I said, 'Well?'

'Hucks and Thornton,' he said hoarsely.

'Good. And who arethey?'

'I… they…' His eyes were still on the matchbox. I picked it up, slowly, very slowly, and pressed it gently open… and he watched all the time. Sweat flooded his face.

Then I said, 'Oh, bugger it. No.' And I pulled open the door and threw the matchbox the length of the main room.

A car rushed past. Not a Volkswagen, but I was too late at the window to catch it on the only piece of road I could see. But going uphill fairly fast.

Wasn't the road blocked above here?

By the time I was out of the door and with a view of the full stretch of road, it was out of sight. I ran back and emptied half a bucket of water into the stove – and nearly blew the cabin down. For a moment, smoke and steam filled the room and the hot metal fizzed like a snake-pit. But it faded quickly. There'd be no sign of life when the car came back.

But it didn't come back. Not right away and then not just after that and…

… and David?

I'd told him to stay off the road and out of sight. He could hear a car as well as I could; I'd just be giving away my own position by stepping out and yelling at him.

I moved from one window to another and to the front door, open a crack and bleeding cold air in on us. Behind me, Nygaard said, 'Please shut the door.' I didn't.

Then a figure moved across a gap between two cabins up the road. A figure like – no, I didn't know what it was like. Not just on one glimpse. But the next time it moved, it was Trond. You can't make a mistake about that frog shape, not twice.

Nygaard said, 'What is happening? It smells burning.'

'I doused the fire. Now shutup.'

Trond was moving from cabin to cabin, checking each one and pretending he was an infantryman under fire but forgetting an infantryman has a firm sense of direction. Wrong, maybe, but firm. Trond was hidden from our direction for one moment, then running up and planting his backside to me, peek-a-booing around a corner back the way he'd come.

When he was within thirty yards, I took out the derringer and cocked it. He checked one last cabin and started for ours. I let him come to fifteen yards… ten – and he stopped. He'd seen the door wasn't quite closed.

I opened it and stepped out, holding the gun pointed. I wasn't going to shoot at that range, but I wanted him to decide whether he came any closer.

'Hello, Trond.'

The wide fleshy face creased into a grin and he stepped forward. Then two shots sounded, back up the valley, and he stopped, head cocked. A distant voice shouted, 'Trond!'

Then he scuttled away around a cabin and out of sight. I waited. Nothing. I dropped down the steps, derringer in hand -and the car rushed past down the road. A white Cortina, old model, that could be the one we'd seen in Rasmussen's drive, or maybe not.

I shouted, 'David?' The far slope bounced back a sloppy echo. But I was still prowling and shouting when Willie and Kari got back, half an hour afterwards.

He bounced out of the Volkswagen almost before it had stopped, screaming. 'You bloody idiot! They've got David!' I just nodded. By then I was sitting perched on the parapet at the side of the road and feeling rather tired, plus other things.

'How do you know?' I asked dully.

'They stopped us on the road!' Kari was out now, staring white-faced at me. Willie went on, 'I saw him!'

'And who else?'

'What does that…? Well, there were three of them, men. Two British, I think. The other was Trond.'

'One of them with a bandage on his hand?'

'I didn't see. They said-'

'White Cortina, was it?'

'Yes. Do you want to know what they said?'

'I can guess, but go on.'

'They'll swap him for Nygaard.'

Kari said, 'We cannot do this.'

I said, 'I guessed that, too. Why not?'

'He is a person! Not a slave! You do not give him away -even for an English schoolboy.'

I looked at Willie. 'Did they say when and where?'

'At the crossroads at Byrkjedal, at four.' He looked at his watch. 'Fifty minutes/ 'So there's no rush.' I looked at Kari. 'I don't think Nygaard's in any danger, you know. He's still a key witness in a big case. Once we're down the hill, we can report him to the police and have them pick him up as an alcoholic. Get him properly committed to somewhere. We can do that, too, under Norwegian law. No problem. Now start packing him up.'

I led the way confidently towards the cabin. That's what majors are for, isn't it? -to show confidence?

Ten minutes later we were all packed – well, the Volkswagen was – and three of us standing around sipping a last cup of coffee while Nygaard sat in his uniform greatcoat on the bench and shivered at other things beside the cold.

Willie murmured, 'Did you solve the mystery of the Marie Celeste?'

'No. I missed it. But it's there. In him and in the log.'

'What'll they – I mean Ellie Smith-Bang – what will she do to him?'

'Why anything? She seems happy with him as he is.'

Nygaard got slowly to his feet, so slowly I didn't notice until he was nearly upright, his eyes fixed on the door. He let out a low, horrified moan.

My coffee mug spun away and the derringer was aimed – but not at the devils he could see. Thirty-eight Specials aren't enough for them. I slipped the gun back into its clip.

He was still watching the door – or whatever had walked through it. He began a gentle, gradual, horrible scream…

Now I'd got him. Now he'd tell me any damn thing he knew, or could fake or could remember – and I'd know the difference. He'd put his naked soul on the counter and I could buy it for a half glass of whisky – as long as I didn't pay.

I looked at Willie. Then Kari. 'Give him a drink.'

'But no!' She was horrified.

'Why not? He'll get worse from now on – and it's the first thingthey'll give him, down the hill.'

She said pitifully, 'But weren't you curing him?'

'No. Just starving him. So that he'd tell me something. It doesn't matter now – does it?' I looked back at Willie. 'Only forty thousand, that and three men's lives so far.' Back to Kari. 'A real cure is something else. And it'll only work if he wants it to, if he's got a reason for it to. Find that and you'll find the cure. Maybe. But meantime give him a drink.'

She said, 'You are very cruel, I think.' But she went outside to dig up the whisky and brought it back and slammed it into my hands.

He hadn't noticed any of it.

I sloshed some into a mug and gave it to him. He took a gulp, choked and splattered, gashed and gulped again. The second shot went down easier. In half a minute he took on nearly a quarter bottle and was sitting happily at the table sipping the next quarter as politely as any Paris boulevardier.

I said to Willie, 'That's it, then. Come outside, I want to talk to you.'

He frowned, but came.

The sky still began a bare two hundred feet higher, and now a few grains of snow were tippling down in the wind. Instinctively we began a parade-ground circuit of the cabin.

I said, 'Simple yes-or-no answer: was Martin Fenwick a homosexual?'

'Oh, really, old boy…' All the woolly speech mannerisms were suddenly back.

'And Jonas Steen was his steady boyfriend. That was why he gave Steen the surveying jobs – and why Steen gave him the log of the Skadi, even sent it to his flat in London. It was probably why hehad the flat, why his whole life pattern – Jesus, the things I didn't notice!'

Willie cleared his throat and wriggled a bit and said, 'Well, you know, he obviously wasn'tentirely, if you see what I mean…'

'You mean David?' There was no question but hewas Fenwick's son, not with the amount he'd done for him. 'Christ, why do these people have to be dynastic, as well?'