'Of course. Everyone's talking about you.'

The nerves tightened. 'Where?'

'At the British High Commission - that's where I work. You were almost killed, weren't you?'

'So they told me.'

She stared into my eyes, beginning to say something and changing her mind and saying instead, 'How did you manage not to be?'

'Bit of luck.'

The cyclo lurched between a taxi and a standing bus and she grabbed the rail. 'I was terribly upset when I heard the news.'

I said carefully, 'There wasn't any news.'

'What? Oh. I know. I mean, when I heard from my boss. There was nothing in the papers the next day, and that puzzled me. Who are you, actually?' Another level stare.

'I wondered, too,' I said, 'about the blackout.'

'It came from the Thai embassy, I know that. We traced it through. Their ambassador phoned the Singaporean minister for home affairs and asked him if he could hush the whole thing up.'

'Well, this place has got a good reputation for safety in the streets, and tourists read newspapers.'

'It could be that.' Her eyes didn't leave mine. 'But it wasn't. Was it?'

I didn't say anything.

'The Chief of Police was also requested to pursue his enquiries with the utmost discretion, in the interests of the state. I quote.'

Which explained why there weren't a whole drove of people from the homicide squad waiting round my bed at the hospital.

'1 don't know how these things work,' I said.

'No?' She blew out a gentle laugh. 'There's something else that intrigues me. I'm pretty certain you're the first man I've ever met who can deal with five assailants armed with knives. And smartly.'

'They weren't very good.'

She laughed again and said, 'Do you mind the Empress? It's only a food centre, but you can pick and choose among all the hawkers, absolutely anything - Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, whatever - and they bring it to you cooked. Or do you know all this - have you been here before?'

'Just passing through. The Empress sounds fine.'

The place was crowded when we got there but some people were just leaving. It was a corner table not far from the river and I spent the first ten minutes sweeping the environment, simply as a matter of routine because there were upwards of a hundred people in this area and if any one of them wanted to do anything with a gun I couldn't stop him. But it was going to be safer for me in the open until I could go to ground. Shoda didn't want to make any fuss: the limousine thing had been set up carefully to provide discretion. My little Yasma was meant to kill with the first thrust, and afterwards my body would have been buried deep in a rubbish dump and the car would have gone back to the hire company.

Shoda would have been very upset by the agitation at political level, in spite of the news blackout, and the next time she'd order the subtlest kill she could think of. But that was an assumption, and assumptions are dangerous. As I sat talking with this reasonably attractive but rather chatty girl at the rickety bamboo table my nerves were crawling, just below the skin.

'You take everything in, Martin, don't you?' She pulled another kebab out of the basket and skinned the skewer. 'I mean, you actually listen.'

'You're so interesting.'

She gave me another stare, then looked down suddenly. 'Not really. I talk like a bloody -' she shrugged, her thin shoulders coming forward. 'I've made it a rule, you see, not to bore my friends - I mean about him, Stephen. And you turned up as an absolute stranger, and I suddenly felt like letting my hair down.'

'It looks nice like that.'

Two Asians watching me from the table twenty yards away, twenty-five yards, tough, track-suits, intent.

'Actually,' Katie said, 'the wounds are still raw. It hasn't been long. Do you remember that film? A Married -no-An Unmarried Woman?

'I don't think I saw it.'

They looked down, not away, when they saw I'd made contact. I didn't like that. But there were quite a few track-suits among the crowd; I'd seen the joggers in the park on the way here.

'They were just walking in the street, in New York. She was Meryl Streep - no, Jill Clayburg. She's asking him about where they ought to go for their holiday, and he suddenly tells her he's met someone else. And, I mean, it was a long marriage. And she doesn't say anything, or I don't think she does. All I remember is that she just goes across the pavement and throws up into a rubbish bin. God, what a script.'

Perhaps I shouldn't be wary of men in any case, but of women - women in black track-suits. She might use women exclusively in her death squads. But I glanced across the two men over there at short intervals. And others: the short Burmese standing with his back to the rail with the river behind him and his head turning in this direction every so often, and the two thick-necked Mongols on the far side of the' flower stall: they weren't anything to do with it because they never spoke to the merchant; it was just good available cover.

The skin crept at the nape of the neck. Aftermath of the near-death experience. Discount. But don't discount entirely.

'Well, that was how I felt, you see, when he told me the same thing - Stephen. Only I didn't throw up. I just turned and walked across the street and nearly got killed by a taxi, and do you know' - she was watching me hard with her eyes narrowed to make sure I was listening - 'do you know the thought that flashed into my mind as the thing came hurtling so close to me that it tore my dress? I was hoping I was going to the because then he'd be tortured with guilt for the rest of his life.' She shrugged, and her thin shoulders came forward. 'So I suppose I must have loved him, to hate him that much.'

'How long ago was it?'

'Three months. Three months and two days.'

'And how d'you feel now?'

'Better for having got it off my chest for the thousandth time to a virtual stranger.' She puffed out a laugh. 'You're a patient man.'

'I'm glad I could help.'

'Can I have some more sake?'

I got her some from the stall. The two men in track-suits were leaving, not looking back. They could have been looking at Katie, fair-haired and slender.

When I sat down again she said, 'The reason why I was so terribly upset that night, you know, the night when you helped me at the Thai Embassy, was because I realised later that when I slammed the door on you like that I was leaving you to go to your death, or damned nearly. I would've been almost the last person in this world you'd have spoken to. It gave me the willies - I didn't sleep much afterwards.' She put her hand on mine for a moment. 'I'm so glad you're all right. Who are they, anyhow?'

'I don't know. No one I recognised.'

'So you don't know why they attacked you?'

'No.'

The Burmese was a plain-clothes man. I'd got his attitude down now, his movements. He was watching a group of Chinese at another table, not me.

'You must have some idea,' Katie said quietly. 'Was it to do with your Thai connection?'

She'd only seen me twice, but each time it had been at their embassy. 'Possibly.' It was time to see what she could give me, apart from the pain of a smashed marriage. 'You asked me just now who I was. I'm a weapons specialist.'

'I know. Representing Laker Foundry.'