. And the dead girl’s father was American too. It was a cold wind that was disturbing my calm. I shivered.

Wildtrack’s deck lights were doused and the cabin lights glowed through the narrow scuttles until curtains were snatched across the glass.

I thought of what I’d heard. It matched the evidence given to the inquest, and made sense. A safety harness would have saved Nadeznha Bannister’s life, but safety harnesses are not infallible. A harness is a webbing strap that encases the torso and from which a strong line hangs. At the end of the line is a steel snaphook that can be attached to a jackstay or D-ring. I’d known a snaphook open simply because it was wrenched at an odd angle. I’d known them bend open, too. Snaphooks were made of thick, forged steel, but water is stronger than steel, especially when the water comes in the form of a breaking ocean wave. I imagined a heavy following swell, lifting Wildtrack, surging her forward, then dropping her like a runaway lift into the deep trough. The next wave would steal the wind from the sails, there’d be a moment of unnatural quiet, then Nadeznha Bannister would have heard the awesome melding roar as the great tongue of breaking death curved over the stern. She might have looked up to see her death shredding high and white in the night above her. If she had unsnapped her harness for a moment she would have screamed then, but too late, because the cold tons of white water would be collapsing on to the boat to turn the cockpit into a maelstrom of foam and berserk force.

Wildtrack would have staggered, her bow rising as her stern was pile-driven downwards, but a good boat would survive a pooping and Wildtrack would have juddered upwards, shedding the flooding water. But Nadeznha Bannister would already have been a hundred yards astern, helpless in the mad blackness. The wind would have been shrieking in the rigging, the decks would have been seething, and her cries would have been lost in the welter of foam and wind and banging sails.

Or else she was pushed. But the cries in the darkness would have been just as forlorn.

Then, from Wildtrack’s aft cabin, Jill-Beth screamed.

The scream was more of a yelp, and swiftly cut off as though a hand had been slapped over her mouth. I detected panic in the quick sound, but the music on the terrace was far too loud for anyone but me to have heard the truncated scream.

I picked up a full beer bottle and hurled it. Wildtrack lay no further than good grenade distance away and the bottle crashed with a satisfying noise on her main coachroof. The second ricocheted off a guardrail and shattered a cabin window, the third missed, but the fourth bottle broke against the metal mainmast and showered fragments of glass and foaming beer on to the boat.

The aft cabin door opened, and Jill-Beth came out like a dog sprung from a trap. She did not hesitate, but scrambled over the guardrail and dived into the river. Mulder, bellowing in frustrated anger, followed from the cabin as I hurled the fifth full bottle. By pure chance it hit him clean on the forehead, throwing him back and out of sight.

He shouted in anger or pain. I’d thrown the bottle hard enough to fracture his skull, but he seemed quite unhurt as, seconds later, he reappeared with his shotgun in his hands. He aimed it at Sycorax’s cockpit.

I dropped.

He fired. Both barrels.

The noise slammed across the water and I saw the glare of the barrel flames sheet the sky above me. The pellets went high, spatter-ing into the bushes above the wharf. I listened for the sound of Jill-Beth swimming, but could only hear the sharp click as Mulder broke the gun for reloading.

I scrabbled through the tangled mess of stores that clogged the cockpit. Jimmy Nicholls’ and my hauls from the boat auctions lay in an unseamanlike confusion. I cursed, then found the net bag I wanted. I heard the cartridges slap home in Mulder’s gun and the click as the breech was closed.

When in doubt, an old commanding officer of mine liked to say, hit the buggers with smoke. I had bought some old emergency smoke floats and I prayed that they still worked as I pulled the first ring. I counted as though it were a grenade, then lobbed it out of my shelter.

There was a pause as the water entered the floating can, then I smelt the acrid scent and I raised my head to see a smear of orange smoke boiling up from the river. The lurid smudge spread to hide Wildtrack’s hull. The ebb had just begun and the can was floating downstream, but the sea breeze was conveniently carrying the smoke back towards Mulder. I thickened it with a second can, then leaned over Sycorax’s side to search for Jill-Beth. I could hear people calling from the terrace. I tossed yet another float to keep Mulder blinded, and the can landed just feet away from a sleek black head that suddenly surfaced in the river. “Miss Kirov?” I called politely.

“Nick?”

I held out my hand for her, and as I did so Mulder unleashed his next weapon. Perhaps he had realized that one volley of gunfire was enough, and that more might land him in trouble with the law, so now he fired a distress flare in Sycorax’s direction. The flare was rocket-propelled, designed to sear high into the air where it would deploy a brilliant red light which dangled from a parachute. I heard the missile fizz close overhead. It struck the coping of the wharf and bounced up into the night trailing smoke and sparks. A second rocket followed from the mass of orange smoke. Either could have killed if they had hit my head, but both went high.

Jill-Beth’s hand took hold of mine and I pulled her dripping from the water. I was given haste and strength by a third rocket which went wide. The first flare had exploded in the trees above the boathouse and the brilliant dazzle of the red light made it seem as if the wood had caught fire. I hurled my last smoke float towards Wildtrack and searched among the mess in the cockpit to find my own flares.

Jill-Beth was panting. Her expensive silk shirt and white trousers were soaked and dirty. “Climb the wall,” I said, “and run like hell for the house.” There were people streaming down the lawn, shouting, and I hoped their presence would deter Mulder’s madness.

I found a flare that I pointed towards the bigger boat.

“No!” Jill-Beth said the word with panicked force. “I can’t stay here! For God’s sake get me out! Have you got a dinghy?”

“Yes.”

“Come on, Nick! Let’s go!”

I abandoned the flare and we scrambled over the stern into my tender. I had the presence of mind to toss a duffelbag of spare clothes in first, then I slashed the painter. Jill-Beth pushed us away and we drifted on the tide towards the overhanging trees beyond the boathouse cut. Jill-Beth poled us with an oar and we reached the shelter of the thick branches just as the first guests reached the river bank to stare in awe at the rolling orange smoke that was meant to mark an emergency at sea for searching helicopters. The cloud had shrouded Wildtrack right up to her gaudy string of lights and was made even more spectacular by the brilliant light of the burning flares.

“The smoke was smart of you,” Jill-Beth said. “Sorry, Nick.”

“Sorry?”

“Never mind. Sh!” She touched a warning finger to her lips, then pointed behind me as if to say that we could be overheard by the people who now crowded the river bank. I was rigging the dinghy’s outboard, an ancient and small British Seagull that I’d bought for a knockdown price at auction.

“Fanny!” It was Bannister’s angry voice. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Fireworks, sir!” Fanny must have realized that he had over-reacted and now he proved sharp enough to find an explanation that fitted the night’s mood. “Just using up old flares, sir!”

“I heard a gunshot.” The Honourable John’s voice.

“Lifeboat maroon.” Mulder’s voice came out of the thick smoke.

“How awfully exciting.” Melissa’s voice. “Have you got an Exocet?”

“Nothing to be excited about.” That was Bannister again, thinking ahead to the possibility of headlines. He knew it was illegal to set off distress flares unnecessarily. “Are you drunk, Fanny?”

“A bit, sir!”

“I’ll paddle!” That was Jill-Beth, in a whisper. She pushed the dinghy along the bank, keeping under the trees’ cover. “That bastard wanted to kill me!” she whispered.

“I thought he was raping you.”

“That was just for starters. Does that engine work?”

“I was cheated of ten quid if it doesn’t.” Seagulls might not be flash, but by God they work. I pulled, the old engine coughed and caught, and the noise brought the stab of a torch beam that swept round towards us from Bannister’s garden, but we were now well under the cover of the overhanging trees. The branches whipped at us as I opened the throttle, and I heard Jill-Beth giggle, apparently in reaction to the panicked escapade. “There are dry clothes in the bag,” I said.

“You’re a genius, Nick.”

I waited till we had rounded Sansom’s Point before I broke out from under the trees’ shelter. We were hidden from Bannister’s house by now and I curved the dinghy towards the main channel and opened the throttle as high as it would go. Seagulls might work, but they’re not fast and we were going at no more than a hearse’s crawl as we left the black shadows under the trees and emerged into the moonlight where I found myself sharing the dinghy with one very wet, very tanned and entirely naked girl who was rubbing herself dry and warm with one of my spare sweaters. She seemed quite unabashed, and I had time to notice that she was tanned all over and how nice the all over was before I politely looked away.

“Enjoying the view?” she asked.

“Very much.”

She pulled on the sweater and a pair of my dirty jeans that she rolled up around her calves. She pushed at her soaking hair, then looked upriver. “Where are we going?”

“Jimmy Nicholls’ cottage. You know Jimmy?”

“I’ve met him.” The village lights were bright on the starboard bank while two miles further south the town lights quivered on the water. Beyond that was the sea. Jimmy’s cottage was just short of the town.

Jill-Beth was searching through the duffelbag. “Got any sneakers here?”

“No shoes, sorry.”

She looked up at me and smiled. “Thank you for the rescue.”

“That’s what we white knights are for,” I said.

At which point the dragon growled, or rather I heard a percussive bang and then the throaty roar of big engines, and I knew it was too late to reach Jimmy’s house. I pulled the outboard’s lever towards me and prayed that the puttering little two-stroke could outrun the gleaming monster engines on Wildtrack II’s stern. I’d forgotten the threat of the big powerboat crouched in Bannister’s boathouse.

Jill-Beth turned as the engine noise splintered in the night. She knew immediately what the sound meant. “That bastard doesn’t give up, does he?”

“A Boer trait.” I was running for the darker western bank where more overhanging trees might hide us. I glanced behind to where the dying flares still silhouetted Sansom’s Point. They also lit the shredding remnants of my smokescreen through which, as yet, there was no sign of the big powerboat.

Jill-Beth was suddenly scared. “He knew why I’m here,” she said in astonishment.

I suspected that I knew why she was here too, but it was no time for explanations because a brilliant stab of white light suddenly slashed across the river. Mulder, if it was Mulder in Wildtrack II, had turned on the boat’s searchlight. He was still beyond Sansom’s Point and the light was far away from us, but I knew it would only be seconds before the powerboat came snarling into our reach of water.

“Come on, you bastard!” I enjoined the engine.

“Jesus!” Jill-Beth cowered as the sharp prow of Wildtrack II burst into view. There was a speed limit of six knots on the river and he must have been doing twenty already and was still accelerating.

That was his mistake, for the acceleration was throwing up his bows so he could not see straight in front. The wake was like twin curls of moonlit gossamer that spread behind him.

“Head down!” I called out. Jill-Beth ducked and the dinghy scraped under branches. I killed the engine as the dinghy’s bows jarred on some obstruction. The searchlight whipped past us as the powerboat slewed round into the main channel. She must have been doing thirty knots now and her engines could have woken the dead in village graveyards a mile away. I scrambled past Jill-Beth and tied the dinghy’s painter to a low bough. “Give me your wet trousers,” I said.

She frowned with puzzlement, but obeyed. I hung the white trousers over the dinghy’s side, looping one leg over the gunwale and hanging the other straight down into the water. “Breaking our shape,” I explained. “He’s looking for a wooden dinghy, not a brown and white pattern.” The drooping tree branches would help confuse our shape, but I knew Mulder’s searchlight was powerful enough to probe through the leaves and I hoped the white cloth would disguise us.

“He’s stopping.” Jill-Beth was down in the dinghy’s bilge and her voice was scarce above a whisper.

The power-boat was slowing and I heard its engines fade to a mutter as its bow dropped and its shining aerofoil hull settled into the current. Mulder had accelerated to where he thought we might be; now he would search. “Head down!” I crouched with Jill-Beth in the boat’s bottom.

The light skidded past us, paused, came back, then went on again.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Wildtrack II was burbling along the river now, searching. Mulder had missed us on his first pass. But he would be back.

Jill-Beth tweaked the trousers I’d hung over the gunwale. “A soldier’s trick?”

“Is it?” I said.

“Because you weren’t injured in a car crash, were you?”

“You shouldn’t listen to gossip at parties.”

“Gossip?” She laughed softly, and her face was so close to mine that I could feel her breath on my cheek. “You’re Captain Nicholas Thomas Sandman, VC. Your last annual report before the Falklands was kind of non-committal. Captain Sandman’s a fine officer, it said, and did well in Northern Ireland, but seems frustrated by the more commonplace duties of soldiering. In brief, he’s not very ambitious.

He spends too much time on his boat. The men liked you, but that wasn’t sufficient reason for the regiment to recommend you for staff college. They really wanted you to leave the regiment to make room for some younger gung-ho type, right? You lacked the motivation to excel, they said, then someone gave you a real live enemy and you proved them all wrong.”

I said nothing for a moment. The water gurgled past our fragile hull. I had pulled away from Jill-Beth, the better to see her face in the shadows. “Who are you?”

“Jill-Beth Kirov, like the ballet.” She grinned, and her teeth showed very white against her dark skin. I raised my head high enough to see Wildtrack II searching the far bank and I made out Mulder’s distinctive silhouette against the glare caused by his searchlight on the thick leaves.

“Who are you?” I asked again.

“I work for a guy called Yassir Kassouli. Heard of him?”

“Bannister’s father-in-law.”

“Ex-father-in-law,” she corrected me, then stiffened suddenly as the searchlight whipped round and seemed to shine straight at the two of us. I saw the willow leaves above our heads turn a mixture of bright silver-green and jet black as the light slashed into the branches. “Jesus!” Jill-Beth hissed.

“It’s all right.” I put an arm over her shoulder to keep her head low. The light swept on, probing another shadow, but I kept my arm where it was. She did not move.

“What do you do for Kassouli?” I whispered the question almost as if I feared Mulder might hear us over the growl of his idling engines.

“Investigator.”

“A private detective?” I asked in some astonishment. I thought private detectives only existed on television, but how else could she have discovered the details of my confidential army file?

“Insurance investigator,” she corrected me. “I work for the marine division of an insurance company that’s a subsidiary of Kassouli Enterprises.”

“What do you investigate?”

“Hell,” she shrugged, “whatever? I mean, if some guy says a million bucks’ worth of custom-built motor yacht just turned itself into a submarine off the Florida Keys, and now he wants us to fork out for a new one, we kind of become curious, right?” I tried to imagine her dealing with crooks, and couldn’t. “You don’t look like an investigator.”

“You expect the Pink Panther? Shit, Nick, of course I don’t look like a cop! Hell, if they see some chick in a bikini they don’t start reaching for their lawyer, do they? They offer me a drink, then they tell me all the things they wouldn’t tell some guy with a tape-recorder.” She peered upriver, but Mulder was now far off the scent.

“And just what are you investigating here?” I asked.

“Nadeznha Bannister’s life was insured with her father’s company for a million bucks. Guess who the beneficiary is?”

“Anthony Bannister?”

“You got it in one, soldier.” She grinned. “But if Nadeznha was murdered, then we don’t have to pay.”

There was something chilling about the calm and amused confidence with which she had spoken of murder; so chilling that I took my arm from her shoulder. “Was she murdered?”

“That’s what I’m trying to prove.” She spoke grimly, intimating that she was not having any great success.

“What else are you doing?” I asked.

She must have heard the suspicion in my voice, for her reply was very guarded. “Nothing else.”

“Dismasting Wildtrack? ” I guessed. “Cutting its warps?”

“Jesus.” She sounded disgusted with me. “You think I’m into that kind of stupidity? Just what kind of a jerk do you think I am?” Then if not her, who? Yet I believed her strenuous denial, because I wanted this girl to be straight and true. “I’m sorry I suggested it,” I said.

“Hell, Nick, I’d love to know who’s bugging Bannister, but it sure as hell isn’t me. Ssh!” She put a finger to my lips because Wildtrack II had swung round, accelerated, and now the searchlight slid towards us again. Mulder cut the throttles once more and I cautiously raised my head to see the big powerboat coming slowly down this western bank. I could sense Mulder’s confusion from the erratic movements of the light, but there was still a chance that he would find us.

Jill-Beth wriggled herself into a semblance of comfort. “How long will that bastard keep looking?”

“God knows.”

“I need to get back to Mystique. I left all my papers in the cabin.”

“We’ll just have to wait.” I paused. “Is that why you were with Mulder tonight? Hoping he’d say something incriminating?”

“Sort of.” She grinned at me. “You must have thought I was a real creep, but the chance to talk to him was just too good. But the bastard set me up. He knew just why I was here.”

“How did he know?”

“Beats me.” She raised her head to watch the light, then subsided again. “Why was that girl chewing you up?”

“Bannister wants me to be his navigator in the St Pierre. I’ve refused. She got upset.”

She stared at me in silence, perhaps puzzled that I should refuse such an offer. Then she shrugged. “I’m sorry to involve you, Nick.”

“Don’t be sorry. I wanted to be involved.”

Her big eyes reflected dark in the night. She said nothing, nor was there anything that I cared to say, so instead I leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth.

She returned the kiss, then placed her head on my shoulder. We stayed still. I did not know just what tangle she was drawing me into, I only knew that I wanted to be a part of it. I sensed a tension flow out of her.

We talked then. Mulder searched for us, but we crouched in the dinghy and talked. She told me she came from Rhode Island, but now lived on Cape Cod. Her father was in the US Navy. I told her that my father was in jail, and that Bannister’s house had been my childhood home.

She told me Mystique was a cow to sail, but she had not wanted to bring her own boat over from Massachusetts because the crossing would have wasted valuable time. I asked her if hers was a big boat and she said yes, then wrinkled her nose prettily and told me she was kind of affluent. I told her I was kind of poor.

She said Sycorax was a great-looking boat. I agreed. I also decided that fate had been kind in sending this girl to my river. She was swift to laugh and quick to listen. We talked of sailing and she told me of a bad night when she’d been single-handed on the western side of Bermuda. I knew those reefs, and sympathised. She’d been a watch-captain on one of the boats caught in the ’79 Fastnet storm and I listened jealously to her descriptions.

We talked, almost oblivious of Mulder’s fumbling search, but then his light suddenly went out and the sound of his twin engines died away to leave an ominous silence. We both twisted to stare at the river, but nothing moved on the water except the dying disturbance of the powerboat’s wake.

“He’s given up,” Jill-Beth breathed.

“No,” I said.

“He’s gone!” she insisted.

“He wants us to think he’s gone.” I climbed over the dinghy’s thwart, wound the starting lanyard on to the Seagull, then yanked it. The motor belched into life and its distinctive sound echoed across the river. I let it run for five seconds, then cut the fuel just as the searchlight split the darkness in an attempt at ambush. Mulder had been hiding in the shadows, but his guess of where the outboard’s sound had come from was hopelessly wrong. I chuckled at having successfully tricked him.

Jill-Beth was less pleased. “He’s a stubborn bastard.”

“He’ll wait all night,” I said.

“Jesus! Shee-it!” She was suddenly vehement in her frustration.

“I need to get those damned papers! Hell!” She stared across the river to where Wildtrack II was searching the far bank. The searchlight flickered quick and futile across the empty leaves. “Suppose I swim back?” Jill-Beth asked suddenly.

“What if he finds you?” I asked in warning.

“I can’t just do nothing!”

In the end she helped me to hide the dinghy by filling it with stones and sinking it at the river’s edge. We concealed the Seagull under a pile of grass and leaves, then worked our way northwards.

It was too dangerous to stay close to the river while Mulder searched so we looped up to Ferry Lane through the hill pastures. I made Jill-Beth wear my brogues to save her bare feet from the nettles and thorns. It was an awkward journey through hedgerows and across rough fields, but I noticed how my leg did not buckle once and how the pain in my back seemed to relent in the face of our urgency.

The urgency was to rescue Jill-Beth’s papers which, she said, must not fall into Bannister’s hands. We planned to go as far as the ferry slip from which we would swim to Mystique. If Mulder had abandoned his search by then, and restored Wildtrack II to the boathouse, Jill-Beth would slip her moorings and sail out to sea. If there was still danger, then we would just remove the papers and swim ashore again.

But our planning was all in vain for, as we reached the shadows at the head of the ferry slip, we saw that Bannister had anticipated our fears. A dinghy was moored beside Mystique and two men, perhaps from Mulder’s crew, were searching her. Their torchlight flickered on the small boat’s deck. There was still a hint of orange smoke skeining the moorings, though the fires in the woodland had died to a dull glow.

Jill-Beth swore again.

“How important were the papers?” I asked.

“There’s nothing in them he doesn’t already know,” she said, “but they’ll tell him just how much I know. Shit!”

“Shall we call the police?” I asked. “I mean, they don’t have any right to search your boat.”

“Come on, Nick!” she chided me. “How long will it take for us to reach a phone? And how long before the goddamn police arrive?

Bannister will have his answers by then.” She stared at the flickering shapes on Mystique, then shrugged in resignation. “You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, so there’s no point in trying.” She shivered, and I put an arm around her. She resisted for a second, then subsided against me. “Hell,” she said, “but you’re a very inconvenient man, Nick Sandman.”

“I thought I was rather convenient for you tonight.”

“I don’t mean that.” She went silent because Wildtrack II had appeared at Sansom’s Point. I thought Mulder was going to bring the big powerboat up to the moorings, but instead, in a swirl of moonlit foam, he accelerated in a semicircle to speed downriver again.

“What I meant,” Jill-Beth said softly, “is that it’s very inconvenient to get emotionally entangled during a case.”

“Are you emotionally entangled?”

She did not answer the question, and I did not press her. Instead we crouched together in the deep shadows at the slip’s head and stared at the bright lights on Bannister’s terrace from whence came the tumbling sounds of music and laughter. The night’s alarums were over for the party guests, but there was still a grim game of cat and mouse happening on the darkened river.

Jill-Beth could not escape to sea so long as Mulder blocked the river, and the South African had shown no signs of giving up the chase.

“I’m finished here,” Jill-Beth finally said. “I guess I screwed up, right?”

“I don’t see how you could have ever got your evidence,” I said in an attempt to make her feel better. “I mean, if Bannister did push his wife overboard, how could you ever prove it?”

“That’s my job,” she said bitterly, then pulled herself gently away from my embrace. “But what’s important now is to get you safely back. I can’t show my face here again, but you’re still kosher. Tell them that, as far as you know, you just rescued me from that Goddamned rapist, OK? We haven’t talked about Kassouli, and you think I’m just a girl writing a pilot book.”

“It doesn’t matter about me,” I said, “except that I don’t want to leave you.”

She smiled at my protestation, then kissed me. “If you disappear now, Nick, Bannister will think you’ve been working with me. How long do you think your boat will be safe then? Jesus! You saw how ready that South African is to pull a trigger! He’ll stop at nothing, Nick.”

The thought of Sycorax at risk made me silent.

“Stay here,” Jill-Beth urged me, “and I’ll get in touch with you.

I’ll leave a message with Jimmy Nicholls and it’ll be real soon, Nick.”

“I want it to be soon.”

“Real soon.” She said the words softly, in promise, and I felt a shiver of excitement. Jill-Beth gently pulled away and stood up.

“Can I keep the shoes for tonight?”

“Where are you going?”

“I’ve got to reach a telephone. I’ll call one of Kassouli’s British executives and tell him to send a car for me. I need to go to London, I guess, in case Kassouli wants me to fly home.” She shrugged. “He’s not real keen on people who screw up.”

“You did your best,” I said loyally.

“Yassir Kassouli’s not interested in my best, only success.” I shivered. The parting was awkward, and made more so by the unasked questions and unsaid words. I smiled. “Don’t leave England without meeting me.”

“I’ve got to return your shoes, right?” She laughed, then tied the laces as tightly as she could. “Take care, Nick.”

“You take care, too.”

She impulsively leaned towards me and kissed me warmly.

“Thank you for everything.” She said it softly, then pulled away from me and bundled up the wet clothes she’d fetched from the dinghy.

“What about Mystique? ” I asked.

“The charterers will fetch her back. I’ll call them from London.” We kissed again, then she started uphill. I watched her shadow moving in the lane and listened to the scuff of the heavy shoes.

The sounds faded and I was alone. The men who’d searched Mystique rowed towards the far bank. Mulder was still downriver and I felt suddenly forlorn. I tried to conjure back the sensations of Jill-Beth’s skin and voice. Till that moment I had not thought of myself as lonely, but suddenly it seemed to me that the American girl would fit so easily into Sycorax’s life.

I sat for a long time, thinking. I should have been thinking about murder and proof and justice, but I had been entranced by a girl’s smile and a girl’s voice and by my own hunger. The music sounded across the water. I consoled myself that Jill-Beth had promised to call me soon, and somehow that promise seemed to imply a whole new hope for a whole new life.

I waited a good hour, but Mulder was as stubborn as I feared and did not return. In the end I stripped naked, bundled my clothes at the small of my back, and went quickly down the ferry slip and into the river. I breaststroked through the quicksilver shimmer of moonlight to my wharf where I pulled myself over Sycorax’s counter.

I dried off, went below, and tried to imagine the finished cabin as a home for two people. Then, dreaming the dreams of love’s foolish hopes, I locked the washboards and hatch, then waited for dawn.

No one stirred in the dawn. The litter of the night’s party was strewn down the garden where a vague and sifting mist curled from the river. Wildtrack II was back in its dock. I’d heard the powerboat come in during the night and I had waited with a hammer in case Mulder should try to enter Sycorax’s cabin, but he had ignored me. I’d slept then.

Now, waking early, I took one of Bannister’s inflatables and went downstream to where I’d left my dinghy. I emptied it of water, then dragged tender and outboard over the mud and towed them home.

If Mulder saw me from Wildtrack, he did nothing.

I washed my hands in the river, took some money from its hiding place in Sycorax’s bilge, then walked up to the house. Some of the guests slept in the big lounge, others must have been upstairs, but no one was stirring yet. I made myself coffee in Bannister’s kitchen, then took the keys to one of his spare cars. There was a Land-Rover that Bannister kept deliberately unwashed so that tourists would think he had a working farm, and a Peugeot. I took the Peugeot for my long overdue errand.

I hadn’t driven in over two years, and at first my right leg was awkward on the pedals. I missed the brake once and almost rammed the heavy car into a ditch, but somehow I found the hang of it. I drove north and east for three hours, arriving at the housing estate at breakfast time. Concrete roads curved between dull brick houses.

I parked in a bus-stop and waited for an hour, not wanting to wake the household.

Sally Farebrother was still in her brushed nylon dressing-gown when she opened the door to me. She had a small child clutching at her right leg and a baby in her arms. She looked surprised rather than pleased to see me; indeed, she must have wondered if I was in trouble, for I looked like a derelict in my filthy jersey, torn jeans, and old sea-boots. Sally did not look much better herself; she had become a drab and shapeless girl burdened with small children and large resentments. Her dyed hair was lumpy with plastic rollers and her face was pasty. “Captain?”

“Hello, Sally. Is Terry in?”

She shook her head. “They’re on exercise.”

“I didn’t know. I’m sorry.” I was embarrassed to find her so obviously joyless. I’d been a guest at Sergeant Farebrother’s wedding, and I remembered even then fearing that the pretty bride of whom Terry was so proud had the sulky look of a girl who would resent the man who took her from the discos and street-corners. Terry had proved no better than I at choosing a wife. “It’s just that I’ve got some kit here,” I explained lamely. “Terry said he’d keep it for me.”

“It’s in Tracey’s room.” Tracey was one of the children, but I couldn’t remember which. Sally opened the front door wide, inviting me in.

“Are you sure?” I knew how swiftly malicious rumours went round Army housing estates.

Sally did not care. “Upstairs,” she said, “on the left.” She cleared a path for me by kicking aside some broken plastic toys. “I’ll be glad to have the space in the cupboard back.”

“I’m sorry if it’s been a bother.”

“No bother.” She watched me limp upstairs. “Are you all right now?”

“Only when I laugh.” The house had the ammonia stench of babies’ nappies. “How’s Terry?”

“They want him to be a Weapons’ Instructor.” It was said unhappily, for Sally was always nagging Terry to resign the service and go home to Leeds.

“He’d be good at that.” I tried to be encouraging as I reached the landing. “This room?”

“In the cupboard.” A child began crying downstairs and Sally shouted at it to be quiet and eat its bloody breakfast. The house was thin-walled and cheap; married quarters.

I found my bergen under a broken tricycle in the child’s cupboard.

I dragged the heavy rucksack out and hauled it downstairs. “Give Terry my best, won’t you?”

“He’ll be sorry to have missed you.”

“I’ll be in touch with him. Thanks for keeping this.”

“Sure.” She closed the door on me. I saw the curtains twitch in other houses.

I drove back to Devon, reaching Bannister’s house at lunchtime. I’d filled the Peugeot’s tank with petrol as amends for borrowing it, but no one seemed to have missed the old car which Bannister kept solely for local errands. I could hear voices in the house, so I took the path through the woods down to the wharf where Sycorax lay.

I emptied the bergen on the cabin floor. There were sweaters still smeared with dark peaty Falklands soil. There was a shaving kit, canteen, monocular, two shirts, and a camera which still had a roll of undeveloped film in it. There was a situation map, a cigarette lighter, a letter from my bank manager which I’d never opened, and a deck plan of the Canberra. This was the kit we’d left behind as we marched to the start line for the last attack. There was a letter from Melissa’s lawyer demanding that I surrender pension rights, bank accounts, all joint savings, everything. Like a fool, I’d given in on every demand. At the time it had seemed a most irrelevant letter and I had simply wanted the matter out of the way before the grimmer reality of taking the heights above Port Stanley began.

There was a letter from my father that I had not answered, and two photographs of my children. There were three pairs of underpants that needed washing, a towel, a pair of gloves, and a tin of camouflage cream. There was, God alone knew why, a map of the London Underground. There was my beret, which gave me a pang of old and still bright pride. There were no bad dreams.

And underneath it all was the reason why I had driven so far. It was a souvenir wrapped in a dirty towel. I’d taken it from a dead Argentinian officer who’d been lying in the burnt gorse on Darwin Hill. I unwrapped the towel to find a leather belt from which hung a pouch and a holster. In the holster was a .45 calibre automatic pistol, made in the USA; a Colt. It was ugly, black, and heavy. I turned it in my hand, then ejected the full magazine. I emptied the magazine of rounds and noted that the spring was still in good condition, despite being compressed for so many months. I cocked the empty gun and pulled the trigger. The sound seemed immense inside the Sycorax’s hull. The words Ejercito Argentina were incised on the barrel’s flank.

I opened the pouch and took out the spare magazines and rounds.

I did not want to use this weapon, indeed I had hoped never to fire a gun like this again, but Jill-Beth’s warning, and the memory of how easily Fanny Mulder had resorted to his shotgun, had persuaded me to retrieve this trophy of a faraway war. Now, staring at the gun’s obscene and functional outline, I was suddenly ashamed of myself. I wasn’t a prisoner, there was no need to stay. Holding the heavy gun I was suddenly disgusted that my affairs with Bannister had come to this. I would get out now, I would resign. I would leave Bannister. There was no sense in staying in a place where I had been driven to arm myself with a weapon.

My disgust tempted me to hurl the gun far into the river, but there are still seaways where such a thing is needful, and so I oiled and greased the pistol, loaded it, then sealed it in two waterproof bags.

I hid the gun deep in Sycorax, deep down where the sun would never shine, deep beneath the waterline in a dark place where such a thing is best kept.

A hand rapped on the outside of the hull and I jumped like a guilty thing.

“Mr Sandman?” It was one of Mulder’s crew. “Mr Bannister wants to see you. Now.”

It wasn’t a request, but an order. But I wanted to see Bannister too, so I obeyed.

Bannister was waiting for me in his study. He had taken care to provide himself with reinforcements. Fanny Mulder stood to one side of a table littered with charts and weather maps, while Angela slumped in a deep chair in the corner of the room. They all three looked tired.

“Ah, Nick!” Bannister seemed almost surprised that I’d come. I sensed that there had been an argument before I arrived. Angela was sullen, Mulder silent, and Bannister was nervous. He crossed to his desk and shook a cigarette out of a packet. “Thank you for coming,” he said.

“I wanted to see you anyway.”

He clicked a lighter, puffed smoke. “Angela tells me you borrowed a car this morning?”

“I filled it with petrol,” I said. “I should have asked you before I borrowed it. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right.” His denial was too hasty. Bannister, it was clear, did not have the guts to go for a confrontation. Clearly Angela and Mulder were expecting a fight, and I guessed that was what the argument must have been about. They wanted to attack me, while Bannister wanted to keep things gentle. For all his tough-guy image, he crumbled at the first touch.

“Is that all you wanted?” I asked. “Because I’ve also got something to say to you.”

“Where did you go in the car?” Mulder asked in his flat voice.

I ignored him. “I’ve come to tell you that you can count me out,” I said to Bannister. “Not just out of the St Pierre, but out of everything. I don’t want any more of your film, any more of your company. I’m through.”

“Where did you go?” Mulder insisted.

“Answer him,” Angela said.

“I’ve got nothing to say to you! Nothing!” I turned on her furiously, stunning the room with my sudden anger. “I’m sorry,” I said to Bannister. “I don’t want to get angry. I just want out. After last night”—I glanced at Angela, then looked back to Bannister—“I don’t see how I can decently stay. And as I understand things, you promised to restore my boat, so give me a cheque for a thousand pounds and I’ll finish Sycorax myself and leave you alone.” Bannister hated the confrontation. “I think we should talk things over, don’t you?”

“Just give me a cheque.”

Mulder seemed to despise Bannister’s pusillanimity. He moved close and looked down at me. “Where did you go in the car, man?”

“Get out of my way.”

“Where did—”

“Get out of my bloody way or I’ll break your fucking neck!” I astonished myself by my own savagery. Mulder, even though he could surely not have feared me, stepped back. Angela gasped, while Bannister stayed motionless.

I made my voice calm again. “A cheque, please.” Bannister found some courage for the moment. “Did you go to see Miss Kirov, Nick?”

“No. A cheque, please.”

“But you did invite her to the party?” Bannister insisted.

“Yes, but I didn’t know Fanny was going to try and rape her. Are you going to give me a cheque?”

“I didn’t—” Fanny began.

“Shut up!” I snapped. I’d harried them all into submission. They’d summoned me to this room to dress me down as if I was a small schoolboy, but they were all now silent. Mulder stepped away from me, while Angela fumbled in her bag for a cigarette. I could hear the murmur of voices from the terrace beneath where the guests gathered for brunch. “I want a cheque,” I said to Bannister.

I thought I’d won, for Bannister walked to his desk and pulled open a drawer. I expected him to bring out his chequebook, but instead he produced a stack of cardboard folders. “Please look at those, Nick.”

I didn’t move, so he lifted the top one, opened it, and handed it to me.

My own photograph was in the file and curiosity made me take it from Bannister. “Read it,” he said quietly.

There were only two sheets of paper in the folder, both topped with a printed letterhead: ‘Kassouli Insurance Fund, Inc. (Marine)’.

My photograph was pasted on to one of the sheets with my career, such as it had been, carefully typed out beneath. The citation for the Victoria Cross was reproduced in full. The other sheet was handwritten in what, I supposed, was Jill-Beth’s writing. “Captain Sandman’s presence in AB’s house is unexpected, but could be fortunate for us.

Captain Sandman, like many soldiers, is a romantic. In many ways he lives in La-la land, by which I mean he’s a preppy drop-out who wants to do a Joshua Slocum, but undoubtedly his sense of honour and duty would predispose him to our side.” I was wondering where La-la land was, and whether Jill-Beth would like to live there.

“That,” Bannister said quietly, “is your Miss Kirov’s pilot book.

We found these files on her boat.” He handed me another opened file which had a photograph of Fanny Mulder doing his morning exercises on Wildtrack’s bow. The sparse career details said that Francis Mulder had been born in Witsand, Cape Province, on 3 August 1949. His schooling had been scanty. He’d served in the South African Defence Forces. He had a police file in South Africa, being suspected of armed robbery, but nothing had ever been proved.

The next entry recorded his purchase of a cutter in the Seychelles where he had run his charter business until Nadeznha Bannister had spotted his undoubted talent.

Again there was a handwritten comment. “Despite being a protegé of your daughter’s, there can be no doubt of Mulder’s loyalty to AB.

AB has promoted him, pays him well, and constantly demonstrates his trust in Mulder.” The rest of the page had been raggedly torn off, making me wonder if Bannister had destroyed comments that discussed Mulder’s presumed involvement in Nadeznha Bannister’s murder.

I was tempted to ask by what right Bannister had searched Mystique, but, faced with the evidence in the files, it would have been a somewhat redundant question. Bannister took the two files from me. “Do you understand now why we’re somewhat concerned that you might be a close friend of Miss Kirov’s?” He turned to stare at a large portrait of his dead wife that stood framed on the study bookshelves. “Do you know who owns the Kassouli Insurance Fund?”

“I assume your ex-wife’s father?”

“Yes.” He said it bleakly, almost hopelessly, then sat in a big leather chair behind the desk and rubbed his face with both hands.

“Tell him, Angela.”

Angela spoke tonelessly. “Yassir Kassouli is convinced that Tony could have prevented Nadeznha’s death. He’s never forgiven Tony for that. He also believes, irrationally and wrongly, that by making another attempt on the race this year Tony is demonstrating a callous attitude towards Nadeznha’s death. Yassir Kassouli will do anything to stop Tony winning. Last night Miss Kirov tried to persuade Fanny to sabotage our St Pierre attempt. Fanny refused. In turn he accused Miss Kirov of dismasting Wildtrack. They had an argument. That’s when she pretended to be attacked, and when you played the gallant rescuer.” Angela could not resist unsheathing a claw. “That’s the truth, Mr Sandman, of which you’re such a staunch guardian.” I said nothing. There had been a ring of truth in her words, however much they contradicted what I’d seen and what Jill-Beth had said, and I felt the confusion of a man assailed by conflicting certainties. Jill-Beth had spoken of murder, and of a million-dollar insurance claim, while Angela now spoke convincingly of a rich man’s obsession with preserving his daughter’s memory. I supposed that the real truth of the matter was that there was no real truth. Nor, I told myself, was it any of my business. I had come here to resign, nothing more.

Bannister swivelled his chair so he could stare at the portrait. If he’d murdered her, I thought, then he was putting on an award-winning performance. “I can’t explain grief, Nick,” he said. “Yassir Kassouli’s never forgiven me for Nadeznha’s death. God knows what I was supposed to do. Keep her ashore? All I do know is that so long as Kassouli lives he’ll hate me because of his daughter’s death. He isn’t rational on the subject, he’s obsessed, and I have to protect myself from his obsession.” He shrugged, as if to suggest that his explanation was inadequate, but the best, and most honest, that he could provide. He tapped the folders. “You can see that Miss Kirov believes that you’ll help sabotage my St Pierre run this year.”

“I’m not in a position to help,” I said to Bannister, “because I’ve resigned from your life. No film, no St Pierre, I just want your cheque. A thousand pounds will suffice, and I promise to account for every penny of it.”

“And how will you account for the money already spent?” Angela snapped into her most Medusa-like mood, echoing her vituperation of the previous night. “Do you know how much money we’ve invested in this film? A film that you undertook to make? Or had you forgotten that you signed contracts?”

I still refused to look at her or speak to her. I kept my eyes on Bannister. “I want a cheque.”

“You just want to do what’s most comfortable!” Angela had worked herself into another fine anger. “But I want a film that will help people, and if you back out on it, Nick Sandman, then you’re reneging on a contract. It’s a contract we trusted, and we’ve spent thousands of pounds on realizing it, and if you tear it up now then I promise you that I’ll try and recoup that wasted money. The only property of yours that the courts will consider worth confiscat-ing is Sycorax, but I’ll settle for that!” Her voice was implacably confident, suggesting she had already taken legal advice. “So if you don’t fulfil your contractual obligations. Nick Sandman, you will lose your boat.”

I still ignored her. “A thousand pounds,” I said to Bannister.

“You’re not going to walk out on this!” Angela shouted.

“A thousand pounds,” I said to Bannister again.

Bannister was caught between the two of us. I suspected he would gladly have surrendered to me at that moment, but Angela wanted her pound of Nick Sandman’s flesh and Bannister, I assumed, was afraid of losing her flesh. He prevaricated. “I think we’re all too overwrought to make a decision now.”

“I’m not,” I insisted.

“But I am!” He betrayed a flash of anger. “We’ll talk next week. I need to look at the budget, and at the film we’ve already shot.” He was making excuses, trying to slide out from making a decision. “I’ll phone you from London, Nick.”

“I won’t be here,” I said.

“You’d better be here,” Angela snapped, “if you want to keep your boat.”

So far, except for the first time she’d spoken to me, I’d succeeded in ignoring her. Now I told her to go to hell, then I turned and walked from the room. The guests on the terrace fell silent as I limped past them. I didn’t know whether I’d resigned, been fired from the film, or was about to be baked in a lawyer’s pie. Nor did I much care.

I stumped down the lawn, skirted the boathouse, and saw that Jimmy Nicholls had come upriver and tied his filthy boat alongside Sycorax. He was lifting two sacks into Sycorax’s scuppers. “Chain plates and bolts,” he told me. “Ready for the morning.”

“Bugger the morning. Can you tow Sycorax away today?”

“Bloody hell.” He straightened up from the sacks. “Where to?”

“Any bloody where. Away from bloody television people. Bloody stuck-up, arrogant powder-puffs.” I climbed down to Sycorax’s deck.

Jimmy chuckled. “Fallen out with your fancy friends, boy?” I looked up at the house and saw Angela watching me from the study window. “Up yours, too.” I didn’t say it loud enough to carry.

“The bastards are threatening to get the bailiffs on to Sycorax. Where can I hide her?”

He frowned. “Nowhere on this river, Nick. How about the Hamoaze?”

“Georgie Cullen’s yard?”

“He liked your dad.”

“Every thief likes my dad.” I scooped up a coiled warp and bent it on to a cleat ready for the tow. I wanted Angela and Bannister to see me leave. I wanted them to know that I didn’t give a monkeys for their film or their threats. “Have you got enough diesel to get me there today, Jimmy?”

“You don’t want to go anywhere right now,” Jimmy said sternly.

“I’ve got a letter for you. Boy on a motorbike brought it from London!

Said I was to get it to you, but no one was to notice, like, so that’s why I hid it with the bolts, see?” He pointed to one of the sacks.

“From London, Nick!” Jimmy was just as astonished as I that someone should hire a messenger to ride all the way from London to Devon. “The boy said as how an American maid gave it he. You want to read it before you bugger off?”

I wanted to read it. A moment ago I had been full of certainty as to what I should do, but the sudden and overwhelming memory of a naked girl in my dinghy, of her smile, of her competence, made me carry the heavy sack down into Sycorax’s cabin. The creamy white envelope was marked ‘Urgent’.

I tore it open. Two things fell out.

One was a first-class ticket for British Airways, London to Boston and back again. The ticket was in my name, and the outbound flight left Heathrow the very next morning. The return had been left open.

The second thing was a letter written in a handwriting that I’d just read in Bannister’s study. ‘If you haven’t got a visa then get one from the Embassy and come Tuesday. I’ll meet you at Logan Airport.’

The signature was a child’s drawing of a smiling face, a sketched heart, and the initials JB.

I did not consider the choices. Not for one heartbeat did I sit and think it through. It never occurred to me that I was being asked to take sides, nor did I think it odd that a girl would send me an expensive air ticket. At that moment, after years in which I had known nothing except fighting, pain, and hospital, I was being offered a great gift. The gift seemed to imply all the things that a soldier dreams of when he’s neck-deep in wet mud with nasty bastards trying to bury him there forever.

In short, with visa and passport ready, I would go.

There would be no time to hide Sycorax, but a stratagem would have to protect her while I was away. I also asked Jimmy to keep an eye on her. “If they tow her off, Jimmy, follow them.”

“I’ll do what I can, boy.” He eyed the air ticket. “Going far, are you?”

“Out of the frying-pan, Jimmy, and straight into bed.” I laughed.

It seemed like a madcap thing to do, an irresponsible thing to do, but a wonderfully spontaneous and exciting thing to do, and there had been precious little spontaneous and enjoyable excitement in my life since the bullet caught me. So I locked the cabin hatch, rode Jimmy’s boat downriver to the town, and caught a bus. For Boston.

The stratagem to protect Sycorax involved telephoning my mother in Dallas.

“Do you know what time it is, Nick?” She sounded horrified. “Are you dying?”

“No, you are.” I fed another fifty-pence piece into the coinbox.

“It’s half-past four in the morning! What do you mean, I’m dying?”

“I apologize about that, Mother, but if anyone calls from England and asks after me, then say you’re not well. Say you asked me to visit your deathbed. It’ll only be for a few days.” There was a pause. “It bloody well is half-past four!”

“I’m sorry, Mother.”

“Where are you, for God’s sake?”

“Heathrow.”

“You’re not really coming to see me, are you?” She sounded appalled at the prospect.

“No, Mother.”

“Your sister came a month ago and I’m still exhausted. Why am I dying?”

“Because I’ve told some people that I’m visiting you. I’m actually going somewhere else and I don’t want them to know.” Another pause. “I really don’t understand a word you’re saying, Nick.”

“Yes, you do, Mother. If anyone telephones you and wants to know if I’m there, then the answer is that I am there, but I can’t reach the telephone straight away, and you’re dying. Will you tell your maid that?”

There was another long pause. “This is uncommonly tedious, even for you. Are you drunk?”

“No, Mother. Now will you help me?”

“Of course I will, I just think it’s terrifying to be telephoned at half-past four in the morning. I thought the Russians must have in-vaded. Did you transfer the charges?”

“No, Mother.”

“Thank God for that.” She yawned down the telephone. “Are you well?”

“Yes. I’m walking again.”

“How’s your father?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

“You ought to. You were his favourite. How are Piers and Amanda?”

“They’re very well.”

“So crass of you to have lost Melissa. Do you mind if I go back to sleep now?”

“Thank you, Mother.”

“You’re very welcome.”

I pressed the receiver rest, put in more coins, and dialled Devon.

No one answered in Bannister’s house, or rather the relentlessly cheerful answering machine responded. “This is Sandman,” I said,

“and I’m phoning to say that my mother’s been taken ill in Dallas and her doctors think I should be with her. I’ll discuss our other problems when I get back.”

I was taking precautions. I feared that Angela might interpret my disappearance as a desertion of her wretched film, and that she would then carry out her legal threats. I had no idea how long it took to get a court order, or whether the court could really order Sycorax’s sequestration, but I reckoned the fiction of a dying mother would confuse the lawyers for long enough. Then, just as soon as I returned to England, I planned to take the boat away. I’d had enough of Bannister, more than enough of Medusa, and I would take Sycorax to another river and there rig and equip her. But first, America.

They looked at me very oddly at the check-in desk. I was wearing a pair of my oldest deck-shoes, duck trousers which were stained with varnish and linseed oil, and a tatty blue jumper over one of the unwashed Army shirts I’d found in the bergen. It was my cleanest shirt. “Any luggage?” the girl asked me.

“None.”

But my ticket was valid, and my visa unexpired, so they had to let me on.

I went with excitement. I forgot Bannister and I forgot his threats because a girl with bright eyes and black hair had summoned me to Boston.

It was raining at Boston’s Logan Airport. There was no Jill-Beth. Instead a chauffeur with a limousine the size of a Scorpion tank waited for me. The chauffeur apologized that Miss Kirov was unable to be personally present. He was civilized enough to overlook my lack of luggage and the state of my clothes. The US Immigration officers had been less courteous, though a phone call to the Military Attaché at the British Embassy in Washington had finally convinced them that I had not come to corrupt the morals of the Republic. I rather hoped that I had.

In which hope I was driven south through a thunderstorm.

We drove to Cape Cod. I remembered, as we crossed the canal, how I had sailed Sycorax down this waterway to the East Boat Basin six years before. I’d had a crew from my regiment on board and we’d all been awed by the glossy boats amongst which Sycorax had seemed like a poor and shabby relation.

Now, taken deep into the Cape, I was wafted to a hotel of unimaginable luxury where I was expected and, despite my appearance, treated as a most honoured guest. I was shown to a door that carried a brass plate inscribed “Admiral’s Quarters”, but few admirals could ever have lived in such sybaritic splendour. It was a suite of rooms which overlooked a harbour. I had a jacuzzi, a bath, a bedroom, a living-room and a private balcony.

I went to the window. My father had always loved America; he loved its freedom, its excesses and its shameless wealth. I found the Republic more frightening, perhaps because I had not inherited my father’s talent for manipulating cash. I stared now at the busy harbour where boats that cost more than an Army officer could earn in a lifetime jostled on their moorings. The rain was clearing, promising a bright and warm evening. A motor-yacht with a flying bridge, raked aerials, fighting chair and a harpoon walkway accelerated towards the sea, while behind me the air-conditioning hissed in the Admiral’s Quarters. It all suddenly seemed very, very unreal; like a splendid dream that will end at any moment and return the sleeper to a commonplace reality. I turned on the television to find that the Red Sox were four runs ahead at the bottom of the eighth with three men on base. A printed card planted on the television set assured me that Room Service could bring me the Bountiful Harvest of the Sea or Land at any hour of the Day or Night. I felt as though I was drowning in casual affluence. There was a shaving kit laid out for me in the bathroom, a towelling robe waiting on the bed, while in one of the walk-in cupboards I found my old brogues which had been re-heeled, then polished to a deep shine. The sight of them, and the memory of the last time I had worn them, made me smile.

There were also four pairs of new shoes sitting alongside the brogues.

Above the shoes, and hanging in protective paper covers, were clothes. There were two dinner-jackets; one white, one black. There were slacks, shirts, unnecessary sweaters, even a rain-slicker. Some ties hung on a door-rack and I noticed, with astonishment, that my old regiment’s striped tie was among them. A label was pinned on to the regimental tie: “With the Compliments of Miss Kirov.” At the bottom of the paper slip was the legend, ‘Kassouli Hotels, Inc., a Division of Kassouli Leisure Interests, Inc.’.

I suppose I’d really known right from the moment when I’d opened that thick creamy envelope in Sycorax’s cabin. I’d known who had paid for the ticket, and who wanted me in the States, but I’d deceived myself into thinking that it was love; as bright and shiny and new as a fresh-minted coin. Of course it was not. It was Kassouli.

The compliments slip only confirmed it, but still I thought I could pluck my fresh coin out of the mess.

The telephone startled me.

“Captain Sandman? This is the front desk, sir. Miss Kirov has requested us to inform you that she’ll come by at seven o’clock with transportation. She suggests formal dress, sir.”

“Right. Thank you.”

He enjoined me to have a nice day. On the television the batter hit a grand slam home run, the ball rising so that the picture was shattered by the starburst of stadium lights. I turned the set off and drew a bath. It was madness, but I had volunteered to come here because of a girl. I felt my right leg trembling and I feared that the knee would buckle, so I lowered myself into the bath and told myself that there was no need for apprehension, that it was an adventure, and that I was glad to be here.

My sense of unreality, that I was a sleepwalking participant in a sleek dream, only increased when Jill-Beth arrived. She came in a white BMW convertible, and was wearing an evening dress of black and white speckled silk. She had a triple strand of pearls beneath a lace shawl. Her hair seemed glossier and her skin more glowing than I remembered. “Hi, Nick.”

“Hello.” I was shy.

She laughed. “I knew you’d choose the black tux.”

“I’m sorry to be so conventional.”

“Hell, no. I like a black tux on a man. You don’t want to look like a waiter, do you?” She leaned over and gave me a quick kiss. “How’s the jet lag?”

“As bad as yours, I imagine?”

“I feel great. You’d better, too, because we’re partying.” She accelerated the BMW from under the hotel’s awning. It was a hot sticky evening, but, though the BMW’s hood was down, she had the air-conditioning on full blast so that my legs froze while my chest became sticky with sweat.

“I didn’t bring much money,” I said warningly.

“A thousand bucks should see you through the night.” She saw the expression on my face, and laughed. “Hell, Nick! You’re Kassouli’s guest, OK?”

“OK,” I said, as though I’d known all along that it was Kassouli who’d plucked me across an ocean and not love.

Jill-Beth swung into a marina entrance where an armed guard recognized her and opened the gate. We drove past a row of moored motor-cruisers, each the size of a minesweeper and each with an aerial array that would have done service to a frigate.

“La-la land,” I said, echoing the comment Jill-Beth had written about me in the file that Bannister had shown me.

Jill-Beth instantly understood the allusion, and laughed. “Did you see the files?”

“Only those that Bannister wanted me to see.”

“That figures. Were you offended by what I wrote?”

“Should I have been?”

“Hell, no.” She waved to a man on board one of the moored cruisers, then offered me a deprecating smile. “I guess I’m not exactly flavour of the month with Tony Bannister?”

“Not exactly. Nor am I.”

“Tough.” She swung the BMW into a parking slot opposite a berth where a white cutter was moored. She put the gear into neutral and kept the motor running as she nodded at the yacht. “Like it?” I knew that make of boat, and liked it very much. She was called Ballet Dancer and had been built on America’s West Coast; a 42-foot cutter with a canoe stern, bowsprit, and the solid, graceful lines of a sturdy sea boat. She was made of fibreglass, but had expensive teak decks and rubbing-strakes. “Yours?” I guessed.

“Mine. I always wanted to be a ballet dancer, you see, but it doesn’t help if you’re built like a steer.”

“You should have qualified then.”

She smiled at the compliment. “I grew too tall. Anyway, I prefer sailing now.”

“She’s a lovely boat,” I said warmly. Ballet Dancer had the good look of a well-used boat. You can always tell when a boat is sailed hard; it loses its showroom gloss and accretes the small extra features that experience has demanded. Ballet Dancer’s cleats and fairleads were worn, there were extra warps neatly coiled in her scuppers, and there was a ragged collection of oars, poles and boathooks bundled beside the lashed-down liferaft. The teak decks and trim had faded to a bone white. In a month or two Sycorax would have this same efficient and weathered look. “She looks beautiful,” I said.

“And all mine,” Jill-Beth said happily. “Paid off the final instalment last month.” She switched off the BMW’s engine and opened her door. “Coming?”

I followed her on to the floating pontoon and watched as she disconnected the shoreside electricity and unlooped the springs.

“We’re going out?” I said with surprise.

“Sure. Why not?”

It seemed very odd to be crewing a boat while dressed in evening clothes, but that was evidently Jill-Beth’s plan. She started the engine.

“You want to take her out, Nick?”

The boat’s long keel made it hard to turn in the marina’s restricted water, but I backed and filled until the bow was facing the channel.

Once there Jill-Beth unrolled the genoa from the forestay, then hoisted the main. I’d never seen a girl in evening dress rig a yacht before. “The trick to it,” she said happily, “is a damned good anti-perspirant.” She came and sat next to me in the cockpit where she opened a locker. “Champagne?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

The evening had been sparked with a spontaneity that matched the irresponsibility of flying the Atlantic. I felt happy, even light-headed. It was cooler out on the water where the small wind spilt down on us from the mainsail’s curve. “How does she compare to Sycorax? ” Jill-Beth asked.

“Sycorax carries more windage aloft. The gaff, all those blocks and halliards, the topsail yard. So she has to have a lot of metal underwater. That makes her stubborn.”

“Like you?”

“Like me. And like me she’s not too hot to windward, but I don’t plan to fight my way round the world.” A motor-cruiser surged past us. There was a party in evening dress on its covered quarterdeck and they raised their glasses in friendly greeting. I could see the first stars pricking the sky’s pale wash where an airliner etched a white trail. “Thank you for the air ticket,” I said.

“Nada.” Jill-Beth grinned. “Isn’t that why white knights rescue damsels in distress? For a reward?”

“Is this my reward?” I asked.

“What else?” She touched my glass with hers. The wake of the cruiser jarred Ballet Dancer’s double-ended hull and made Jill-Beth’s champagne spill on to my black trousers. She wiped the excess off.

“I like you in a tux. It makes you look elegantly ugly.” I laughed. “I think it’s the first time I’ve worn a tie since they gave me the medal.” We passed a moored boat which had a smoking barbecue slung from its dinghy davits. The skipper waved a fork at us and we raised our champagne flutes in reply. I thought how the pleasure of this evening compared to the bitter paranoia of Bannister’s life; the jealousies and ambitions, the sheer squalidness of his suspicions. No wonder, I thought, that his American wife had tired of it. Had she wanted to come back to this elegant coast with its sprawl of luxuries?

I pushed the mainsheet traveller across as the wind backed a point or two. We were going softly eastwards, past shoals, but keeping within the buoys that marked the offshore channel. Two more motor-cruisers passed us, and both carried yet more people in evening dress. “Where’s the party?” I asked.

“There.” Jill-Beth pointed directly ahead towards a massive white house that occupied its own sand-edged promontory. The house was shielded on its landward side by trees while wide terraced lawns dropped to the private beaches and to the private docks that this night were strung with lanterns and crowded with boats. A string of headlamps showed where other guests drove along the spit of sand that led to the promontory. “The house belongs to Kassouli’s wife,” Jill-Beth said. “She’s not there, but Kassouli is. He wants to thank you.”

“Thank me for what?”

“For rescuing me.”

I suddenly felt nervous. There’s something about the very rich that always makes me nervous. Principles, I remembered, are soluble in cash, and I had already surrendered my privacy to Bannister’s cash and feared that something more might be asked of me this night. I pushed the helm away from me. “Why don’t we just bugger off to Nantucket? I haven’t been there for years.” Jill-Beth laughed and pulled the helm back again. “Yassir wants to see you, Nick. You’ll like him!”

I doubted it, but obediently steered for the dock where servants waited to berth our yacht. I could hear the thump of the music coming from the wide, lantern-hung gardens. I chose a windward berth, spilt air from the sails, and two men jumped aboard to take our warps.

We entered the garden of Kassouli’s delights. A pit had been dug on one of the beaches and a proper clambake of driftwood and seaweed sifted smoke into the evening and tantalized us with the smells of lobster, clams and sweetcorn. Higher up, on one of the terraces, steaks dripped on barbecues. There was champagne, music and seemingly hundreds of guests. It was clearly an important social occasion, for there were photographers hunting through the shoals of beautiful people. One flashed a picture of Jill-Beth and myself, but when he asked my name I told him I was no one important. “A Brit?” He sounded disappointed, then cheered up. “Are you a Lord?” I told him my name was John Brown. He wrote it down, but it was plain I was not destined to be the evening’s social lion.

“Why didn’t you say who you were?” Jill-Beth protested.

“I’m no one important.”

“Nonsense. You want to dance?”

I said my back hurt too much and so we sat at a table where we were joined by a noisy group. One of the men, after the introductions, told me how I could refinance my boat on a twelve-year amortization schedule. I made polite noises. I gathered that a good few of the guests worked for Kassouli, either in his finance houses, shipping line or oil companies. I looked for Kassouli himself, but the man who wanted to lend me money said that the boss probably wouldn’t show himself. “Yassir’s not a great partygoer. He likes to give ’em, though.” The man peered round the garden. “That’s his son, Charlie.”

I recognized the son from the pictures I’d seen in Bannister’s house, but there was one thing I was not prepared for. Charles Kassouli was now in a wheelchair. He was only in his early twenties, but had withered legs slewed sideways on the chair.

“What happened?” I asked my new acquaintance.

“Motorbike.” The reply was laconic. “Too many bucks and not enough sense. What do you expect of rich kids?” Jill-Beth introduced me to the son a few moments later.

Charles Kassouli’s face was startlingly handsome, but his character was distant and churlish. I thought he might be doped into lethargy with painkillers, though he proved snappish enough when Jill-Beth told him I was a sailor.

“Sailing sucks.” The resentful face turned to see whether I would take offence. I took none. If anything I felt a chill pity, for here was a boy born to the pleasures of the richest society on earth, and who had thrown them away with one twist of a motorcycle’s grip. At the same time I felt some scorn. I’d known scores of people in hospital who, denied the chance to walk, faced their lives with a courage that made me feel inadequate. Charles Kassouli, though, was clearly not cut from the same cloth.

“You’ve never sailed?” I asked him.

“I told you. Sailing sucks.”

“Charles owns a motor-cruiser,” Jill-Beth said in an attempt to chivvy him into cheefulness.

“Are you dancing, JB?” He threw away his cigarette and swivelled his chair away from me.

“Sure, Charlie.” She walked beside his electric wheelchair on to the dance floor and I watched how unself-consciously she gyrated in front of him. She grinned at me, but I turned away because a voice had spoken in my ear. “Captain Sandman?”

The speaker was a tall and fair-haired man who had broad shoulders beneath his white and braided uniform coat. He offered me a slight bow of his head. “Captain Sandman?” he asked again.

He had a Scandinavian accent.

“Yes.”

“If you’re ready, sir?” He gestured towards the big house.

I looked for Jill-Beth, but she had disappeared with Kassouli’s son, and so I followed the uniformed manservant into the great house that was more like a palace. We entered through a garden room hung with cool watercolour landscapes. A door led to a long air-conditioned hallway lined with the most superb ship models of the eighteenth century. Naval museums would have yearned for just one such model, but Kassouli owned a score of them. The walls were hung with pictures of ancient naval battles. An open door revealed a conservatory where a long indoor swimming pool rippled under palms.

At the hallway’s end the Scandinavian opened both leaves of a gilded door and bowed me into a library where he left me alone.

It was a lovely room; windowless, but perfectly proportioned.

It was lined with expensive leather-bound editions in English, French, Greek and Arabic. On rosewood tables in front of the library stacks were more ship models, but these were of Kassouli’s modern fleet. There were supertankers and bulk carriers, all painted with the Kassouli Line’s emblem of a striking kestrel. Each ship’s name began and ended with a K. Kalik, Kerak, Kanik, Komek. In the trade it was called the Kayak Line; a slighting nickname for one of the world’s great merchant fleets.

And a fleet run, I thought, by a modern merchant prince; a Le-vantine who had drawn me across the globe. I was suddenly very nervous. I stared up at the paintings which hung above the bookshelves. They were not pictures calculated to reassure a nervous Briton; they showed the battles of Bunker Hill, Saratoga, Yorktown, and, from a later war, New Orleans. The canvases were dark with varnish; the patina of ancient wealth giving gloss to a new American’s fortune.

On a table in the room’s centre there was a handsomely mounted family photograph. Yassir Kassouli, his plump face proud, sat next to his wife. She was a fair-haired, good-looking woman with amused eyes. Behind them stood Nadeznha and Charles; proud children, wholesome children, the finest products of the world’s richest melting pot. I saw how their father’s Mediterranean blood had dominated in their faces, but on Nadeznha I could see an echo of her mother’s humorous eyes.

“A photograph taken before the tragedies.” The voice startled me.

I turned to see a tall, thick-set and balding man standing in a doorway. It was Yassir Kassouli. His skin was very pale, as though he had seen little sunlight in the last few months. What was left of his hair was white. In the family photograph he had appeared as a man in his prime, but now he had the look of old age. Only his eyes, dark and suspicious, showed the immense and animal force of this immigrant who had made one of America’s great fortunes. He was in evening dress and bowed a courteous greeting. “I have to thank you, Captain Sandman, for coming all this way to see me.” I muttered some inanity about it being my pleasure.

He crossed to the table and lifted the photograph. “Before the tragedies. You met my son?”

“Indeed, sir.” The ‘sir’ came quite naturally.

“I raised my children according to Western tenets, Captain Sandman. To my daughter I gave freedom, and to my son pleasure. I do not think, on the whole, that I did well.” He said the last words drily, then crossed to a liquor cabinet. “You drink Irish whisky, I believe.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Jameson or Bushmills?” He had a New England accent. If it had not been for his name, and for the very dark eyes, I’d have taken him for a Wasp broker or banker.

“Either.”

He poured my whiskey, then helped himself to Scotch. As he finished pouring, the door opened and his son, escorted by Jill-Beth, wheeled himself into the room. Kassouli acknowledged their arrival by a gesture suggesting they helped themselves to liquor. “You don’t mind, Captain, if my son joins us?”

“Of course not, sir.”

He brought me my whisky that had been served without ice in a thick crystal glass. “Allow me to congratulate you on your Victoria Cross, Captain. I believe it is a very rare award these days?”

“Thank you.” I felt clumsy in the face of his suave courtesy.

“Do you smoke, Captain Sandman?”

“No, sir.”

“I’m glad. It’s a filthy habit. Shall we sit?” He gestured at the sofas in front of the fireplace.

We sat. Jill-Beth and Charles Kassouli positioned themselves at the back of the room, as if they knew they were present only to ob-serve. The son’s earlier and surly defiance had been muted to a respectful silence and I suspected that Charles Kassouli lived in some fear of his formidable father. He certainly did not light a cigarette in his father’s presence.

Yassir Kassouli thanked me for rescuing Jill-Beth. He thanked me again for coming to America. He spoke for a few minutes of his own history, of how he had purchased two tank-landing craft at the end of the Second World War and used them to found his present fortunes. “Most of that fortune,” he said in self-deprecation, “was based on smuggling. A man could become very rich carrying cigarettes from Tangiers to Spain in the late forties.

Naturally, when I became an American citizen, I gave up such a piratical existence.”

He asked after my father and expressed his regrets at what had happened. “I knew Tommy,” he said, “not well, but I liked him. You will pass on my best wishes?” I promised I would. Kassouli then enquired what my future was, and smiled when I said that it depended on ocean currents and winds. “I’ve often wished I could be such an ocean gypsy myself,” Kassouli said, “but alas.”

“Alas.” I echoed him.

The word served to make him look at his family portrait. I watched his profile, seeing the lineaments of the thin, savage face that had become fleshy with middle age. “In my possession,” he said suddenly, “I have the weather charts and satellite photographs of the North Atlantic for the week in which my daughter was killed.”

“Ah.” The suddenness with which he had introduced the subject of his daughter’s death rather wrong-footed me.

“Perhaps you would like to see them?” He clicked his fingers and Jill-Beth dutifully opened a bureau drawer and brought me a thick file of papers.

I spilt the photographs and grey weatherfax charts on to my lap.

Each one was marked with a red-ink cross to show where Nadeznha Bannister had died. I leafed through them as Kassouli watched me.

“You’ve sailed a great deal, Captain Sandman?” he asked me.

“Yes, sir.”

“Would you, from your wide experience, say that the conditions revealed in those photographs were such that a large boat like Wildtrack might have been pooped?” Kassouli still spoke in his measured, grave voice, as though, instead of talking about his daughter’s death, he spoke of politics or the Stock Market’s vagaries.

I insisted on looking through all the papers before I answered.

The sequence of charts and photographs showed that Wildtrack had been pursued, then overtaken, by a small depression that had raced up from New England, crossed the Grand Banks, then clawed its way out into the open ocean. The cell of low pressure would have brought rain, a half gale, and fast sailing, but the isobars were not so closely packed as to suggest real storm conditions. I said as much, but added that heavy seas were not always revealed by air pressure.

“Indeed not,” Kassouli acknowledged, “but two other boats were within a hundred miles, and neither reported exceptional seas.” I shuffled the photographs with their telltale whirl of dirty cloud.

“Sometimes,” I said lamely, “a rogue wave is caused by a ship’s wake. A supertanker?”

“Miss Kirov’s researches have discovered no big ships in the vi-cinity that night.” Kassouli had the disconcerting trick of keeping his eyes quite steadily on mine.

“Even so,” I insisted, “rogue waves do happen.” Kassouli sighed, as though I was being deliberately perverse. “The best estimate of wave height, at that time and in that place, is fifteen feet. You wish to see the report I commissioned?” He clicked his fingers again, and Jill-Beth dutifully brought me a file that was stamped with the badge of one of America’s most respected ocean-ographic institutes. I turned the typed pages with their charts of wave patterns, statistics and random sample analyses. I found what I wanted at the report’s end: an appendix which insisted that rogue waves, perhaps two or three times the height of the surrounding seas, were not unknown.

“You’re insisting that such seas are frequent?” Kassouli challenged me.

“Happily very infrequent.” I closed the report and laid it on the sofa.

“I do not believe,” he spoke as though he summarized our discussion, “that Wildtrack was pooped.”

There was a pause. I was expected to comment, but I could only offer the bleak truth, instead of the agreement he wanted. “But you can’t prove that she wasn’t pooped?”

His face flickered, as though I’d struck him, but his courteous tone did not falter. “The damage to Wildtrack’s stern hardly supports Bannister’s story of a pooping.”

I tried to remember the evidence given at the inquest. Wildtrack had lost her stern guardrails, and with them the ensign staff, danbuoys and lifebelts. That added up to superficial damage, but it would still have needed a great force to rip the stanchions loose. I shrugged. “Are you saying the damage was faked?” He did not answer. Instead he leaned back in his sofa and steepled his fingers. “Allow me to offer you some further thoughts, Captain.

My daughter was a most excellent and highly experienced sailor.

Do you think it likely that she would have been in even a medium sea without a safety harness?”

I saw that Kassouli’s son was leaning forward in his wheelchair, intent on catching every word. “Not unless she was re-anchoring the harness,” I said, “no.”

“You are asking me to believe”—Kassouli’s deep voice was scornful—“that a rogue wave just happened to hit Wildtrack in the two or three seconds that it took Nadeznha to unclip and move her harness?”

It sounded lame, but sea accidents always sound unlikely when they are calmly recounted in a comfortable room. I shrugged.

Kassouli still watched closely for my every reaction. “Have you seen the transcript of the inquest?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“It says that the South African, what was his name?” He clicked his fingers irritably, and Jill-Beth, speaking for the first time since she had come into the room, supplied the answer. “Mulder,” Kassouli repeated the name. “The report says Mulder was on deck when my daughter died. Do you believe that?”

“I don’t know.” I hesitated, and Kassouli let the silence stretch uncomfortably. “There’s a rumour,” I said weakly, “that Mulder lied to the inquest, but it’s only pub gossip.”

“Which also says that Bannister was the man on deck.” Kassouli, who had clearly known about the rumour all along, pounced hard on me as though he was nailing the truth at last. “Why, in the name of God, would they lie about that?” I was beginning to regret that I had come to America. It had seemed like a blithe adventure when Jimmy had delivered the ticket to Sycorax, but now the trip had turned into a very uncomfortable inquisition. “We don’t know that it was a lie,” I said.

“You would let sleeping dogs dream,” Kassouli said scathingly,

“because you fear their bite.”

I feared Kassouli’s bite more. He was not a sleeping dog, but a very wideawake wolf. “There is something else.” Kassouli closed his eyes for a few seconds, as if his next statement was painful. “My daughter, I believe, was in love with another man.”

“Ah.” It was an inadequate response, but my Army training was not up to any other reaction. I could discuss the sea with a fair equanimity, but I was discomforted by this new, embarrassing and personal strain in the conversation.

Kassouli, oblivious to my embarrassment, turned to his son. “Tell him, Charles.”

Charles Kassouli shrugged. “She told me.”

“Told you what?” I asked.

“There was another fellow.” He was laconic, and his voice was very slightly slurred.

“But she did not say who he was?” his father asked.

“No. But she was kind of excited, you know?” I did know, but I kept from looking at Jill-Beth. “Isn’t it odd,” I said instead, “that she sailed with her husband if she was in love with someone else?”

“Nadeznha was not a girl to lightly dismiss a marriage,” Kassouli said. “She would have found divorce very painful. And, indeed, she shared her husband’s ambition to win the St Pierre. It was a mistake, Captain. She sailed to her murder.”

He waited once more for me to chime in with an agreement that her death had been murder. I’d even been fetched clean across the Atlantic to provide that agreement, but I did not oblige.

Kassouli gave the smallest shrug. “May I tell you about Nadeznha, Captain?”

“Please.” I was excruciatingly embarrassed.

He stood and paced the rug. Sometimes, as he spoke, he would glance at the family photograph. “She was a most beautiful girl, Captain. You would expect a father to say that of his daughter, yet I can put my hand on my heart and tell you that she was, in all honesty, a most outstanding young lady. She was clever, modest, kind and accomplished. She had a great trust in the innate decency of all people. You might think that naivety, but to Nadeznha it was a sacred creed. She did not believe that evil truly existed.” He stopped pacing and stared at me. “She was named after my mother”—he added the apparent irrelevance—“and you would have liked her.”

“I’m sure,” I said lamely.

“Nadeznha was a good person,” Kassouli said very firmly as if I needed to understand that encomium before he proceeded. “I believe that I spoilt her as a child, yet she possessed a natural balance, Captain; a feel for what was right and true. She made but one mistake.”

“Bannister.” I helped the conversation along.

“Exactly. Anthony Bannister.” The name came off Kassouli’s tongue with an almost vicious intensity; astonishing from a man whose tones had been so measured until this moment. “She met him shortly after she had been disappointed in love, and she married him on what, I believe, is called the rebound. She was dazzled by him. He was a European, he was famous in his own country, and he was glamorous.”

“Indeed.”

“I warned her against a precipitate marriage, but the young can be very headstrong.” Kassouli paused, and I noted this first betrayal of a crack in the perfect image he had presented of his daughter. He looked hard at me. “What do you think of Bannister?”

“I really don’t know him well.”

“He is a weak man, a despicable man, Captain. I take no pleasure in thus describing one of your countrymen, but it is true. He was unfaithful to my daughter, he made her unhappy, and yet she persisted in offering him the love and loyalty which one would have expected from a girl of her sweet disposition.”

There was confusion here. A sweet girl? But headstrong and wilful too? There was no time to pursue the confusion, even if I had wanted to, for Kassouli turned on me with a direct challenge. “Do you believe my daughter was murdered, Captain Sandman?” I sensed Jill-Beth and the crippled son waiting expectantly for my answer. I knew what answer they wanted, but I was wedded to the truth and the truth was all I would offer. “I don’t know how Nadeznha died.”

The truth was not enough. I saw Yassir Kassouli’s right hand clenching in spasms and I wondered if I had angered him. The son made a hissing noise and Jill-Beth stiffened. I was among believers, and I had dared to express disbelief.

Yet if Kassouli was angry, his voice did not betray it. “I only have two children, Captain Sandman. My son you see, my daughter you will never see.”

The grief was suddenly palpable. I hurt for this man, but I could not offer him what he wanted—agreement that his beloved daughter had been murdered. Perhaps she had been, but there was no proof.

I was prepared to admit that it was unlikely that Nadeznha Bannister had been unharnessed in a stiff sea, I could even say that it was possible she had been pushed overboard, but such lukewarm support was of no use to Yassir Kassouli. I was in the presence of an enormous grief; the grief of a man who could buy half the world, but could not control the death of a child he had loved.

“It was murder,” Kassouli said to me now, “but it was the perfect murder. That means it cannot be proved.”

I opened my mouth to speak, found I had nothing to say, so closed it again.

“But just because a murder is perfect,” Kassouli said, “does not mean that it should go unavenged.”

I needed to move, for the sofa’s rich comfort and the man’s heavy gaze were becoming oppressive. I stood and limped to the room’s far end where I pretended to stare at a model of a supertanker. She was called the Kerak. It struck me, as I stared at the striking kestrel on her single smokestack, that despite Kassouli’s Mediterranean birth he had one very American trait; he believed in perfection. The Mayflower had brought that belief in her baggage, and the dream had never been lost. To Americans Utopia is always possible; it will only take a little more effort and a little more goodwill. But a large part of Yassir Kassouli’s dream had died in the North Atlantic, in nearly two thousand fathoms of cold water. I turned. “You need proof,” I said firmly.

He shook his head. “I need your help, Captain. Why else do you think I brought you here?”

“I—”

He cut me off. “Bannister has asked you to navigate for him?”

“I’ve refused him.”

Kassouli ignored the words. “I will pay you two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Captain Sandman, if, on the return leg of the St Pierre, you navigate the Wildtrack on a course that I will provide you.”

Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The sum hung in the air like a monstrous temptation. It spelt freedom from everything; it would give Sycorax and me the chance to sail till the seas ran dry.

Kassouli mistook my hesitation. “I do assure you, Captain, that your life, and the lives of the Wildtrack’s crew, will be entirely safe.” I did not doubt it, but I noted how one man’s name was excepted from that promise of mercy; Bannister’s. I’d known Kassouli was Bannister’s enemy, now I saw that the American would not be content until his enemy was utterly and totally destroyed. Something primeval, almost tribal, was at work here. A tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye, and now a life for a life.

I still had not answered. Kassouli picked up the framed photograph and turned it so I could stare into the dead girl’s face. “Can you imagine the pure terror of her last moments, Captain?” He paused, though no answer was needed, then he sighed. “Now Nadeznha is among the caballi.”

He had said the word very softly. I waited for an explanation, but none came. “The caballi? ” I prompted him.

“The souls of the young dead, the untimely dead.” Kassouli’s voice was very matter of fact, almost casual. “They roam the world, Captain, seeking the consolation of justice. Who, but their families, can provide such solace?”

I said nothing. My father had often told me that the very rich, having conquered this world, set out to conquer the next, which was why spiritualist frauds so often found patrons among practical men and women whose dour talents had made vast fortunes. Kassouli, having failed to convince me with the science of meteorology and oceanography, had retreated to the claptrap of the ghost world.

But neither ghosts, nor weather charts, nor even two hundred and fifty thousand dollars could make me accept. I needed the money, God knows how Sycorax and I needed the money, but there was an old-fashioned dream, as old as the dream that was carried in the Mayflower, and it was called honour. There was no proof that Bannister had done murder, and till that proof was found there could be no punishment. I shook my head. “I’m not your man, sir. I’ve already told Bannister I’m not sailing with him.”

“But that decision could be reversed?”

I shrugged. “It won’t be.”

He half smiled, as though he had expected the refusal, then carefully replaced the silver-framed family portrait. “You are a patriot, Captain?”

The question surprised me. “Yes, sir.”

“Then you should know that I have given myself one year to avenge my daughter’s death. So far, Captain, I have tried to achieve that satisfaction through conventional means. I pleaded with your government to re-open the inquest, I went on my knees to them!

They have refused. Very well. What your government will not do, I will do. But I need the help of one Englishman, and that is you.

Miss Kirov assures me you are a brave and resourceful young man.” I looked at Jill-Beth, but she gave no sign of recognition. “But you have no proof,” I protested to the father.

Kassouli was long past that argument. “If no Englishman will help me, Captain, then I will wash my hands of your country. I don’t flatter myself that I can bring Great Britain to its knees, as I went on my knees to Great Britain, but I will withdraw all my investments out of your country and I will use my influence, which is not negligible, to deter others from investing in your economy.

Do you understand me?”

I understood him. It was blackmail on an enormous scale; so enormous that it defied belief. My face must have reflected that incredulity, for Kassouli raised his voice. “Every cent of every investment I have in Britain will be withdrawn. I will become an enemy of your country, Captain Sandman. Whenever it will be in my power to do it harm, that harm will be done. And when I die, I will charge my son to continue the enmity.”

Charles Kassouli, under the thrall of his father’s powerful voice, nodded.

Kassouli smiled. “But this is a nonsense, Captain Sandman! Fate has sent you to me. Fate has put you into Anthony Bannister’s confidence, and I do not believe that fate is so very capricious.” He held up a hand to check my protest. “I understand, Captain, that I am asking you to take on trust that my daughter was murdered. You must reflect that not every course of action in this world is under-pinned by cause and proof, by validation and reason, or by the natural justice of good sense and right feeling. Sometimes, Captain, we have to trust our God-given instincts and act!” The last word was stressed by a punch of his right fist into his left. “Did you?” he asked,

“consider the sense and rationality of your actions when you assaulted the Argentinian positions on the night you won your medal?”

“No,” I said.

“Then do not become a weak man now, Captain.”

“It isn’t weakness…”

“My daughter is dead!”

I closed my eyes. “And you cannot prove it was not an accident.” I opened my eyes to see that, surprisingly, Kassouli was smiling.

“You have not disappointed me, Captain. I would have been shocked had you offered instant agreement. I like strong people.

They are the only ones on whom I can rely. So, I wish you to do one thing for me.” He held out a hand to indicate that I should accompany him to the door. As we walked he made one last effort to sway me. “I want you to consider everything I have said. I want you to consider the meteorological conditions, the sea conditions, and the experience of my daughter. I want you to weigh in the balance the value of her immortal soul against that of Anthony Bannister. I want you to search your conscience. I want you to consider the damage I can cause to your country. And when you have done all of those things, then I want you to inform me whether or not you will help me. Will you do that, Captain?”

I glanced towards Jill-Beth, but she just smiled and lifted a hand in farewell.

“Will you do that, Captain?” Kassouli insisted.

“Yes, sir,” I said lamely.

He pressed a button beside the doorframe and the tall Scandinavian servant appeared instantly. Kassouli gripped my hand. “Good-night, Captain. I will send for your answer in due time.” The door closed on me. The Scandinavian asked whether I wanted to rejoin the party, but I shook my head. Instead I was shown to a limousine that took me back to my lavish hotel. I waited there half expecting a knock on the door or a telephone call, but none came.

So I slept uneasily. And alone.

In the morning I walked about the harbour and tried to persuade myself that Kassouli’s threats had been nonsensical. I could not convince myself. I walked back to the hotel where I was informed that a car would be taking me to the airport that afternoon, and that Miss Kirov was waiting for me in the Lobsterman’s Saloon.

The saloon was decorated with old-fashioned lobster pots, nets and plastic crustaceans. I found Jill-Beth sitting alone at the polished bar. She smiled happily. “Hi, Nick! Irish whiskey?” Her ebullience was like a mockery of the evening before. “How did you sleep?” she asked.

“Alone.”

“Me too.” She shrugged, and I knew I had been brought to this town only to meet Kassouli. Jill-Beth had been nothing but the bait and, like a greedy mackerel snapping at a gaudy feather, I’d bitten. “So what did you make of Yassir?” she asked me.

“Mad.”

She shook her head. “He’s a grieving father, Nick. He lost a daughter and he wants to sleep better. It isn’t madness. You want to eat lobster?”

I took the menu out of her hands and laid it down. “He isn’t talking about sabotaging Bannister’s attempt at the St Pierre, Jill-Beth, he’s talking about killing Bannister!” Her eyes widened in mock horror. “I didn’t hear him say that!”

“Not in so many words.”

She shook her head disapprovingly. “Then you’re talking out of turn, Nick. Maybe Yassir just wants to talk to Bannister? Maybe he wants a signed confession so the courts can take it over? Hell, he probably wants to save his insurance company paying out a million bucks! Maybe he just wants to put Bannister over his knee and tan his hide? I don’t know what he wants, Nick.”

“He’s mad! He can’t declare economic war on a whole country!”

“Sure he can! Hotels, chemical works, computers, investments, oil, shipping. I guess his companies employ thirty thousand people in Britain? I know that’s not many, but there are subcontractors too.

Still, why should you care about unemployment?”

“For God’s sake!” Her insouciance angered me.

“Nick.” She touched my hand. “He’s a very, very angry man.”

“He hasn’t got a shred of proof!”

“There can’t be proof of a perfect murder.” I sipped the whiskey that was drowning in crushed ice. “Who was Nadeznha Bannister in love with?”

“Goodness knows.” Jill-Beth shrugged. “Charlie doesn’t know, or won’t say.”

“But that’s part of Kassouli’s evidence,” I protested. “A love affair that no one even knows existed, a weather map that doesn’t describe the sea conditions, and the probability that she’d have been wearing a safety harness. That’s it, Jill-Beth! On that thin basis he’s predicating murder!”

“You got it, Nick.”

“You can’t believe it,” I challenged her.

She stirred her drink with a lobster-shaped swizzle stick. “I work for Kassouli, so I guess I’m predisposed to believing what he wants me to believe. But if I weigh the evidence?” She stared up at the net-hung ceiling. “Yeah, I guess it was murder. I mean, who’s to know?

Bannister doesn’t want a divorce, he’s kicking around with that new blonde of his, he knows Nadeznha will give him grief with the taxman, so he pushes her over the edge five hundred miles out on the return leg? I’d call that the perfect murder.”

“It isn’t me who lives in La-la land,” I said bitterly. “Kassouli goes on about unquiet souls? About ghosts?”

Jill-Beth smiled. “La-la land, my dear Nick, is where everything is simple, where the virtuous always triumph, and where honour rules. This isn’t La-la land. You’re dealing with a guy who’s very angry, very frustrated, and who wants justice. He only has two children; one’s crippled, one’s dead, and he can’t have any more.”

“Why can’t he have any more?” I asked.

Jill-Beth ordered herself another drink. “Dorothy’s got cancer.

Dying very slowly.”

“Jesus.” I flinched.

“Yassir loves her very much. He’s given sixteen million to cancer research. Is that mad?”

“No.”

“He built a whole research wing around her in Utah. He read somewhere that Utah has the lowest rate of cancer in America.” She shrugged, as if to show that nothing Kassouli could do would save his wife. “Yassir isn’t mad, Nick, but he’s very, very determined.

Hell, all he’s got left now is his son, and you’ve seen him.”

“Surly,” I commented.

“Sky-high, you mean.”

It took me a second or two to realize what she implied. “Drugs?” I sounded astonished.

“Drugs, though he hides it from his father.” She stirred her drink.

“People envy Kassouli. He’s rich. But he’s been dealt a bad hand with his family, and he wants to hit back.” I looked at her, and I thought how very American Jill-Beth was; bright-eyed, firm-faced, shining hair, and it struck me how like Nadeznha she must be. Yet this lovely girl was condoning murder.

She would deny it, but I was convinced that Kassouli planned murder. “Suppose I went to the police?” I said. “Suppose I tell them that you’re trying to make me an accessory to piracy on the high seas? Or murder?”

“Try it,” she said cheerfully.

“They’d have to believe me,” I said, without too much conviction.

“How many peasants like me get invited to Kassouli’s house?”

“Lots of people.”

“I can prove you flew me over here!”

“Your ticket was paid for in cash. If necessary we’ll say that you met me in Devon and followed me here because you were besotted by my beauty. You wouldn’t be the first guy to bug me like that.” She grinned. “I’m empowered to increase the offer to four hundred thousand dollars. One hundred thousand in cash when you agree, and the rest after completion. Payable in any tax haven and in any currency you like.”

“I’m not helping you. When I get back to England I’m moving Sycorax to a hiding place. Somewhere a long way from Bannister and a long way from you.”

She ignored me. “I’ll be over in England soon, Nick. I’ll get in touch, OK?”

“You won’t find me.”

She touched my forearm. “Don’t be a pain, Nick. Chivalry died with Nadeznha. Stay with Bannister, say you’ll navigate his boat, and buy yourself a calculator that goes up to four hundred big ones.” She picked up the menu again. “You want to eat?” I shook my head.

“OK.” She slid off the stool, her new drink untouched. “I’ll see you soon, Nick, and I’ll have one hundred thousand dollars cash with me. If you’re not there, then kiss a lot of British jobs goodbye.

Safe home.”

I turned as she reached the door. “Why me, Jill-Beth?” She paused. “Because you’re there, Nick. Because you’re there.” She smiled, blew me a kiss, and went.

I felt like a frog that had sought out the princess, been kissed, but stayed a frog all the same. In short, I felt damned foolish. And up to my neck in trouble.

The Honourable John Makyns, MP, pretended that he was not embarrassed by lunching with his wife’s cast-off husband, but I noted how he had chosen one of the West End’s less prestigious clubs for our meeting. “I thought you were a member of Whites?” I teased him.

“The food can be better here,” he lied smoothly, then waved his fish knife towards the trompe l’oeil ceiling. “And it’s an amusing place, don’t you think?”

“Side-splitting. Is Melissa well?”

“Very well, thank you.” He paused. “I probably won’t mention to her that we’ve lunched.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t either.”

He gave me a quick smile of thanks. “Not that she dislikes you, Nick. You mustn’t think that.”

“But she might think we were swopping dirty secrets?”

“Something like that, I suppose.” He seemed rather sombre, but perhaps that was understandable. It isn’t every day that you’re telephoned from Heathrow to be told that a major foreign industrialist is declaring economic war against your country. The Honourable John broke off a piece of an over-baked bread roll that he thickly smeared with butter. “How was America?”

“Hot, shining, busy.”

“Quite. It is like that, isn’t it?” He fussed over the choice of wine and recommended the lamb to me. I ordered it, then listened as he told me a long and disjointed story about his mother’s kitchen garden and the problems of finding craftsmen who could repair Tudor brickwork. He was avoiding the subject, which was Yassir Kassouli.

He’d tried to ignore the subject on the telephone, but as soon as I threatened to call the Fleet Street newspapers he had hastened to suggest this luncheon. He was still evasive, though, asking about Devon, the weather in America, my health and my opinion of the lamb.

“I’ve tasted better out of cat-food tins.”

“They’re rather proud of their lamb here.” He was hurt.

“Tell me about Kassouli.” I decided to cut through to the reason for our meeting.

“Ah.” The Honourable John speared a piece of meat with his fork and energetically sawed at the gristle with his knife. “Kassouli did approach HMG. Not officially, of course. As a private citizen of a foreign state, Kassouli has no diplomatic standing, you understand?”

“But he’s rich, so Her Majesty’s Government listened?” He frowned at my crudity, but nodded. “We like to be accommodating to influential foreigners. Why shouldn’t we be?”

“Indeed.”

He was still frowning. “But we really could not help him.”

“What did he want?”

The Honourable John shrugged. “I think he wanted us to put Bannister on trial, but there really was no cause, nor justification, nor reason.”

“A dead girl?” I suggested.

He shook his head. “An incident happened on the high seas, beyond the limits of our or anyone else’s sovereignty. Agreed that the boat is British registered, which is why there was a British inquest, but the coroner’s findings were quite clear. It was an accident.”

“Couldn’t you have given Kassouli another inquest? Just to satisfy him?”

“There was no legal reason for doing so. There would have had to be fresh evidence, and there was none.”

“There was a rumour,” I said, “that lies were told at the inquest.

I hear Bannister was on deck when Nadeznha died, not Mulder.”

“As you say,” John said delicately, “a rumour. Insufficient, alas, to initiate new proceedings.”

“But it was explored?” I persisted.

“I really couldn’t say.”

Which meant that the Government had toyed with the idea of re-opening the inquest, but had sheered away for lack of real evidence.

“So Kassouli’s been threatening you?” I accused John.

He gave a tiny and frosty smile. “One does not threaten HMG.”

“He told me he’d pull all his jobs out of Britain, then follow it with his investments, and then persuade all his rich pals to do the same thing. That won’t look good on the unemployment figures.” The Honourable John concentrated on chewing, but finally decided he would have to reveal something from his side of the table. “You aren’t the first person to bring us this message, Nick. A Kassouli embargo on Britain?” He frowned as he drew from his meat a length of string which he fussily placed at the side of his plate. “I do trust, Nick, that you won’t be telling any of this to the newspapers? HMG

wouldn’t like that.”

I ignored that. “Could Kassouli hurt us?”

The Honourable John leaned back and stared at the painted ceiling for a few seconds, then jerked his head forward. “Not as much as he thinks. But he could embarrass us, yes. And he could damage confidence at a time when we’re working hard to attract foreign investment.”

“How bad would the damage be?”

“We’d survive.” He said it without much fervour. “The longer-term damage would be to unemployment. If all Kassouli’s jobs went to Germany or Ireland or Spain, we’d never see them again. And most of them are in just the kind of sunrise industry we need to encourage.”

“So he could hurt us?” I insisted.

“Embarrass,” he insisted.

“So what do I do?”

The Honourable John grimaced with a politician’s dislike of a direct question which needed a straight answer. “I really can’t say,” he said primly. “I’m merely a humble back-bencher, am I not?”

“For Christ’s sake, John. You’ve been briefed on this! Just as soon as I telephoned you trotted round to the Department of Industry or whatever honey-pot has got the problem and told them what I told you!”

“I might have mentioned it to the Permanent Secretary,” he allowed cautiously. The real truth was that HMG had moved with the speed of a scalded cat; partly because they were terrified of Kassouli, and even more terrified that I’d spill the whole rotting can of worms into Fleet Street’s lap.

“So what do I do?” I insisted.

He swirled the white wine around in his glass, trying to look judicious. “What do you feel is best, Nick?”

“I’d hardly be coming to ask for your help if I knew what to do, would I? I’ve got some madman threatening economic warfare against Britain unless I help turn Anthony Bannister into fish food.

Wouldn’t you say that was a matter for government, rather than me?”

“Fish food?” The Honourable John could be wonderfully obtuse when he wanted to be.

“They want me to turn out his lights, John. Switch him off. Banjo him. Kill the fucker.”

He looked immensely pained. “Did Kassouli say as much?”

“Not exactly, but I can’t think what the hell else he wanted. I’m supposed to steer the good ship Lollipop straight to point X on the chart. What do you think is going to be waiting for us? Mermaids?”

“I shall really have to insist that I’ve heard no implications of murder. So far as I know, all Kassouli wishes to do is deny Bannister the chance of winning the St Pierre.”

“Don’t be pompous, John. The bastard’s up to no good. You want me to go and squeal this tale down Fleet Street? Someone will listen to me. I’ve got a fragment of bronze that will insure that.”

“They’ll listen only too avidly, I fear. Nothing excites the press so much as a chance to damage our relationship with the United States.” He stared at me helplessly.

“Then for Christ’s sake, reassure me! Tell me the Government’s on top of this problem. Don’t you have friends in Washington who can tell Kassouli to rewire his brain?”

“Not with the amounts of money he contributes to members of Congress, no.” He shrugged. “And you forget that Kassouli has never made these threats openly. They have been—how shall we say?—hinted at. Usually by intermediaries like yourself. Kassouli naturally denies making such threats, nevertheless HMG is forced to take them seriously,”

“Then give him his God-damned enquiry! Why ever not?”

“Because counter to the squallings of the left-wing press, Nick, HMG do not actually control the judiciary. A new inquest can only be instituted if there are fresh revelations of fact. There are not.

So we must look to you—”

“Hold it!” I said. “Here’s a revelation of fact. I’m not going to help Kassouli, because I don’t fancy joining my father in jail. What I’m going to do is go back to Devon and, if Bannister’s bloody mistress hasn’t stolen my boat, I’m going to tow it off to a nice safe place where I shall rig it. Meanwhile you’ll be losing lots of jobs, but don’t blame me, I’ve done my bit for the country and I’ve got a fucked-up spine to prove it. And you can tell Melissa not to try and find me before I sail, because I’ll have disappeared. The kids’ school fees are in the bank, and there isn’t any more money, so it isn’t worth her looking. Will you tell her that, John? Tell her I’m up a bloody creek and bankrupt.”

“Nick, Nick, Nick!” The Honourable John held up a pained hand.

“Of course we’re not asking you to adopt responsibility for this situation.”

“You’re not?”

He waved away a waiter. “I repeat that I am not a member of Her Majesty’s Government…”

“…yet.”

“But I think I can fairly reflect what the Government is thinking.

Frankly, Nick, we’d rather Mr Kassouli did not press his threats against us. I think that’s a fair stance, and a sensible one. But, as I said, the threats have not been made openly and we need to know a great deal more about their nature. Your information is valuable, but we’d like more. Is it a real threat, for example? Do I make myself clear?”

“The answer to your first question is yes; to the second, no.” He wouldn’t look at me. “What I think I’m saying is that HMG

would be most grateful, most grateful indeed, if you were to keep us informed of Mr Kassouli’s intentions. Nothing more, Nick. Just information.”

“How grateful would HMG be?” I mimicked his pronunciation.

He gave a small laugh. “I don’t think we’re talking about fiscal remuneration, Nick. Shall we just agree that we would silently note and privately approve your patriotism?”

“Jesus bloody wept.” I waited till he looked at me. “You want me to go along with Kassouli, don’t you?”

“We want you to keep us informed. Through me, though naturally I shall deny this request was ever formally made. It’s entirely unofficial.”

“But the only way I can keep an eye on Kassouli is by going along with his plans, isn’t it? So I do help him, and HMG will be very grateful in the most nebulous and undeniable manner. Is that it?” The Honourable John thought about his answer for some time, but finally nodded. “Yes, I think that is it. And you do want your boat back, don’t you? This would seem to effect that desideratum.” It was all so very delicate. Kassouli justified revenge as righteous anger. The Honourable John was making it a case of expediency.

And I was to be the instrument. “Why don’t I just go to the police?” I asked.

He gave me a very small, very tight smile. “Because you would discover that the matter was beyond their competence.”

“Meaning HMG put it there?”

“Indeed.”

I thought of Harry Abbott; always so close to me, nudging me away from trouble like an escort ship taking a merchantman past a minefield. Except Abbott’s job, I suddenly realized, was to steer Bannister into the mines. “God, but you’re a slimy lot.” I stared at him. “Do you think Bannister murdered his wife?”

“I think it would be unscrupulous to make any conjecture.”

“If you want him dead,” I said brutally, “why don’t you use your thugs to do it? Or are you telling me that those chaps who used to disappear from my regiment went into monasteries?”

“Our thugs,” he said in a pained voice, “don’t have boats on Bannister’s lawn, nor the honour of Bannister’s acquaintance.”

“You could introduce them,” I said helpfully. “I thought Bannister was a friend of yours?”

“Rather more of Melissa’s, I think.” He did not look up at me as he spoke.

Poor sod, I thought. “Really? I never got that impression.” He tried to hide his relief, but couldn’t. “Not that they’re especially close, I think, but she has more time for a social life than I do.”

More time to slide in and out of bed, he meant. Both the Hon-John and I wore Melissa’s horns. “So HMG,” I said instead, “would be jolly grateful if I helped knock off Melissa’s friend Tony, and you’re telling me, in the slimiest and most roundabout manner possible, that the police will turn a blind eye.”

“You may put whatever construction you choose upon my words, Nick, and once again I entirely deny any imputation of a conspiracy to murder. All I am prepared to say, and that unofficially, is that we would like you to be helpful to a most important industrialist who could bring a great deal more investment and many more jobs to Britain.”

“Is that what Kassouli promised you if you turned a blind eye?

Jobs?”

That made him twitch. “Don’t be ridiculous, Nick.”

“The man’s as mad as a hatter, John. He talks about unquiet souls.

He’s probably chatting to his daughter on a planchette board, or through some half-mad fucking spiritualist!”

“Was madness an occupational risk of hatters? I don’t know.” He looked at his watch. “Good Lord. Is that the time? And Nick?”

“John?”

“Not a word to the press, there’s a very good chap.” He paid and left me. I had gone to the Government for help, and I’d been abandoned. So I did the one thing they did not want me to do. I phoned Fleet Street.

The pub was dingy, smelly and, compared to the Devon pubs, expensive, but it was close to the newspaper offices which was why Micky Harding had suggested it. Harding had been one of the reporters who had marched every step of the Falklands with my battalion which, inevitably, had nicknamed him ‘Mouse’.

Mouse now brought four pints of ale to the table. Two for each of us. “You look bloody horrible, Nick.”

“Thank you.”

“Never thought I’d see you again.”

“You could have visited me in hospital.”

“Don’t be so fucking daft. I spent bloody hours outside your door, didn’t I? But you were being coy. What’s the matter? Do we wear the wrong perfume for you? Cheers.” He downed the best part of his first pint. “Saw your ugly face in the papers. Who beat you up?”

“Friend of Anthony Bannister’s. South African.”

“Well, well, well.” He looked at me with interest, sensing a story.

“But you can’t say that,” I said hastily, “because if you do I lose my boat.”

He closed his eyes, clicked his fingers irritably, then gave me a look of triumph. “Sycorax, right?”

“Right.”

“Three bloody years and I haven’t forgotten.” I remembered how Micky prided himself on his memory. “God,” he went on, “but you were boring about that bloody boat. Still afloat, is it?”

“Only just.”

“How come you lose her if I say that you were beaten up by a mate of Bannister’s?”

“Because I need Bannister’s money to repair it.” Micky gave me a long and disbelieving look. “If I recall correctly, which I bloody well do, us taxpayers gave a hundred thousand quid to everyone who got badly wounded in the Falklands. Didn’t you qualify?”

“I got stitched up by a divorce lawyer.”

“Bloody hellfire. A hundred grand?”

“Damn nearly.”

“Jesus, mate. You need a bloody nanny, not a newspaper reporter.

So tell me all.”

I told him about Sycorax. I also told him about Bannister, Jill-Beth, Kassouli and the Honourable John. I told him everything. I told him how I had let myself be suckered into Kassouli’s house and how, as a result, I now had a problem. I wanted to head Kassouli off, not because I was on Bannister’s side, but because it was impossible to do nothing when so many jobs were threatened. It had become a matter of patriotism. Micky grimaced when I used the word. “So why don’t you just play shtum?” he asked. “Clearly the fucking Government’s happy for Bannister to get knocked over, the jobs get saved, and you keep your boat. What do you need me for?”

“Because there’s no proof that Bannister did kill his wife.”

“Oh. You want to be honourable as well, do you?” He said it in friendly mockery, then lit a cigarette and stared at the smoke-stained ceiling. He was a big man with a coarse tongue and a battered face and a mind like a suspicious weasel. He gave me an overwhelming impression of world-weariness; that he had seen everything, heard everything, and believed very little of any of it. Now he looked dubious. “It’s the word of a convict’s son versus the British Government and one of the world’s richest men?”

“That’s about it.”

“The VC will help, of course—” he thought about it some more—“but Kassouli will deny talking to you?”

“Utterly.”

“And the Government will say they never heard of you?”

“I’m sure.”

“Dodgy.” He went silent again for a few puffs of his cigarette.

“Do you think there’s a chance Bannister did it?”

“I haven’t the first idea, Mouse. That’s the whole point about a perfect murder. It’s so perfect you don’t even know if it was murder.”

“But if we say it was murder, Nick, or if we even bloody hint at it, Bannister will slap a bloody libel writ on us, won’t he?”

“Would he?”

“Of course he would. Worth hundreds of thousands, that libel.

Tax-free, too.” He shook his head. “It just can’t be proved that he murdered his wife, can it?”

“No.”

“It would be the perfect bloody murder.” He said it admiringly.

“And a damn sight cheaper than divorce.” He lit another cigarette.

“I want it. It’s a lovely little tale. A stinking rich Yank with a wog name, a murdering Brit bastard, a pusillanimous government, a copper-bottomed war hero, and a corpse with big tits. Just right for a scummy lowlife rag like mine. Cheers, Nick.”

“So can you help?” I felt the relief of a weight being lifted, the relief that I was no longer alone between the rock and a hard place. If the British Government would not take on Kassouli’s obsession, then the press certainly would. Kassouli’s threats would disappear in the face of publicity, for he would surely not dare acknowledge that he was trying to blackmail a government or plan revenge on the high seas. I would let the newspapers stir up the sludge and make a huge stench. The stench might even give Kassouli what he wanted; another enquiry into Nadeznha’s death. The stench would also release me from the whole mess. I had wanted help, and now I had it from the very people I’d been avoiding for over two years.

“I’ll help,” Micky said grimly, “but I need proof.” He wrinkled his face as he thought. “This Jill-Beth Kirov-like-the-fucking-ballet.

She’s coming back to talk to you?”

“She said so. But I’m planning to move my boat tomorrow. I’m not going to be around to be talked to.”

“You have to move the boat?”

“Bloody hell, yes. Bannister’s threatening to repossess it, and I’ve had enough.”

“No.” Micky shook his head. “No, no, no. Won’t do, Nick. You’ll have to stay there.” He saw my unwilling expression, and sighed.

“Look, mate. If you’re not there, then the American girl won’t talk to you. If she doesn’t talk to you, then we haven’t got any proof.

And if I haven’t got proof then we don’t have a story. Not a bloody dicky-bird.”

“But how does her talking to me provide proof?”

“Because I’ll wire you, you dumb hero. A radio mike under your shirt, an aerial down your underpants, and your Uncle Micky listening in with a tape-recorder.”

“Can you do that?”

“Sure I can do it. I have to get the boss’s permission, but we do it all the time. How do you think we find all those bent coppers and kinky clergymen? But what you have to do, Nick, is go along with it all, understand? Tell Bannister you’d love to navigate his bloody boat. Tell Kassouli you’re itching to help him trap Bannister. String them along!”

“But I don’t want to stay at Bannister’s,” I said unhappily.

“In fact I’ve already told them I’m through with their damned film.”

“Then bloody un-tell them. Eat crow. Say you were wrong.” He was insistent and persuasive; all his world-weariness sloughing away in his eagerness for the story. “You’re doing it for Queen and Country, Nick. You’re saving jobs. You’re staving off some Yankee nastiness. It won’t be for ever, anyway. How long before this American bint turns up with the hundred thousand?”

“I don’t know.”

“Within a month, I’ll wager. So, are you game?” Bannister had not been able to persuade me to stay on to be filmed, nor had Kassouli, nor even the Honourable John, but Micky had done it easily. I said I’d stay. But only till the story broke, and after that I would rid myself of all the rich men into whose squabble I had been unwillingly drawn. “Of course we’ll pay you for the story,” Micky said.

“I don’t want money for it.”

He shook his head. “You are a berk, Nick, you are a real berk.” But I was no longer alone.

I took the train to Devon next morning. It was raining. Wildtrack had left the river, either gone back to the Hamble marina or else to her training runs. Mystique had also disappeared; probably reclaimed by an angry French charter firm.

But Sycorax was still at my wharf. I had half expected to find her missing, but she was safe and I felt an immense relief.

I limped down to her and climbed into her cockpit. I saw that Jimmy had bolted the portside chainplates into position, ready for the main and mizzen shrouds. I unlocked the cabin padlock and swung myself over the washboards. I lifted the companionway and found the gun still in its hiding place under the engine. If Mulder had been willing to search Mystique, I wondered, why not Sycorax?

I went topsides, but there was no sign of Jimmy. Nothing moved on the river except the small pits of rain. I had the tiredness of time zones, of being dragged by jets through the hours of sleep. I slapped Sycorax’s coachroof and told her we’d be off soon, that there was not much longer to stay on this river, only so long as it took to trap a coterie of the world’s wealthy people.

There was no beer on board Sycorax, nor anything to eat, so I trudged up to the house only to find that the housekeeper was out.

I knew where she kept a spare house key, so I let myself in and helped myself to beer, bread and cheese from the kitchen. I ate the meal in the big lounge from where I stared out at the rain falling on the river. A grockle barge chugged upstream and I saw the tourists’

faces pressed against the glass as they stared up at Bannister’s big house. Their guide would be telling them that this was where the famous Tony Bannister lived, but in a few weeks, I thought, the newspaper’s scandalous stories would bring yet more people to gape at the lavish house. I supposed the grockle barges must have done good business during my father’s trial.

The sound of the front door slamming echoed through the house.

I turned, expecting to hear the housekeeper go towards the kitchen, but instead it was Angela Westmacott who came into the lounge.

She stopped, apparently surprised at seeing me.

“Good afternoon,” I said politely.

“I thought you’d resigned,” she said acidly.

“I thought we might talk about it,” I said.

“Meaning you need the money?” She was carrying armfuls of shopping which she dropped on to a sofa before stripping off her wet raincoat. “So are you making the film or not?” she demanded.

“I thought we might as well finish it,” I said meekly. I’d planned to go this very afternoon, but, true to the promise I’d made to Micky Harding, I would stay.

“And how is your mother?” Angela asked tartly.

“She’s a tough old bird,” I said vaguely, and feeling somewhat ashamed at being taxed with the lie I’d recorded on the answering machine.

“Your mother sounded quite well when I spoke to her. She was rather surprised at first, but she did eventually say you were in Dallas, though not actually in the house right at that moment.” Angela’s voice was scathing. “I said I’d phone back, but she said I shouldn’t bother.”

“Mother’s like that. Especially when she’s dying.”

“You are a bastard, Nick Sandman. You are a bastard.” I felt immune to her insults because I was no longer in her power.

I had Micky’s newspaper behind me. I turned to watch rainwater trickling down the window. The clouds were almost touching the opposite hillside, which meant the moors would be fogged in. I prayed that Jill-Beth would come to England soon so that I could get the charade of entrapment done, and free myself of all these spoilt, obsessed and selfish people.

A sob startled me. I turned and, to my astonishment, I saw that Angela was crying. She stood at the far end of the long window and the tears were pouring down her face and her thin shoulders were shuddering. I stared, appalled and embarrassed, and she saw me looking at her and twisted angrily away. “All I want to do,” she said in between sobs, “is make a decent film. A good film.”

“You use funny methods to do it,” I said bitterly.

“But it’s like swimming in treacle!” She ignored my words.

“Everything I do, you hate. Everything I try, you oppose. Matthew hates me, the film crew hate me, you hate me!”

“That’s not true.”

She turned like a striking snake. “Medusa?” She waited for a response, but there was nothing I could say. She sniffed, then wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her jacket. “Can’t you see what a good film it could be, Nick? Can’t you, for one moment, just think of that?”

“Good enough to blackmail me? No supplies till I do what you want? If I won’t do everything you want, just as you want it, you threaten to steal my boat!”

“For God’s sake! If I don’t force you, you’d do nothing!” She wailed it at me. She was still crying; her face twisted out of its beauty by her sobs. “You’re like a mule! The bloody film crew spend more time reading the Union regulations than they do filming, Matthew’s frightened of them, you’re so bloody casual, but I’m committed, Nick! I’ve taken the company’s money, their time, their crew, and I don’t even know whether I’m going to be able to finish the film! I don’t know where you are half the time!

And if I do find you, and want to talk to you, you look at me as if I’m dirt!” It was as if a great chain had snapped inside her. She hated to be seen thus, and she tried to shake the demeaning misery away, but she could not stop her sobs. She found her handbag, took out a packet of cigarettes, but only succeeded in fumbling them across the carpet. She cursed, picked one up, and lit it. “I swore I’d give up bloody cigarettes,” she said, “but how can I with bastards like you around? And Tony.”

“What’s wrong with Bannister?”

“He’s frightened of you! That’s what’s wrong with him. He won’t tell you what’s expected of you, so I have to do it. Always me! He’s so God-damned bloody lazy and you’re so God-damned bloody obstructive, and I’m so bloody tired!” She shook with great racking sobs. “I’m so bloody tired.”

I limped towards her. “Is it such a good film?”

“Yes.” She wailed the word. “God damn you, you bloody man, but it is! It’s even an honest film, though you’re so full of shit that you won’t see it!”

“God damn me.” I trod on her spilt cigarettes. “But I didn’t know.” I put my hands on her shoulders, turned her, and held her against me. She did not resist. I took the burning cigarette from her fingers and flicked it into the swimming pool. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“I’m sorry, too.” She sobbed the words into my dirty sweater.

“Hell,” she said, “I didn’t want this to happen.” But she did not pull away from me.

“I did,” I said. From the very first I’d wanted it to happen, and now, on a rainy afternoon, and to confuse everything, it did.

It rained all afternoon, all evening. For all I knew or noticed, all night too.

We talked.

Angela told me about her childhood in the Midlands, about her Baptist minister father and oh-so-respectable mother, and about the redbrick university where she had marched to abolish nuclear weapons and save the whales and legalise marijuana. “It was all very normal,” she said wistfully.

“Did your father think so?”

“He was all for saving the whales.” She smiled. “Poor Daddy.”

“Poor?”

“He’d have liked me to have been a Sunday School teacher. Married by now, of course, with two children.” Instead she had met a glib and older man who claimed to run a summer radio station for English tourists in the Mediterranean.

She’d abandoned university in her last year, and flown south, only to find that the radio station had gone bankrupt. “He didn’t want me for that, anyway.”

“What did he want you for?”

She rolled her head to look at me. “What do you think?”

“Your retiring and gentle nature?”

She blew smoke at the ceiling. “He always said it was my legs.”

“They’re excellent legs.”

She lifted one off the bed and examined it critically. “They’re not bad.”

“They’ll do,” I said.

So then she had used the letterheaded stationery of the defunct radio station to land herself a job with a real radio station in Australia. “It was cheeky, really,” she said, “because I didn’t know the first thing about radio. I got away with it, though.”

“Legs again?”

She nodded. “Legs again. God knows what would have happened if I’d been ugly.” She thought about that for a time, then frowned.

“I’ve always resented the looks, in a way. I mean, you’re never sure whether they want you for your looks or abilities. Do you know what I mean?”

“It’s a problem I have all the time,” I said, and she laughed, but I was thinking that her passionate drive to make a good film must have been part of her answer to that question. She desperately wanted to prove that her abilities could match those of a clever and ugly person.

Not that Angela had ever been coy about using her good looks.

She’d moved from the radio station to its parent TV company, and it was there that she had met Anthony Bannister who had been filming in Australia. He had promised her a job on his programme if she should ever return to England. “So I came back.”

“Just for him?”

She shrugged. “I wanted to work in English television. I wanted to come home.”

“And Bannister was the price?”

She looked at me. “I like him, Nick. Truly.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” She stubbed out the cigarette then rolled on to my left arm. I held her against me and she crooked her left leg over mine. “He’s like me, in some ways.”

“He’s got good legs?” I asked in astonishment.

“He’s so vulnerable. He’s very good at his job, but he doesn’t have any confidence outside of it. Have you noticed that? So he wears his success like a mask.”

“He’s weak,” I said.

“It’s easy for you to say that. You’re strong.”

“You should see me in telephone boxes. There’s nothing but a blur, then I reappear with my underpants outside my trousers.” She laughed softly. “Tony doesn’t think anyone likes him. That’s why he tries to be nice to everyone. People think he’s so successful and confident, but all the time he’s frightened and he’ll always agree with what any opinionated person says because he thinks that will make them like him. That’s what makes him good on the telly, I think. He draws people out, you see. And he’s very good-looking.” She added the last in a rather defensive voice.

“He’s spreading round the waist,” I said idly.

“He won’t exercise. He’s always buying the equipment, but he never uses it.”

“Was he married when you met?”

She nodded, but said nothing more.

We lay quietly for a while, listening to the rain. I pulled a strand of her long hair across my chest. “Will you marry him?” I asked.

“If he wants me to, yes.”

“Will he?”

“I think so.” She fingered the scar on my shoulder. She had very long thin fingers. “He’d prefer someone like Melissa, someone with social acceptance, but he may settle for me. I’m efficient, you see, which is good for his career. I think he’s frightened he might lose me to a rival programme.”

“Do you love him?”

She appeared to think about it, then shook her head.

“Then why marry him?”

“Because…” She fell silent again.

“Why?” I insisted.

“Because he can be good company.” She spoke very slowly, like a child rehearsing a difficult lesson. “Because he’s very successful.

Because I can give him confidence when he meets people who he thinks despise him. He thinks you despise him.”

“Maybe that’s because he’s despicable?”

She pulled a hair out of my chest in punishment. “He’s not despicable. He’s insecure and he’s only confident when the television cameras are pointing at him.”

“You’ll have a wonderful marriage,” I said sourly, “with the bloody cameras following you around.”

“And perhaps I can change him,” she said. “He’d like to be more like you.”

“Poor?”

“He envies you. He wishes he’d been a soldier.”

“Good God.” I lay in great contentment, my left hand stroking her naked back.

“That’s why he likes Fanny, I think,” Angela said. “Fanny’s tough.”

“That’s true.”

“And if tough people respect him, Tony feels tough himself.” She shrugged. “Perhaps, in time, and if enough people offer him acceptance, he will become strong?”

It seemed a rum recipe to me. “You’re strong,” I said.

“I don’t cry very often,” she said, “and I don’t like it when I do.” She lay silent for a few moments. Gulls were calling harshly on the river. “There’s something else about Tony,” she went on. “He doesn’t have close friends. He’d like to have one really close friend.

Not me, not any woman, just some man he could be totally honest with.”

“Friends are harder to find than lovers,” I said.

“Do you have friends, Nick?”

“Yes.” I thought about it for a second. “Lots.”

“He doesn’t. Nor do I, really. So, yes, I’ll marry him because it will make me feel safe.”

“Safe?”

Angela raised her face and kissed my cheek. “Safe.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m tired of being chased by men. Now, because people know that I belong to Tony, they don’t try.”

“Belong?”

“He’s very possessive.” She said it in a slightly apologetic tone, then lay staring at the ceiling for a moment. “He wants me to give up my job if we marry.”

“Would you?”

“It wouldn’t be fair to other people if I didn’t, would it? I mean, they’d say I got all the best jobs because I was Tony’s wife.” I reflected that people must already be thinking that, wedding ring or no.

She shrugged. “And I’d never have any more money worries, would I? And I’d get this house, and I could see you whenever you sailed Sycorax back to the wharf. That wouldn’t be bad, would it?” It was a long way, I thought, from a semi-detached Baptist minister’s house in the Midlands to a mansion above a Devon river. “It might not be bad,” I said, “but would it be good?”

“That’s a romantic’s question.”

“I’m a romantic. I’m in love with love.”

“More fool you.” She wriggled herself into comfort against me as the wind slapped rain at the window. It was a north wind and I imagined the small yachts beating hard towards shelter through the bucking waves at the river’s bar. Angela was still thinking of love and its dishonest shifts. “Tony isn’t faithful to me, but I’m not to him any longer, am I?”

“Would he be angry about this?”

She nodded. “He’d be horribly angry. And hurt. He’s unfaithful to me all the time, but he never thinks that it might hurt me.” She shrugged. “He has a terrible pride. Terrible. That’s why I think he might ask me to marry him.”

“Because he thinks you’ll stay faithful to him?”

“And because I’m decorative.” She twisted her head to see if I thought her immodest.

I kissed her forehead. “You’re very decorative. The very first moment that I saw you, I thought how decorative you were. It was lust at first sight.”

“Was it?” She surprised me by sounding surprised.

“Yes,” I said gently. “It was.”

She smiled. “You were very gaunt and frightening. I remember being very defensive. I didn’t think I was going to like you, and I was sure you were going to hate me.”

“I was just fancying you,” I said, “but I was nervous of you. I thought television people would be much too clever and glamorous.”

“We are,” she said with a smile, then went back to thinking about Bannister. “It’s very important to Tony to have a beautiful wife. It’s like his car or house, you see; something to impress other people with. And it helps in the business, too.”

“What happens if he wants to trade the wife in for a younger model?”

“Alimony,” she said too swiftly, “is a girl’s best friend.” We lay in silence for a long while. I heard an outboard on the river as someone made a dash through the rain towards the pub. Angela fell lightly asleep. Her mouth was just open and her breath stirred a wisp of her pale hair. I thought she looked very young and innocent as she lay in my arms. All the tense anger had leached out of her face in this afternoon; as if by coming to bed we had stopped fighting some foul gale and just let ourselves run before the wind. I kissed her warm skin, and the kiss woke her. She blinked at me, recognition came to her eyes, and a smile followed. She returned my kiss. “Tell me about you,” she said.

“I thought you were making a film about me. Don’t you know everything already?”

“I don’t know whether you’re in love with Jill-Beth Kirov.” The suddenness of the question surprised me. In this new happiness I’d clean forgotten that I’d only just returned from America.

“I’m not in love with her.”

“Truly?”

“Truly.”

Angela propped herself up on an elbow. “Did you fall out of love with her in these last few days?”

“I didn’t…” I stopped. I had been about to say I had not met Jill-Beth, but I did not want to lie to Angela. Not now. Lies twist life out of true, and this afternoon I’d found something that I wanted to be very true.

Angela was pleased with herself. “You’d be amazed how co-operative people are to television companies. Airlines aren’t supposed to reveal who’s on their passenger lists, but when you say you’re from the telly and that it’s terribly important to find Mr Sandman who’s flown to the States without his script, they do help. And Dallas, Nick, is a very, very long way from Boston. Or it was the last time I was in America. Has it moved?”

I smiled. “I thought I was being very clever.”

“Fooling you, Nick Sandman, is like taking candy off a very dumb baby.” She rolled away from me, lit another cigarette, and came back to my side of the bed. She lay on her belly, propped herself on her elbows, and blew smoke at my face. “So?”

I nodded. “I fell out of love with her in these last few days.”

“Did you go to bed with her?”

“No.”

She looked pensive. “You would say that, wouldn’t you? Being a gentleman.”

“Yes, I would. But I didn’t.”

“I’m glad.” She ducked her head and kissed me. “Will you be in love with me now?”

“Probably.”

“Only probably?”

I raised my head and kissed her. “Undoubtedly.”

“Silly Nick.” She laid her head on my chest, and I felt the heat of the cigarette as she drew on it. “Did you fly to America to go to bed with her?”

“No. Yes. She wanted to see me, but I wanted to go to bed with her.”

“Did you pay the air fare?”

“No.”

Angela laughed. “It would have been an expensive non-fuck if you had. Did she want to see you about the St Pierre?”

“Yes.” I suddenly wondered if this was a clever Bannister trick to make me confess all. Angela must have instinctively felt my fear, for she lifted her face and looked into my eyes.

“I didn’t tell anyone where you were, Nick.”

“Why not?”

“Because I want to finish the film.” She drew on the cigarette.

“Are they going to sabotage Wildtrack? ” I didn’t answer and she pulled away from me. “Did you meet Yassir Kassouli?”

“Yes.”

“What did you think of him?”

“Very impressive, very powerful, horribly rich, very obsessed, and quite possibly a touch mad.”

She smiled, then rolled over and sat up with her ankles crossed in front of her. She put an ashtray on the sheet and tapped her cigarette into it. Her naked body looked uncannily like Melissa’s, very thin and pale and supple. If love was a thing of lust, then I was already lost. “Kassouli’s always hated Tony,” she said. “He hated him for taking his daughter away. He thought Nadeznha had married beneath herself. She married him on the rebound, I think. That’s what Tony says, anyway.”

“Were they happy?”

Angela shook her head. “Not especially. But not especially unhappy either. But Kassouli didn’t help. He used to visit them all the time. Nothing was too good for his darling Nadeznha. He made them buy this house and insisted they put the pool in for him. He was always here, nagging her to go home.”

“Why didn’t she?”

“Nadeznha always did just what Nadeznha wanted.” I heard the dislike in Angela’s voice. “She quite liked queening it in England.

Here she was the heiress married to the show star, while in America she’d just have been another little rich girl.”

“I heard she was rather a sweet girl,” I said as innocently as I could.

“Sweet?” Angela almost spat the word. “She was unbelievably selfish. She was a monster! I always thought Tony was terrified of her, though he denies it.”

I thought how Bannister clearly fell for very strong women. “She was a very good sailor,” I defended the dead.

“That’s not necessarily a recommendation, is it?” I smiled, rolled off the bed, and walked to the window. I had been embarrassed at first because of the scars on my back, but Angela had laughed at the embarrassment. Now I stood and stared down at the river. The tide was rising, swirling to cover the mudflats and lift the moored tenders on the far bank. “Was Nadeznha going to leave him?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” Angela frowned. “Tony hasn’t said much, but he wouldn’t. I mean, it would have been a terrible blow to his pride if she’d walked out. Marrying her was a great coup, after all. But he’s sort of hinted at it. He thinks she was having an affair, but I don’t know who with. He gets angry if I talk about it now.”

“Does he often get angry?”

“Only with people he thinks he can bully. He’s a very insecure man.”

I leaned my backside on the sill and watched her angular body on the rumpled sheet. Her unbound hair hung to the base of her spine. The bedclothes, all but for the bottom sheet, had fallen in a heap on the carpet. It was time, I thought, to delve into yet another layer of truth on this wet afternoon. “Do you know what people say about Nadeznha’s death?”

She looked up at me. “I know, Nick.”

“And?”

She shrugged. “No.”

“No, impossible? No, he didn’t do it? No, you’re not saying anything?”

She stared down at the sheet for a long time. “I don’t think he’s got the guts to kill someone. Killing someone must be horrible.

Unless you’re so angry that you don’t know what you’re doing. Or in self-defence, perhaps?” She shrugged. “You must know, Nick.

Aren’t you the expert?”

“Good God, no.”

“The Falklands, I mean.”

“It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t easy, either.” I thought about it.

“Afterwards is the worst, when you’re clearing up. I mean, it’s one thing to pull a trigger when you know the bastard is pulling his, but it’s quite different when you see his body a few hours later. I remember there was one who looked just like a fellow I used to play rugby with.”

“Was it really bad?” she asked, and I heard a trace of her television producer’s interest in the question. She was wondering whether I would talk like this on her film.

“Just mucky,” I said.

She heard the evasion and made a face at me. “But could you murder someone in cold blood? Someone you’d loved? Could you murder Melissa?”

“Good Lord, no!”

“What makes you think Tony could, then?”

“I don’t know what I think.” I paused. “Could Mulder?”

“For God’s sake, Nick!” So far she had patiently indulged my interest in the subject, but now, in a flash of the old Angela, she became annoyed. “You think Tony would keep Mulder around if he’d murdered Nadeznha? Tony keeps Mulder as a bodyguard. He knows Kassouli has threatened to stop him winning the St Pierre. Why do you think we won’t take any strangers into the crew?”

“But you asked me.”

She ground the cigarette into the ashtray. “We know what kennel you crawled from, Nick. You’re not one of Kassouli’s people. He’s trying to make you into one, though, isn’t he?” The question was a challenge.

“Yes,” I said honestly, “but he didn’t succeed. And I’m sorry I asked you all these horrid questions about Bannister.”

“Tony isn’t a murderer,” she said flatly.

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

“Don’t even speculate about it,” she said firmly, and with another trace of impatience. “The last thing I want is for the gutter press to start on Tony’s last marriage. Can you imagine the mud they’d sling if they thought he might have murdered Nadeznha?” I could imagine it, and I’d already triggered the process by talking to Micky Harding. Now, however truthful I wanted to be with Angela, I did not think I had better mention Harding to her.

She lit another cigarette.

“You smoke too much,” I said.

“Piss off, Nick.” It was said gently enough; nothing more than irritation at being criticized.

“And can I give you some more advice?” I said.

“Try me.”

“Don’t let Bannister go on the St Pierre. Keep him ashore. I don’t know what Kassouli plans, but it’s more than just preventing him from winning the St Pierre.”

She looked at me for a long time. “He wants revenge for his daughter’s death?”

“I think so, yes.” I wondered why I was being so solicitous of a man who was now my rival for this girl. Good old chivalry.

“Male pride. Old bull, young bull.” Angela swung herself off the bed and walked to the window beside me. The thick clouds were bringing on an early dusk. “Tony’s very proud, Nick, and he won’t back down. He’s told the whole world that he’s going to win the St Pierre this year. He wants to become a hero for Britain on television; he wants to be the man who tweaked the noses of the French. Bloody hell, Nick, he wants a knighthood! Other telly people have got it, so Tony wants one, and he thinks that winning the St Pierre will help.”

“So you’ll be Lady Bannister?”

She smiled, but didn’t answer, and I thought how she would love the title.

“Don’t let him go,” I said. “Does he know how determined Kassouli is?”

“Would you give up a dream just because you were threatened?”

“It would depend on who was doing the threatening,” I said fervently. “I’m much more likely to repent for a Soviet armoured division than for the Salvation Army.”

“He won’t give it up, Nick.” She took my arm and leaned against me. “That’s why I want you to go with him. Because you’ll be another bodyguard.”

“Not for the ratings?” I asked.

“That, too, you fool.” She laughed, then threw her cigarette out of the window.

I fell over.

It had not happened for days, but suddenly my right leg had switched itself off and I lurched sideways, grabbed the windowsill, then sprawled heavily on the thick carpet. Panic coursed through me. I felt stupid, frightened, and suddenly very helpless. The pain was in my back again; not the usual dull pain that I had learned to live with, but a sudden streak of hard and frightening agony.

“Nick? Nick!” There was genuine alarm in Angela’s voice.

“It’s OK.” I had to force my voice to sound calm. I tried to stand, and couldn’t. I heard myself hiss with the pain, then I managed to roll over, which helped, and I pulled myself across the floor towards the bed.

“What is it, Nick?” Angela tried to lift me.

“Every now and then the leg crumples. It’ll be all right in a minute.” I was hiding my fear. I’d thought that because the leg had stood up to my American trip then perhaps the sudden weakness had mended itself, but suddenly, and foolishly, I was a helpless cripple again. I managed to haul myself on to the rucked bed where I lay with eyes closed as I tried to subdue the pain.

“You never mentioned it before,” Angela accused me.

“I told you, it’ll be all right in a minute.” I forced myself to turn over, then began to pound my knee in an attempt to force pain and feeling back into the joint.

“Have you seen a doctor?” Angela asked.

“I’ve seen millions of doctors.”

“You God-damned bloody fool.” She strode naked across the room and seized the telephone.

“What are you doing?” I asked in alarm.

She fended off my clumsy grab for the phone. “You’re going to see a doctor.”

“I’m bloody not.” I lunged for the phone again.

She lifted the phone out of my reach. “Do you want to go to bed with me again, Nick Sandman?”

“For ever.”

“Then you bloody well see a doctor.” She paused. “Do you agree?”

“I told you,” I insisted, “it’ll cure itself.”

“I’m not discussing it, Nick Sandman. Are you going to see a doctor or are you not?”

I agreed. I’d found Angela now and I was not going to lose her and I’d even see a quack for her. I lay back on the bed and willed my leg to move, and I thought, as I listened to her quick, competent voice arranging my appointment, how very nice it was to be cared for by a woman again. I was Nick in love, Nick in La-la land, Nick happy.

PART THREE

The doctor turned out to be a woman of my own age, but who seemed older because of her brusque and confident manner. She was a neurologist whom Angela had met during the filming of a medical documentary. Doctor Mary Clarke had a hint of humour in her green eyes, but none in her voice as she briskly put me through her various tests. At the end of the performance she led me back to her private office overlooking a rose garden, where Angela had waited for us. Doctor Clarke asked me to describe the exact nature of my wound. She grimaced as she took notes, while Angela, who had not heard the full story before, flinched from the gory details.

“I wish,” Mary Clarke said when I’d finished, “that I’d had you as my patient, Mr Sandman.”

“I rather wish that, too,” I said gallantly.

“Because”—she pointedly ignored my clumsy compliment—“I’d have kept you strapped down in bed so you couldn’t have done any more damage to yourself.”

Silence. Except that a nearby lawnmower buzzed annoyingly.

“What do you mean?” I asked eventually.

“What I mean, Mr Sandman, is that your do-it-yourself physiotherapy has undoubtedly aggravated a fairly routine and minor oedematose condition. There’s no medical reason why you shouldn’t be walking normally, except that you forced the pace unreasonably.”

“Bollocks,” I said angrily, with all gallantry forgotten. “The bastards said I’d never walk again!”

“The bastards usually do.” Mary Clarke half smiled. “Because a spinal oedema routinely presents itself as a complete severance.

Naturally, if your spinal cord was cut, you’d be paralysed for life.

It’s only when some degree of mobility returns that an oedema can be diagnosed.”

“Oedema?” Angela asked.

“A bloody swelling,” I answered too caustically, and immediately regretted the tone. I might have lived too long with the doctors and their vocabulary, but Angela was new to it.

“Very literally a bloody swelling,” Mary Clarke said to Angela,

“which presses on the spinal cord to induce a temporary paralysis, but which can usually be expected to subside within a matter of weeks.”

“Mine didn’t,” I said stubbornly, as though I was proving her wrong.

“Because you’d been severely traumatized. There was extensive burning as well as the bullet damage. In essence, Mr Sandman, you have a permanent oedema now.” She paused, then gave a grin that was almost mischievous. “The truth is that you’re a very remarkably scrambled mess. When you die they’ll probably put your backbone in a specimen jar. Congratulations.”

“But what’s to be done?” Angela insisted, and I was touched by the look of real anguish on her face until I realized that she was probably just terrified for the future of her film.

“Nothing, of course,” Mary Clarke said happily.

“Nothing?” Angela sounded shocked.

Mary attempted a nautical metaphor; explaining that my body had somehow lashed together some kind of nervous jury-rig that gave me control of my right leg. The problem was that the jury-rig sometimes blinked out and, though further surgery might help, the risks were too frightening. “Are you determined to sail round the world?” Mary asked me at the end of the bleak explanation.

“At least to New Zealand, yes.”

“You shouldn’t do it, of course. If you had any sense, Mister Sandman, you’d apply for a disabled person’s grant, find a bungalow with a nice ramp for your wheelchair, then write your memoirs.” She smiled. “Of course, if you do that, then you’ll become a completely helpless cripple, so perhaps you should go to New Zealand instead.”

“But…” Angela began.

“There’s nothing I can do!” Mary said sturdily. “Either the leg will function, or it won’t. All any doctor can do now is experiment on him, which I rather suspect won’t meet with Mister Sandman’s approval?”

“Too bloody right,” I said.

“But supposing he’s alone in the middle of the Atlantic when the leg fails!” Angela protested.

“I imagine he’ll cope,” Mary said drily, “and so far there’s always been a recovery of function. The muscle tone is good”—she looked at me—“but if you detect that the numbness is lasting longer each time, or if you see a withering in the limb, then you’d better seek medical advice. Of course they won’t be able to do anything, except slice you up again, but some people find the attentions of a doctor reassuring.” She stood up. “My fee will be a bottle of Côte de Beaune

’78, chateau-bottled.”

That was a good year for Burgundy, and Mary Clarke was a good doctor who knew that sometimes, maybe most times, the best thing to do is nothing. With which treatment Angela had to be content, and I had to live, and so we went back to Devon.