As she drew level with him, she smiled, even though he still wasn't looking at her. 'Your Commander let you out for the day?'

He turned his head. His soft young face was pink; long dark lashes hid his slanted Anatolian eyes. 'Hello ... miss.'

Natalia laughed and the boy's thick lashes parted and flicked upwards revealing a pair of frightened soft brown eyes. He looked like a young bear, lost and scared in an unfamiliar forest.

Now she was up close, Natalia ran her eyes over him in detail. She wanted to be sure this was a good choice. There were bound to be more men, soldiers, further up the path she had just left. She needed to convince herself that this boy was about the best she could do. She smiled at him.

He was good, she had to admit it. Dark, muscular, young.

His large hands augured well, and there was a pistol on his hip. It sat in a leather holster, the handle gleaming in the dying rays of the sun. A thing of great beauty and excellent craftsmanship.

As she looked at the weapon Natalia felt her heartbeat quicken. She was full up, almost in pain. She opened her mouth and ran her tongue slowly around every millimetre of her lips.

He gazed at her questioningly at first; he obviously had no or little experience. But as her hands loosened the remaining buttons of her blouse, the corners of his mouth turned upwards and he smiled. She pierced his eyes with hers and, without looking downwards, she unfastened her brassiere.

Natalia felt her breasts lurch forward, the delicious sensation of the cool breeze touching their skin. The boy's eyes widened and he put a tentative hand out towards her.

She walked towards him and slotted one big, dark nipple between his outstretched fingers. He let out a little gasp as he felt the heavy weight of her in his hand.

'Come on,' she said, her voice thick with sex. 'Let's get a bit further away from the path.'

She disengaged her breast and took his hand. They didn't have to go far. The undergrowth became dense and almost impenetrable only about twenty metres away.

But the place had to be right: a tree with smooth bark or a fiat and bramble-free piece of ground. Standing or lying, she didn't mind as long as she didn't tear her skin. Pain was all right, pain was great, but she didn't want marks on her body.

'Er, miss, er ...'

She turned. 'What!' She hoped he wasn't going to talk.

'Um?' His shaking hand offered her two crisp twenty thousand lira notes.

Natalia snorted and pushed his hand away. 'I don't want your damn money! Just do what I tell you, OK?'

It was obvious from his expression that he could hardly believe his luck. 'Oh, th-'

'Shut up!' She moved some tangled weeds aside with her foot and looked about her. 'This will do.'

As she sank to the ground Natalia slipped off the remainder of her clothing. The soldier stood and watched her, mesmerised. If he was worried or offended by her brusque manner he certainly didn't show it. He just looked at her, his eyes wide, lips wet.

Natalia bundled her clothes into a small heap and put them on the ground beside her. She stretched out one long, tanned leg and caught some of the material of his trousers between her toes. She threw her head back and looked up into his livid, sweating face. His chest heaved as his breath came in unsteady laboured gasps.

For a few seconds they just stared at each other. Natalia, impatient, even started to get bored. She didn't want to savour the moment, the boy wasn't important enough!

But then slowly and with trembling fingers he unzipped his fly and his dark penis sprang, erect and painful, into his hand.

Natalia felt her skin tingle. The boy was huge; he'd hurt. She hadn't been really wounded for a while. She wanted to be.

'If you do what I say this time, you can have as much as you want,' she said coldly. She opened her legs wide and rubbed her breasts with her fingers.

'Oh.' But he didn't move, just stood stupidly with his penis jutting out from his trousers like a stiff, dead snake.

Now she was losing patience. An idiot boy from the country in all probability. She'd just have to take control.

Well, it was what she did best.

'Sit on the ground and take your pistol out.'

'Pistol?'

'Look, do you want me to fuck you or not!' she snapped.

For a moment he looked confused, but then he undid his belt buckle and pulled his pistol from its holster.

Natalia felt her whole body flush and open as he held it out towards her.

The boy sank to the ground and stretched his legs out in front of him. Natalia sprang forward and took his penis between her fingers. It was very hot and she could feel the pulse of his blood tearing through the engorged veins.

'Now,' she said as if she were issuing instructions to a particularly dim servant, 'when I get on top of you I want you to put that pistol in my mouth.'

He looked from Natalia to the pistol and then back at Natalia again. He didn't seem to understand. With a grunt of irritation she pushed his torso back and straddled him.

She had to rise her body up quite high in order to clear his penis. 'Like this,' she said.

She thrust herself down his length and he groaned.

As she rose and fell on him, she took the gun from his hand and put it, barrel first, into her mouth.

At first he tried to take it away from her, but she slapped his hand to one side. The stiff metal tasted good, bitter and acidic. That, and his great bulk inside her, heightened Natalia's senses and she felt a rapturous loss of control sweep across her body. But she wanted more. She grabbed his hands and clamped them hard on to her swaying breasts.

Although so recently broken, he knew what to do and he pinched her nipples hard. She cried out - it was so good.

But his face was agonised now; he wouldn't last long.

Too young. She closed her eyes to shut out the vision of his stupid, grateful face and increased her pace. He was tearing her apart and she loved it.

Arms like bands of steel wrapped themselves around her and she pushed the gun deep into the back of her throat. This was what she thought of their history. This was what she would have done if the hard-eyed men had turned their weapons upon her! She felt like crying; it always had that effect. If only she had been there it would have all been so different. They'd be home, in the right place, not grubbing around with these filthy, these disgusting foreigners. Fucking thick, musky Turks on dirt floors!

The man beneath her bellowed and bucked like a bull.

She opened her eyes and taking the pistol from between her lips, she turned it towards him and rested the barrel against the bridge of his nose.

He stopped moving almost immediately and his eyes became very still, frozen in fear. His chest heaved as he tried to contain his post-coital panting.

She, on the other hand, was quite calm.

Natalia smiled as her finger clicked the safety catch off.

She felt him crumple and shrink inside her. His face lost all its colour and took on the appearance of ashes. Grey and shrivelled.

'Mmm ...'

She laughed at his faltering attempts to speak and jammed the barrel so hard against him that he cried out.

Terror was a good game. It was the only one she really liked to play. Of course it could only be played with scum like this boy, but then she liked scum too. She took the cheap watch off his wrist and flung it on to her heaped-up clothes. Terror fulfilled all her needs.

He was sweating heavily now and she knew that very soon he would start begging for his life. That was always amusing.

She looked down at his big, shaking body and ground her hips against his groin. With one finger she spitefully flicked the base of his penis.

Very slowly, so there could be no possible chance that the dullard wouldn't understand her, Natalia spoke. 'If you don't get that thing of yours up and do it to me again I'm going to blow your head off.'

By the time Robert Cornelius reached Celaleddin Rumi Caddesi, he was totally and utterly exhausted. What, of course, he should have done was ask Natalia what the name of the company was first - before he took off into the back of beyond. But so anxious had he been to get into the area and do what had to be done that all thought of the practicalities had, at the time, escaped him. As a consequence he had stalked the streets for hours, asking probably unwise questions of suspicious local residents, until finally he had arrived where he was now: a place that had been variously described by some as the only and by others as one of many textile plants within the Uskiidar district.

Not that being on the exact site of the actual textile plant owned by this Smits character really mattered that much.

He'd thought originally that it would, but upon reflection, surely it would be enough if he were simply in Uskiidar.

Besides, if someone connected with the old Nazi were really to do something nefarious, would he do it precisely on his own doorstep? No, he wouldn't. He'd be more intelligent than that.

But now he, Robert Cornelius, was where he needed to be and it was at this point, when all the excuses had effectively run out, that the full portent of what he was about to do hit him. Carefully wrapping a handkerchief around his fingers, he took the letter out of his pocket and stared down at it. This had to be madness! He recalled, with a sad but knowing smile, that during the course of all the awfulness back in Britain people had told him he was mad for many months. They hadn't known the half! Not even the most pessimistic consultant could have even dreamed of the still deeper depths to which he would sink: the ultimate insanity that he was about to perpetrate now. Deception, perverting the course of justice, impersonation, libel.

As he looked at the neat, typewritten address on the front of the envelope, he imagined how the other words - the mad, twisted, hate-filled words inside - now looked. In his mind they were mobile, dripping with the spite of ages the modern world hoped it had forgotten. But then if they secured her for him, were they too high a price to pay? If they kept her safe even at the expense of some old Nazi's life, then surely that had to be a good and right thing?

But finding or inventing justifications for something was not the same as approving of one's foul actions at the very core of one's soul. Discomforted by these thoughts, Robert turned away towards the more practical aspects of the operation. What he needed now was a post-box.

Not as numerous or as easily identifiable as its British counterpart, Robert knew that tracking down the elusive Turkish post-box could be problematic. In more 'touristy'

parts of the city it was easy, as most of the hotels would gladly take in cards or letters for foreigners. But here - here what he needed was a post office and he certainly hadn't seen one of those yet.

Wearily he started walking again, stopping every few metres to peer into some unobtrusive place that just might be the lair of the shy and retiring Turkish post office. And for a short time this rather humorous pursuit both filled and entertained his tired mind. It recalled several once well-loved surrealist comedy shows from his youth: shows where ill-assorted people routinely hunted down haggis or worked ceaselessly in clothing mines. It was nice being in that old childhood comedy place again - it was safe, completely devoid of any semblance of the adult creature that he was now. For one tiny moment, he even smiled - properly, fully, just like he had done when he had been a child.

But then, quite suddenly, there was a doorway surrounded by the customarily numerous Telefon booths, and there, also, was a very wide-mouthed gap in the wall - specially designed for letters.

Having found what he had been seeking, Robert then returned his attentions to the letter in his hand. Once he put it inside the box he was committed. If discovered he could consequently experience the full force of the law against him. At present he was innocent and, although suspected by ikmen, there was nothing concrete that could connect him to the old Jew's murder. If he posted this letter, however ...

If he posted this letter and were discovered, some people, including ikmen, would see it as the act of a man who has something to hide. The fraudulent aspect of the thing would be almost as nothing to what the police might perceive as his motive for doing it. If this man Smits had definitely had a hand in Meyer's murder he could justify it, but ...

But if he were to do what Natalia wanted he would have to believe that, wouldn't he? And besides, who was to say that it wasn't true? Unbidden, the image of Natalia running away from him through the streets of Balat rose up large as life in his mind. It made his hand and the letter that it held shake violently, signalling that if he didn't act in some manner soon, he would be unable to do anything.

In order to spur himself forward to the act that he had known all along had to be done, he whispered under his breath what should be his belief - his personal catechism.

'Smits did do it! Smits killed Meyer! Smits killed Meyer!'

Like some sort of mantra he repeated and repeated these phrases, his eyes tight shut, aware only of moving forward ever so slightly, until ...

The movement of someone behind him or perhaps even the noise of a car starting caused him to stop muttering.

Now the letter was no longer in his hand and for a second or two he cast about wildly to see whether he had dropped it on the ground. But then, just as suddenly, he knew that he hadn't. The post-box wore far too satisfied a look upon its blank wide-mouthed face for that.

It was done. He had done it. Yet as he turned around to move away from the scene of his crime, he felt very suddenly, but also very certainly, that he was being watched.

If this type of paranoia had not been such an old 'friend'

he would have given it more thought. But, for once, he dismissed the feeling and then set his feet in the direction of the Bosporus and home.

Chapter 14.

The day after a sleepless night can seem interminable. Logic says that you should try and stay awake until the following night in order not to disrupt the normal sleep pattern.

In practice, however, this is hard. Even when something interesting is happening, the hours seem to drip by. It's like having a terrible hangover without the riotous pleasure of the night before. The body screams for sleep and aches in protest when it is denied.

Robert Cornelius felt a wreck. After finally screwing up the courage to post the letter the previous evening he'd thought that he might feel better. But he hadn't. Nervous tension before the act had given way to anxiety after. He'd spent most of the night sitting on his bed, smoking and going over in his mind what he had done and the myriad possible results of his actions. None of them had a firm base in reality, of course. But then he had felt for some time that his hold upon that was becoming shaky.

He shuddered. The last time it had happened had been after the divorce. He knew why, of course, but the lead-up was still a blur. Had it been weeks or months? The big incidents: finding that man in bed with Betty; the attack - they were clear. But the rest? Friends and family knew more than he did, they talked about it too. Bits of himself had been bandied about the stripped-pine living rooms of Socially Aware flats in Stoke Newington and Finsbury Park.

Somewhere in his head was a big black box with all this shit inside and it was locked. Robert liked it that way. When he'd come to Turkey, he'd left the key behind him. He'd left it back in Islington where it belonged, on its home territory.

Even now, and despite his current anxiety, he still didn't want to open it. But there was a bad feeling. He knew it wasn't external, it was too familiar for that. He couldn't put it into words however hard he tried. The nearest he could come didn't make sense. It was a darkening.

Nothing about him was clear, even in the sharp brightness of the midday sun; things had blurred edges, smeared and broken lines. He was looking at the world through a dusty, tobacco-stained curtain that showed him shapes, lumps of flesh and concrete and metal, but no detail.

Although he wouldn't even acknowledge it to himself Robert knew that meeting Natalia had pushed him across some sort of unseen border. The subsequent journey had been a familiar one. A woman; a drawing away from friends; extravagance; acceptance of the unacceptable. It had been just over a year, a slow descent. But was it? The man, the lawyer, he'd found in Betty's - his - bed all those years ago was surely only the culmination and confirmation of what he had known all along. Betty had used him from day one.

Five years he'd had of that. But he'd done it so willingly!

He'd given her everything she wanted, turned not one but two blind eyes, even though it hurt like hell. He'd grown into a doormat, something pliant and comfortable for her to scrape the soles of her boots on.

He was doing it again. But this time he was aiding and abetting ... No, he couldn't be certain about that even now. He had no real proof. The evidence of his eyes meant nothing. He had to try and remember that. And that day in Balat had been odd, climactically as well as other things.

In retrospect it seemed like the darkening had deepened on that day. Of course it hadn't really, he knew that, but it was comfortable to think that it had. A new black box had been forming in his mind all night and he reminded himself to throw such musings into it. Natalia was in difficulty, that was all that mattered. That was the only fact.

Robert put his hand on the telephone, but he didn't lift the receiver. It was, by his reckoning, the eighth time he'd done that since dawn. He'd never used her telephone number before, but he wanted to. He knew she'd be pleased with his efforts on her behalf, she had to be, it was going to make everything OK again. Better than OK. She couldn't escape now because he had done this for her. Where he went she had to follow because he possessed knowledge. He couldn't form the words that damned her, but he knew.

Robert picked the receiver up and dialled her number. He didn't have to refer to anything, he'd already committed it to memory.

'Carelessness.'

Nicholas looked up from his paper and stared into the darkness that surrounded the great gilded bed. 'What?'

'I was careless, with talk. We think sometimes, quite wrongly, that people can cope with the truth when they cannot.'