Her face was averted, but the killer was using the muzzle of the gun to tilt her chin, forcing forcing her to look at him. He was quietly smiling. She was scowling. He was smiling. her to look at him. He was quietly smiling. She was scowling. He was smiling.

And now she she was smiling. was smiling.

David stared, aghast.

Amy was looking up, smilingly, almost lasciviously, as Miguel murmured: 'You know that I am going to kill him, don't you?'

She nodded.

'Yes.'

'In that case, Amy, shall we have our fun first?'

She nodded again; he leaned very close: 'Dantzatu nahi al duzu nirekin. Before we kill him.' Before we kill him.'

'Yes,' she agreed. 'Please yes? f.u.c.k me here. f.u.c.k me like before.'

Miguel laughed. A sad and gluttonous laugh. The terror iced David's veins with tiny crystals of grief. What was happening?

Again the terrorist traced a line from Amy's ear, to her lips, with the metal of the gunpoint like a surgeon practising his incision, or a butcher marking out a fillet. Then he turned to his accomplice, skulking in the shadows.

'Enoka. Vaya Vaya, Adios! Adios!'

The squat little man scuttled away, an expression of relief in his gait. David looked from Miguel to Amy, to Miguel again. Searching their faces. His heart was cold with the horror.

Amy was still smiling, upwards, smiling at the terrorist: submissive, needy and desirous. The twitch in the terrorist's eye was subtle. More obvious was the erection in Miguel's khaki trousers.

Fear and disgust suffused David's thoughts. He didn't even want to look at Amy. How could she do this? Was it all some terrible joke on him? Was she just saving herself? Or did she really want Miguel? Was this some strange psychos.e.xual game the two of them were playing and he was the necessary spectator?

His heartbeat juddered with anger and contempt and inadequacy.

Enoka had disappeared along the rocky pa.s.sage. They were alone. Miguel and Amy and David. The terrorist was unlashing Amy's hands. Immediately she was free, she reached for Miguel; she was unbelting his trousers, pulling them down, and then tugging at his shirt; she was kissing him under his half shaven chin, and caressing his jawline, like a concubine soliciting a sultan for a night of love. A witch imploring the goat for his favours.

David turned away, nauseated. He didn't want to watch; he was stuck here, tied up, he would have to listen, but he didn't have to watch.

A deep voice echoed across. 'You!'

He opened his eyes.

Miguel was on top of Amy, the great tall figure arched over the small young woman, like a dark roof. But he was looking at David, and the gun was still in his hand.

'You, Martinez. Watch or I kill you. Watch then then I kill you. I kill you.'

David was filled with a furious nausea. He narrowed his sullen eyes and watched.

Amy was on her back. She was naked from the waist down. Her lips were seeking Miguel's bare shoulders, kissing him eagerly. David observed with a grisly repulsion as Miguel entered her. Now they were f.u.c.king, now they were really doing it, Amy was kissing him. She was putting her fingers in his mouth and he was sucking, tasting her fingers. Biting and tasting. His hips bucking wildly, thrusting at her; his face in a rictus of pleasure. He was moaning.

'My sweet red marrubi... marrubi...The little girl. Si Si? You love your Papa still...'

He was biting at her white b.r.e.a.s.t.s, his hands were dark on her white b.u.t.tocks, he was a black overpowering shape on the whiteness of her flesh, nuzzling at her red nipples; his dark wolfish mouth consuming. David felt the blur of despair.

And then, grotesquely, the terrorist climaxed. His arms shivered and he slumped forward.

His head lay on her white naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She was stroking his head, caressing him.

And then she widened her eyes and stared at David with an unfathomable expression.

'Let's go.'

David was choked.

'What?'

'He's asleep. He always falls asleep after s.e.x. Always. The deepest sleep. We have a chance!'

She was gently pushing Miguel away. David realized, bewildered, that she was right: Miguel was snoring, utterly unconscious. The terrorist didn't even stir as Amy pushed him aside, onto the sandy rockfloor.

David diverted his gaze as Amy threw her clothes on; the vortex of questions inside him was spinning: had she really done all this so they could escape escape? What kind of black and cruel comedy was this? As he looked away, he spotted the pistol, fallen from Miguel's grasp.

'My hands. Amy.' Amy.'

Amy was already there, untying him. As soon as his smarting wrists were unbound, David leaned and picked up the gun; then checked Enoka was nowhere to be seen.

He had a chance to shoot the terrorist. Shoot the wolf. David looked at the sleeping head of his tormentor.

He couldn't do it. He couldn't kill a sleeping man, he couldn't kill a man. He was a lawyer, not a killer, the whole thing was absurd, evil but absurd; and besides, even if he killed him, he couldn't defeat him. The graffiti would still be scrawled on the walls of Basque villages. Otsoko Otsoko. The Wolf. And the image of what he'd just witnessed would never quit.

Amy was imploring him. 'Please!'

He surrendered to her urgency. They crept down the rockshelf, out of the cave, beyond the clearing. They were going to make it. David felt the thrill of escape even as his mind reeled at the harrowing scene he had been forced to observe; Amy was running ahead now, up a pathway, between trees and bushes.

'Zara. She'll be there any minute.'

They raced to the end of the path, and then the path became a lane, and then the lane became a misty village road. The spire of Zugarramurdi church loomed across a desolate square.

'There!'

Amy was sprinting towards a car parked up by the church. She flung open the door and David opened the other door; Zara was inside asking questions in frantic Spanish, but Amy just said: 'Go!'

The car sped out of the square, out of Zugarramurdi, down another mountain road.

David looked across the pa.s.senger seat.

Amy was silent, but crying.

12.

Zara drove them speedily to the road where they had left the hire car; it took a bare few minutes to drive what had taken them an hour to crawl. Amy was silent the entire way; she dried her tears and said nothing, despite Zara's repeated and insistent queries.

The Spanish journalist gave them a puzzled glare as they eventually stepped out into the rain. Zara was quite obviously needled by the mystery and the ensuing silence. With a wordless pout Zara handed Amy her bag: the bag she had collected, as instructed, from Amy's flat using the spare key.

Then Zara gave her friend one last searching and bewildered glance before starting up her car and driving off.

Still swathed in silence, they walked quickly up the sodden path, and climbed into David's mudded rental.

It was like they were behaving automatically. Robotically. The mist drifted between the trees. David sat at the wheel, turned on the motor, and slid the car to the edge of the road. They were at the dead and darkling heart of the forest.

He took the gun from his pocket, contemplated it for a moment, then he hurled it from the car with vigorous resolution; he pressed the throttle, and they turned a swift right, speeding away, towards France. Away from Spain, away from Miguel, away from the killer. Away from the witch's cave of Zugarramurdi.

Amy said nothing. David said: 'Are you OK?'

'Yes.' She was staring levelly out of the window, staring at the fleeing ranks of trees. 'I'm OK.'

A car rumbled into view ahead David fought the surge of fear: but it was a farmer in a blue and mud-smeared van. They overtook the van, and he watched it disappear into the fog behind them.

Whole minutes pa.s.sed. Amy gazed expectantly across the gearwell.

'We're going to France?'

'Yes.'

'OK...That's good.'

They were ascending again. After ten kilometres, they attained a grey rocky crest, a balding spot in the woods, watched over by soaring eagles with imperial wings, and then they were over the imperceptible frontier and inside France, driving past deserted old pa.s.sport booths, and descending from the peaks.

David enjoyed a fraction of relief. At least they were out of Spain, where he and Amy had nearly been killed. Where Amy had been...raped. Was it rape? What had just happened? What had just happened?

For the fifteenth time in thirty minutes, he clocked the rearview mirror. Just to check, to see if there were any cars following. Any red red cars. cars.

They were alone on the road; he ma.s.saged the tension from his neck muscles. As they curved the mountain roads, he found himself thinking of the witch burnings. Of Zugarramurdi.

He could imagine the scenes of terror: a young woman being pulled, by her hair, across that dismal cobbled square; he saw the villagers shouting at her, throwing stones, with mangy dogs barking and snapping. He could hear the frightened peasant children, sobbing in the dungeon...Denouncing their parents. He could see the black-hooded priests, stripping the women naked, searching for the Devil's claw-marks...

He tried to clear his mind, focussing on the route. Now they were descending into the foothills, the sun had begun to burn through the thinning clouds; soon enough the clouds were gone. Blue autumn skies reigned over the green hills and valleys of southern Gascony.

'He was cutting trees when I met him,' she said.

David looked across the car, jolted from his reveries.

She repeated her words. Her speech was a monologue, a very necessary monologue.

'When I first saw Miguel. It was at a Basque fair. The Basques have these rustic sports. They call them la force Basque. Herri Koralak la force Basque. Herri Koralak. Trials of rural strength.' Her fringe lifted in the soft freshet of breeze from the open car window. 'He was throwing boulders, and chopping logs, and winning the tug of war. You know, he was like this...legend. The Wolf was already a legend, everyone talked about him, the giant from Etxalar, son of the famous Jose Garovillo, this guy with inhuman strength. A The Wolf was already a legend, everyone talked about him, the giant from Etxalar, son of the famous Jose Garovillo, this guy with inhuman strength. A jentilak jentilak from the forest of Irauty. He was bare chested when I saw him and I was twenty-three and it was purely physical. I'm sorry. Sorry. So f.u.c.king sorry.' from the forest of Irauty. He was bare chested when I saw him and I was twenty-three and it was purely physical. I'm sorry. Sorry. So f.u.c.king sorry.'

He wondered why she was apologizing; he wondered who she was apologizing to. He listened to her as she talked and talked, her words blurring into the noise of the engine and the strobing of the woodland sun.

'Then I realized he was clever, but...but, you know, a killer, truly brutal. And the strength, this famous tall guy, the jentilak jentilak, it was...tainted, it was married to a pure cruelty. But the s.e.x was good, at first. That's the truth and I'm sorry. He used to tie me up. I bit him. He cut me once, on the scalp, with a knife. We had a s.e.x game, with a knife. I came when he did it.'

She was staring straight ahead, her eyes fixed on the horizon of hills. 'Then I began to feel sick. Quite soon. With the s.e.x, the taint of violence. And he was seriously troubled, mentally, emotionally, every way. Pathologically. Whenever we had really pa.s.sionate s.e.x, he always fell into this deep, deep sleep, almost comatose. What is that about? I don't know.'

Now she looked at him. 'So there it is. That was the only way I knew...to give us a chance. He was surely going to kill you. Maybe me too. So I let him f.u.c.k me, as I thought that might save us. Sorry. You can stop the car now if you want and leave me here. I can hitch.'

Her face was a picture of resisted tears. David felt the anger abating, it was replaced with a voyeuristic sympathy, a shared and unseeing terror of what she must have been through. So she had done it to save them; it was rape. A kind of rape. Maybe not rape. But she had saved his life.

'You don't have to talk about it any more,' he said. 'You don't have to talk about it ever again.' And he meant it. But she shook her head, her mouth trembling, as she surveyed the rolling Gascon dales, green and mellow, through the car window.

'I want to talk about it. I knew as soon as he walked in the cave he would want to do...something like that. The same hungry smile. He liked s.e.x in the open, the risk of being caught, being seen by others. We did it in the witch's cave before. That's how I knew where we were. He was always ravenously s.e.xual, like he was starved.'

'I'm so sorry, Amy.'

'Don't be. It wasn't wasn't rape. It was just rape. It was just disgusting disgusting. I did love him once and I can never forgive myself for that. But he was going to kill you. He was probably going to torture you. And so.'

'Is he...' David didn't know how to phrase it. 'Is he ill? I mean he's obviously a b.a.s.t.a.r.d but it feels like more than that.'

'Who knows. Psychotic maybe. The facial tic always made me wonder. And the sleep and the inexorable libido...He used to want s.e.x five or six times a day. Anywhere. With lots of...' She grimaced, and continued: 'Like I said. Tying up. Biting. Cutting. And worse. You know.'

'OK...'

He reached out for her hand; he touched it, blindly, his eyes on the curving hilly road. He said nothing for a few kilometres.

Then he gave voice to obvious question, the same question as before.

'Can we go to the police now?'

'No.'

'I knew you'd say that.'

Her smile was polite.

'Sure. But it's true. No police. That's one thing Jose taught me. When the Basques are involved, don't trust the police anywhere anywhere, on either side.' She gave him another bleak and tightlipped smile. 'You know there are five police forces in the Basque Country? All dangerous. Some are killers for Spain. Some are infiltrated by ETA...We might walk straight back into danger.'

'Yes, but we're in France.'

'Same difference. Let's just...get away. Think about it.'

He subsided. She was maybe right; he suspected she was wrong; but after the last few hours, he didn't want to question her or press her any further than he needed to.

They drove, the sun was warm, they drove.

David and Amy swapped seats, Amy taking his directions. He had a firm idea where they should go: further north and east, into Gascony, away from Spain. Towards the next towns marked on the map. Savin. Campan. Luz Saint Sauveur.

He knew where they were going, because he was more determined than ever to discover the truth about the churches and the map and his grandfather. The savagery and horror of the last days had only made him more purposeful. more purposeful. And he was, to his own surprise, excited by this velocity, this targeting, this rationale for everything. His life, at last, had a satisfying if difficult goal, his existence was speedy and directed, after a decade of anomie and apathy; it was like being on a very fast train after driving aimlessly on a beach. And he was, to his own surprise, excited by this velocity, this targeting, this rationale for everything. His life, at last, had a satisfying if difficult goal, his existence was speedy and directed, after a decade of anomie and apathy; it was like being on a very fast train after driving aimlessly on a beach.