'It can be explained in five minutes.' He held up a hand, palm spread wide to show fingers and thumb. ; 'You could have talked to us in town.'

'Please, just get in the ear.'

At last another vehicle appeared coming from Oban. It was a Volkswagen estate pulling a caravan. The car had a German licence plate.

'Oh oh,' I said, 'here comes an international incident.'

The b.a.s.t.a.r.d just kept on smiling. He didn't seem to mind if he held up the traffic for the rest of the day.

'I'll go fetch my friend,' I said.

As I walked back to the car, a van driver idling past asked what was happening. I just shook my head. I stuck my head into the Ford Escort.

'Bel,' I said, 'I want you to be calm, okay? Here, take the keys. I want you to grab the map book, then get out of the car, unlock the boot, and get our stuff. We're changing cars.'

216.

Then I picked up the raincoat and walked forward towards the Maestro. The driver and pa.s.senger were watching in their mirrors. When I started towards them, they opened their doors. I came to the pa.s.senger side, away from the oncoming traffic, and showed the pa.s.senger my raincoat. He could see the gun barrel.

'You've seen one of these before,' I told him. 'Now tell your partner.'

'He's packing heat,' the pa.s.senger said. He was American too.

'We're going to see your boss,' I told him, and motioned with the gun for him to move. They walked in front of me.

When we reached the boot of the Escort, I told them to keep walking. The German motorist was out of his car and was talking in broken but heated English with the Rover driver, who didn't look to be answering.

Bel had lifted out our two bags. I took one and she the other, and we walked to the Maestro again and got in. I started the ignition and we roared away, leaving the mess behind. Bel screamed with relief and kissed me on the cheek.

'I nearly wet myself back there!'

'Have you got the Escort keys?' I asked, grinning. She shook them at me.

'Then they'll be stuck there till they either push it off the road or learn the German for "back your caravan up".' I tried to relax my shoulders. I was hunched over the steering- wheel like a racing driver. 'It was a close one though,' I said.

'Twice in one day is too close.'

'You think they were something to do with Hoffer?'

I shook my head. 'Too smooth. They had a sort of government smell about them. There's a kind of smugness you get when you know you've got everything on your side.'

'Then they're to do with Prendergast?'

She'd misunderstood me. 'No, they had American sccents.'

217.

'The American government?'

I shook my head slowly, trying to clear it. 'Maybe I'm wrong. But they were definitely Americans.'

'More men hired by that girl's father?'

'I really don't know. I think it all ties in with the Disciples of Love.'

She looked startled. 'You're not going back there?'

'No, don't worry.'

'I thought you'd ruled out Rick and his gang.'

Now I nodded. 'Maybe it goes higher, Bel.' I didn't bother explaining what I meant.

We'd no hire car to return, so I decided to hang on to the Maestro. I could drop Bel off in Yorkshire then dump the car somewhere. We kept moving, stopping only to fill up with petrol, buy sandwiches and drinks from the filling-station shops, and try getting through to Max.

'Maybe he's had to go somewhere?' I suggested.

'Maybe. He'd have said, wouldn't he?'

'Short notice. I know I've been in a tight spot once or twice and dragged him away with no notice at all.'

She nodded, but stared at the windscreen. To take her mind off Max, I got her round to talking about the men from that morning, what they could have wanted from us, how they'd known where we were.

'What would you have done,' she asked, 'if one of them had drawn a gun?'

'Taken the drawing from him and torn it up.'

'But seriously.'

'Seriously?' I considered. 'I'd probably have gone along peacefully.'

'Really?'

'It's hard to know, but I think so.'

I a.s.sumed it was the answer she wanted to hear.

We reached the farm before dark.

218.

I got a bad feeling about the place straight away, and was glad I had the MP5 with me. As soon as I stopped the car, Bel was out and running. She'd felt something too. I called out for her to wait, but she was already opening the kitchen door.

I left the car idling and followed her, holding the submachine gun one-handed. With its stock fully retracted, the thing was just like an oversized pistol. I pushed the safety catch past single-shot and on to three-round burst.

Then I went in.

Bel's scream froze my blood. I wanted to run to her, but knew better than that. There could be many reasons for her screams. I peered into the hall but saw no one. Holding the gun in front of me, I walked forward, brushing the wall all the way. I pa.s.sed the open door of the dining room and noticed that one of the chairs was missing from around the table. Then I saw the living room, things scattered over the floor, and Bel kneeling in the middle of it all, her hands over her face. Finally I saw Max.

'Christ Almighty.'

His headless torso sat on the missing dining-chair, like some ventriloquist's dummy gone badly wrong. Flies had found the body, and were wandering around the gaping hole which had once been a neck. A false glimmer struck me: maybe it wasn't him. But the build was right, and the clothes seemed right, though everything had been stained dark red. The blood on the skin had dried to a pale crust, so he'd been here a little while. There was a sour smell in the room, which I traced to a pool of vomit on the carpet. A tea- towel from the kitchen was lying next to this pool, covering something the size of a football.

I didn't need to look.

I squeezed Bel's shoulder. 'We can't do any good here.

Let's go to the kitchen.'

Somehow I managed to pull her to her feet. I was still 219.

holding on to the gun. I didn't want to let go of it, but I pushed the safety back on.

'No, no, no, no,' Bel was saying. 'No, no, no.' Then she started wailing, her face purple and streaked with tears. I sat her on a chair in the kitchen and went outside.

I'm no tracker. There were tyre marks on the ground, but they could have belonged to Max's car. I took a look around, finding nothing. In the long barn, I flicked the lights on and stood staring at one of the distant human-shaped targets on the range. I switched the MP5 to full auto and started blasting away. It took about fifteen seconds to empty the magazine. Only the legs of the target remained.

Bel was standing at the kitchen door, yelling my name.

'It's okay,' I said, coming out of the barn. 'It's okay.' She put her arms around me and wept again. I held her, kissed her, whispered things to her. And then found myself crying too. Max had been ... I can't say he'd been like a father; I've only ever had the one father, and he was quite enough. But he'd been a friend, maybe the closest I'd ever had. After the tears I didn't feel anger any more. I felt something worse, a cold creeping knowledge of what had to be done.

Bel blew her nose and said she wanted to walk about a bit, so I went back into the house. They hadn't left many clues.

The vomit and the dishtowel were curious, but that was about it. Why cover the head? I couldn't understand it. I went upstairs and looked around. The bedrooms hadn't been touched. They hadn't been burglars.

Of course they hadn't. I knew who they'd been. The Americans. And either Max had talked, or they'd worked it out for themselves anyway, or someone from the Oban Disciples of Love had contacted them. I considered the first of these the least probable; Max wouldn't have talked, not when talking would mean putting Bel in danger. As for working it out for themselves, well, if Hotter could do it so could they.

220.

Bel still hadn't come back by the time I went downstairs. I walked out into the yard but couldn't hear her.

'Bel?'

There was a noise from the long barn, something being moved around.

'Bel?'

I had to go to the car for a fresh cartridge-box. When I pushed it home, I had thirty-two rounds ready for action. I moved quietly towards the barn.

When I looked in, someone had cleared an area of straw from the concrete floor, revealing a large double trapdoor, which now sat open. The trap-door led to a bunker. There were wooden steps down into it, and a bare lightbulb inside.

Bel was coming back up the steps. She had a rifle slung over each shoulder, a couple of pistols stuck into the waistband of her denims, and she was carrying an MP5 just like my own.

'Going to do some practice?' I asked her.

'Yes, on live targets.' She had a mad look in her puffy eyes. Her nose was running, and she had to keep wiping it with the back of her hand.

'Fury is the enemy, Bel.'

'Who taught you that?' she sneered. 'Some Zen monk?'

'No,' I said quietly, 'my father ... and yours.'

She stood facing me, then I saw her shoulders sag.

'Don't worry,' I went on, 'you'll get your revenge. But let's plan it first, okay?' I waited till she'd nodded. 'Besides,' I added, 'you've forgotten something.'

'What?'

'Bullets.'

She saw that this was true, and managed a weak smile. I nodded to let her know she was doing okay.

'You don't need guns just now,' I went on. 'You need your brain. Your brain . .. and your pa.s.sport.'

'My pa.s.sport?'

'Just in case,' I said. 'Now go pack yourself some clothes.

Are there any more sub-machine guns down there?'

221.

'I'm not sure. Why do you ask?'

'I need some practice, that's all.' I started down the steps until I was surrounded by guns, coc.o.o.ned in oiled black metal. It was like being in a chapel.

It took us some time to straighten things out. We knew we couldn't call the police, inform the proper authorities, anything like that. I did propose that Bel stay behind, a proposal she angrily rejected. So we did what we had to do.

The soil in the field nearest the farmhouse was workable. !

Even so, it took until dark and beyond to dig the grave. It:

wasn't a very adequate hole. I knew the reason you dug S down six feet was that much short of this and you'd get soil''

disturbance, the ground above the body rising eventually 4 rather than staying flat. But we'd dug down only three or < four="" feet.="" we="" could="" always="" rebury="" him="">

'Sorry, Dad,' Bel said. 'I know you were never much of a Christian, but you probably wanted something better than; this.' She looked at me. 'He fought that cancer for years. He was ready for death, but not the way it happened.'

'Come on,' I said, 'let's keep busy.' '

It wasn't hard. We had to finish packing and then lock up : the house. We couldn't do much about the living room, so just left it. Bel couldn't think of anyone who'd come to the house anyway. Their mail was held by the post office and picked up whenever they were in town.

'It might be a while before we're back,' I warned.

'That's fine.'

I was never far from the MP5. I knew they could come back at any minute. I would be ready for them. I'd considered stocking up from Max's cache, but knew it didn't make any sense. So I locked the cellar again and covered its doors with straw. The house was locked now, a timer controlling the lights. I walked through the yard to the field wall, and found Bel there, standing over the closed grave.

'Time to go, Bel,' I said.