'Stop,' Bobby said. 'I heard enough. Get this disgusting old fool out of here.'

Bobby and Carriscant stood in the afternoon sun on the police station's front steps, Carriscant assuring Bobby once again that he was fine, that he understood Bobby had his job to do and that he really wanted to walk back to the hospital.

'I can't tell you how sorry I am,' Bobby repeated. 'Sick old bastard.' He was visibly sweating with embarrassment and discomfort, his thin hair stuck to his scalp in damp strands.

'You had to do your job. Honestly, I'd have done the same.'

'He had you to a tee. Right down to that small scar thing on your eyebrow there… But I guess you're a pretty well-known man in Manila. Small town and all that. He could have seen you at the hospital, anything.' He shook himself with exasperation. 'Crazy old bastard. I mean, what a thing to say…' He grinned ruefully at Carriscant and Carriscant allowed himself a grin of collusion in return.

Udo Leys had a bad cold, his eyes itched, his nose ran copiously and he had a dull pain in his chest from the dry, baying cough that erupted irregularly in his lungs. He sounded like some strange mythical animal in its rutting season, plaintively seeking a mate, half sea-lion, half ape, he said, his amusement at this notion setting off another coughing bout. It subsided and he blew his nose, wiping his tufty moustache with considerable care.

'I may be an old man,' he said, 'but that's no excuse. There's nothing more disgusting than an old man's moustache when he's got a cold. My own father's, I remember… ' He winced. 'Full of dried snot. It quite put me off my food. You will tell me, Salvador, if I miss anything, please.' He pushed his lumpy face forward for inspection, lifting his soft pulpy nose with a finger.

'Of course, Udo. There's not a trace.'

'Is it far to go?' Pantaleon asked. Carriscant could sense the suppressed tremble of excitement in his friend's lean body. Like a gun dog, quivering with energy and anticipation.

'Ten minutes,' Udo said. 'They cleared customs this afternoon.'

'And there were no problems?'

'I tell you, Dr Quiroga, there is nobody like Nicanor Axel in the China Sea.' Udo led them to the door. 'When it comes to a discreet or delicate commission Axel is the only man. He has worked wonders for me, wonders.'

They descended from the office to the Calle Crespo, the street almost silent now the tin shops were shut, but from the far end came the firecracker retorts from the shooting gallery and the sound of a barrel organ playing 'Deep in the Heart of Texas'. They heaved Udo into Carriscant's victoria and squeezed in beside him. Constancio whacked the pony's rear and they clopped off in the direction of the docks, detouring Escolta's crowds of shoppers on Panteleon's request (in case he was spotted, he said), going instead via the Plaza Calderon and swinging round through dark malodorous lanes between warehouses to emerge at the quayside next to the fire station.

They descended and peered at the mass of shipping moored on the Pasig. Smoke rose from braziers on the sterns of the wallowing cascos and the glare of the electric light from the fire station and the customs house made it difficult to see beyond the water's edge: nothing much more than a confusion of masts and rigging and here and there, further out from the wharves, the solider, darker bulk of the inter-island steamers and coasters.

'What about the way back?' Carriscant asked. 'Will there be room?'

'Don't worry,' Pantaleon said. 'I'll take it straight home. I'll hire a carromato.'

Constancio was despatched in search of one and then the three men picked their way on sagging gangplanks across the banked houseboats towards where Axel's steamer was moored. Families sat around cooking fires preparing dinner, only the children curious about these three Americanos in their white suits tramping through their homes.

'Why doesn't he put in at a jetty?' Carriscant asked.

'Nothing is meant to be easy or straightforward,' Udo explained cryptically. 'Your business with Axel has to be very important for you to make this effort.'

Moored alongside the outlying casco was Nicanor Axel's ugly little steamer the General Blanco. It was a wide, low-lying coaster with its tall single smokestack set aft and conspicuously raked. In front of the bridge superstructure were three holds with primitive-looking derricks above them. A foul smell, acid and corrupt, seemed to hang like a miasma about the craft. Carriscant felt his stomach turn and he put his handkerchief to his nose as the three of them climbed the angled ladder to the deck, Udo's genial bellows of 'Nicanor, Nicanor, where are you?' preceding them.

On deck Carriscant thought he had located the source of the smell. One of the holds was full of livestock, goats and kids, and the floor of the hold seemed to be lined with rotting vegetation, as far as he could tell from the light thrown by a hanging oil lantern.

'Goat shit,' Pantaleon said. 'Centuries old.'

Udo explained that the crew fed off the livestock as they travelled about the islands and on the longer ocean crossings to Hong Kong and Japan. 'You throw all your rubbish in there, the goats eat it, you eat the goats.' He smiled, pausing to light a cigar. 'Powerful smell, no? If I was a customs officer I wouldn't want to linger on this vessel, I tell you.'

A man descended from the bridge house and advanced along the deck towards them, wiping his hands on a rag. He had a curious sidelong, diffident gait, Carriscant thought, as if some invisible accomplice was pushing him from behind, urging him forward against his will. Udo made the introductions. Nicanor Axel was a small, slight man, with round shoulders, with a dark swarthy skin that sat most oddly with his pale blue eyes and his fair, almost ash-blond hair. On closer inspection Carriscant realised that it was grime that was responsible for the man's skin colour: oil and dirt, grease and dust seemed to have worked their way through his pores and formed a subcutaneous layer beneath his epidermis, in the way that the ink from a tattooer's needle seems to shine through the skin rather than rest upon it. No amount of diligent scrubbing would ever return Nicanor Axel's cheeks to their ruddy Nordic glow – he was steeped and stained with dirt, impregnated with muck.

He was a taciturn, shifty fellow too, Carriscant thought, with a limp, fleeting handshake. He accepted Pantaleon's money grudgingly and counted through the notes twice, pedantically, before ordering two deckhands to board the lorcha that was towed behind the steamer, a semi-masted schooner hulk which, while it reduced the General Blanco's speed through the water, allowed it to double its cargo capacity.

'I'm most grateful,' Pantaleon said. 'There were no problems?'

'No,' Axel replied. 'It was there in Hong Kong waiting.'

The crewmen came towards them bearing a small wooden chest and set it down on the deck. On the side Carriscant read the stencilled letters: 'Ets. Flanquin. Paris '. With a chisel, Axel prised off the lid and there, secure in its wooden braces, was a small petrol engine, factory fresh, with a dull sheen of oil.

Pantaleon knelt before it, lightly resting his fingers on the cylinder casings. 'The Flanquin, twelve horsepower,' he said quietly, reverentially, his face entranced and wondering. The dream was one step nearer.