His senses were fading as his whole existence concentrated on taking in the next breath. He had long since stopped noticing the foul smell inside the little concrete box, or the damp grittiness of the floor against his cheek, and he heard only distantly the rolling crash of thunder. But a few minutes later he heard the rattle of heavy rain on the loose corrugated iron sheet hiding the way in, felt the first trickle of water crawling down the floor, and then remembered how long this place took to drain.

He realised that he was quite likely going to drown. For the first time, the first time in his life, he was horribly and totally afraid.

The rain was smashing itself into a two-foot-high mist above the roadway as Maxim pulled up outside Billy Dann's house. It was semi-detached and mock Tudor, in a quiet suburban street lined with acacia trees and unbroken street lamps. In his slow crawl from the corner as he peered for the right number through the flooding windscreen, it had seemed an odd neighbourhood for the Fight Game: well-weeded drives, well-painted houses, the cars as recommended by Which? and Ratepayers' Association posters in several windows. Maybe he was just wrong about the Fight Game.

Perhaps there had been a hint of the rain slackening; anyway, it did in the minute he waited in the car. He wrapped a short raincoat around himself and ran up the front path.

Dannopened the door himself, looking warm and sticky in a pink short-sleeved shirt and bright green slacks. Maxim hadn't been entirely wrong about the Fight Game.

"Bloodyhell," Dannsaid, "it's you again. Don't they teach you in the Army how to use the telephone?"

"I just wanted a private word. Are you alone?"

"Well, right now, yes, but the wife's -"

"Hop in my car. We'll drive around a bit."

Dannstared. "Are you totallybarmy? I mean you had noticed there's a hurricane going on out here?"

Feeling rather like a flasher, Maxim opened his raincoat to show the revolver pointing vaguely at Dann's crotch. "I'll explain in the car. "

Dannwent wide-eyed and said: "Fucking arseholes," in a reverential sort of voice. Maxim reached around him to pull the front door shut and ushered him down to the car. In the movies they always seemed to make the kidnapped party drive, but Maxim thought about Danndriving his – Maxim's – car into the first acacia while he watched the gun, which seemed to have hypnotised him. It was safer and cheaper to drive one-handed, letting the car steer itself when he changed gear. Why didn't kidnappers choose automatic gearboxes?

When he had turned two corners and gone about a quarter of a mile, he gave Dannthe pistol. "Sorry about that: I just wanted to get you out of the house. Be careful with it, it's loaded."

Dannturned the gun in his hands, still staring at it in the passing flares of street lighting.

Maxim went on: "I'm pretty sure your phone's tapped, your house could be wired, and sornebody'll be watching it. Are youlistening?"

Dannwoke up and handed the gun back. "Here, you take the bloody thing, I don't know anything about guns… Did you mean all that? Why?"

"Oh yes." Maxim tucked the gun away. "Did you hear the news tonight?"

"No, I only listen to the sport. I've got no time for-"

"There's been a shooting in Rotherhithe. "

Dannhesitated, then asked: "You mean Ron."

"It's not him in hospital. But he could be on the run. He could be wounded." He let the car drift to the kerb and stopped with the lights off, watching the rear-view and wing mirrors.

"Where did he get a gun?"Dannasked.

"If it is him, he had it all along. Now: do you have any idea where he might have gone?"

He might've gone to the gym -"

"I doubt it. That was being watched when I was there. They picked him up there but he shook them off. "

"Look, who are these buggers? Did you say they'd got my phone tapped?"

"I said probably. They're Our Side, the Good Guys. Not the police, the ones you're not supposed to talk about. Our Ronnie's mixed up in more things than he knows about. "

Dann's outrage was mounting. "Isn't there any bleeding law in this country any more?"

"Yes. There's the one that says you can get up to two years for 'incitement to disaffection'. Hiding a deserter, that means."

"Then what aboutyou, Major?"

"Oh, I'm not threatening anybody. I'm so far up the creek myself that when they throw the book at me it'll be the whole library. The point is, we're neither of us in a position to complain. Now-anywhere you can think of? Could he have gone to Dave Tanner?"

"He might have done, if there was nowhere else,"Dannsaid grudgingly.

"Where does he live, d'you know?"

"Place called Neptune Court."

"Damn!" Maxim slammed the steering wheel with both hands, nearly hard enough to break it, certainly hard enough to make both palms sting. "The shooting was there. He must have been hiding out with Tanner, or gone round to scrounge a meal."

Why, he thought, why couldn't Blagg have gone out of town, to some place he knew, like Hereford or… Of course not. The only other places somebody who'd joined the Army at sixteen would know were Army places. And as a deserter those were just where he daren't go.

"Anywhere else, at all?" His voice sounded tired and defeated, even to himself.

"We could just drive around Rotherhithe, "Dannsuggested without enthusiasm.

"A couple of hundred police have already had that idea. I came through and it was blue lights from wall to wall… We'd better ask Tanner. "

"Hold on. If you said the cops are all over, they'll be all over Dave Tanner."

Maxim switched on the car lights. "Not necessarily. I don't think they know it's Blagg they're looking for, and if they don't know that, they won't know about Tanner. They probably talked to him already, they'd have talked to everybody in that block, just asking if they saw or heard anything. Routine."

A fresh gust of rain bounced off the bonnet as he pulled away from the kerb.

The police had stationed their Major Incident Vehicle, a glorified caravan with radio aerials, temporary telephone lines and a flashing blue light on a small mast, in a small crescent at the end of Neptune Court. There were several other police vehicles parked around, and a small group of men working under floodlights and umbrellas at the back of the court itself, but that was all. If you're trying to catch somebody immediately after a crime, you grab every man you can and smother the area. But after two or three hours and nil results, you have to accept that the trail is cold and you can't justify that level of manpower. Out there on the unpoliced streets beyond the floodlights, other people are getting stabbed, mugged, raped, burgled, sometimes even just run over. A death by gunshot is only one item on the programme of a Friday night. And with luck, it could turn out to be a bit of gang warfare which nobody is – unofficially, of course -going to bust a gut trying to solve.

Maxim drove past and parked a little further on, and Dannsaid suddenly: "What am I doing here?"

"You can wait in the car. "

Dannchanged his mind back. "No-o. The kid knows me. I'll come in." It was quite likely that, after Wednesday night. Tanner wouldn't want to be alone with Maxim.

Tanner was distinctly unhappy to see Maxim again. He lived with his wife, a thin and rather nervous girl with ragged blonde hair, in a second-floor flat that belonged to her widowed mother. The rooms were small, warm and smeltdamp, filled with brightly varnished furniture that looked well made but nevertheless home-made. A motorcycle jacket and a vivid red helmet lay on one end of the small dining table.

After a couple of minutes' polite talk and the offer of a cup of tea, Mrs Tanner went away to talk to mother.

"We're looking for Blagg," Maxim said abruptly.