This'd be a great idea if we'd intended it,' Ken grunted. The Escort got faster, and we shifted to a crouching hop, like playing monkeys. The gun banged thinly.

Then the Escort ran off the road, dropping a wheel into a shallow ditch with a groan and a twang. Its headlights stared into a bush; the Volkswagen had become a dark hump behind its own pale parking lights, perhaps fifteen yards away.

Ken leant the Smith and an eyebrow around the rear end of the Escort, the tail light glowing on the side of his forehead and the exhaust huffing in his ear. I heard the hammer click back. I whispered: 'Hold on. I don't think he's shooting at us.'

'He picks his nose damn loud then.'

But I was pretty sure I was right. You can hear a bullet that's meant for you, and it isn't a whistle but acrack: a miniature supersonic bang, in fact. All I'd remembered hearing was the pistol itself – fairly distant. Not even a shot crunching into the Escort, which he could hardly miss. Ken said: 'He's in the Volks or behind it.'

'I think he's bugging out.'

'Well, I'll take the Volks.'

'Don't let's rush into things.'

'If you don't think he's shooting at us, what're you worried about?'

'Being wrong.' Either side of the road, the rocky, bushy hillside staggered in blurred shapes up to meet the starlight. You could hide a battalion out there, I said: 'Anyway, militarily I'm stark naked.'

'So distract him.'

I crawled around to the front of the Escort, took a deep breath and stood up in its headlights and shouted: 'Come out of there! ' – and threw myself flat into the ditch.

Ken's gun banged twice, the glass in the Volkswagen wentspang, and he was zigzagging across the road, firing once more, ripping open the driver's door.

A heavy body slumped out on to his feet. Ken jerked aside into a crouch.

Far down the hill a pistol snapped, like a last farewell. Ken pointed the Smith into the dark, then jerked it down angrily.

I reached into the Escort, switched off the engine and lights, and walked across to look at Sergeant Papa.

'You didn't kill him,' I said. 'Not unless you ricochetted one to come in under his ear. With nice close powder burns, too.' Papa was still warm and limp and there was a tang in the air that was partly powdersmo Ke and partly something stronger.

'Did I hit him?' Ken asked tonelessly. He was standing guard beside us, looking somewhere else.

'You hit him.' There was a starred hole in the Volkswagen's windscreen and a frontal shot had ripped away a lot of Papa's left cheekbone. But the bone glittered white in my match-light, with no more than an ooze of blood. His neck wound was something else, on both sides. It isn't like a gun in the mouth, but it's still a messy way to go. Quick, though.

Being careful where I put my hands, I rolled him on his back and started on his pockets. 'I'd guess somebody beside him in the passenger seat, holding a gun to his neck.' The passenger door was slightly open.

Ken said distantly: 'Papa would have to be under the gun to drive up here at all. As a Greek he'd know it was a dead end for him.

'Sorry,' he added.

'That makes it a nice quiet place for an execution.'

'He wouldn't plan to leave Papa here.'

'Papa maybe, the car no. He'd want that -1 assume it's Papa's car – to get down the hill again. To his own car, probably.'

He looked down to the lights of Kyrenia, glittering as calm as the stars. 'So the bugger's down there somewhere, running like-'

'Nothing we can do.' I finished with Papa's pockets, then turned his head gently to look at the back of his neck.

Ken said: 'You think he was shooting just to scare us off?'

'That's my bet. Even if he knows us he couldn't recognise us by this car. We just stopped; if we'd passed on, then nothing.' I stood up.

Ken turned, glanced quickly at Papa in the starlight, then at my hands. 'Did you find the letter?'

'Now, what do you think?' Papa had put on a nice fresh dove-grey suit, regimental tie, clean black lace-up shoes. And he'd filled his pockets with the usual keys, coins, banknotes, identification… and maybe other things.

Ken waved the Smith at my hand. 'What did you take?'

'Some of his money.' I shoved it in my hip pocket.

After a moment, he shrugged. 'Why not? So what now?'

I peered into the Volkswagen at the space behind the back seat. Nothing. Then wrapped a handkerchief around my hand, pulled the bonnet hood release, walked around and lifted the lid. Crammed in above the spare wheel were two suitcases. When I prodded them, they felt full.

'What next?' Ken repeated.

I slammed the lid. 'What does your average honest citizen do when a body falls out on his feet?'

He considered. 'Stuff it back and get out at the speed of a tiger-fart?'

'Correct. But we aren't average or honest. We don't even stuff him back in.'

The Escort came out of the ditch without, apparently, a scratch on her. Ken scuffed the roadside to wipe out any tyre marks and climbed in. 'Home, James?'

'Not through Turkish territory – that guard saw us once; I don't want to give him a reminder. And while we're at it, dump the gun.'

He looked at it regretfully.

I said: 'It's almost empty anyway.'

He nodded slowly, wiped the gun clean and threw it up the hillside. 'Naked again. Champagne for breakfast?"

'For Christ's sake.' I started us rolling downhill.

Kyrenia's narrow streets were bright but quiet. In a week or two they'd be busy and the harbour-frontcafés and bars would be swinging. But we turned west before the seafront and headed out on the coast road.

As we cleared the town again, Ken said: 'Papa's house should be out here soon.'

The seaward side of the road was a straggling wide-spaced line of small hotels, holiday homes, closedcafés and Coca-Cola signs. I slowed down. 'We can't stop there – hell, his mother may be home.' 'I doubt it. No, I was thinking: if somebody finds out we were over this way anyhow, we'd better have a reason.'

'We could go back to Kyrenia and get offensively drunk.'

'That's an idea – hold on, there's the house.'

I stopped. The only clue was a small signboard, a carefully irregular 'rural' shape, saying: Grosvenor House. A stony drive stretched away towards the sea.

I backed the car diagonally to throw our headlights on the house itself, fifty yards up the drive. It was a square modern stucco box, painted a streaky cream and with all the architectural charm of a rat trap. The metal-framed windows looked small and mean, and you could tell there was a garden because there were some plants and bushes that couldn't have died in that climate without some help. But not a light showed anywhere.

'Jesus,' Ken said, instinctively whispering, 'to think a man could live in Cyprus and want to retire to a place like that. And call it Grosvenor House.'

'D'you want to go and press the bell so we can say we did and nobody answered?'

'If we're sure they won't… Well, it's an alibi of a sort.' He got out.

'Don't rush: Lazaros should be along in anything over ten minutes.'

I parked a bit past the house, on a track on the inland side, and left the car facing away from the road. It looks less suspicious, somehow; people don't think they're being watched by theback of a car.

The sea muttered on the rocky coast beyond the houses, the countryside made all those creaking and groaning noises that are so much louder and less reasonable than city noises. I found my half-smoked pipe and lit it, then remembered to switch the interior light so it wouldn't come on when I opened the door. A few cars went by on the road, all fast.