'Did you touch the safety bar?'

'No.'

'Do you know where it is?'

'No.'

'You don't know where it is but you know you didn't touch it. Keep your finger away from the trigger and put it down.'

Jonno didn't. It would have been easy to lay it on the table, where Snapper had left his camera, and where Loy's notebook had been. Sparky was watching him. Jonno had heard no door close, no footsteps on the stairs a cat couldn't have gone quieter. It riled him. He tossed the Dragunov rifle to Sparky, the aim pointing at Sparky's waist. He didn't know if it was loaded or if it was safe. He didn't know if it would be caught. It was.

Most would have sworn at him, and Snapper would have ripped into him.

Sparky said, 'Thank you.'

He should have been kicked from one end of the room to the other. It was a fair assumption that if Sparky hadn't caught it the jolt might have activated the firing mechanism and let a bullet go. He remembered what he'd been told of muzzle velocity and range. The rifle's safety lever was checked.

He had felt, looking at the dog's head and the shoulder of the rat, that he was a king. He was in fact a kid who had abused trust. Sparky laid the rifle on the table, and said, 'You don't want your hands on it and another thing.'

'What?'

'You should have gone with them. You'll be a burden on me.'

'I thought a sniper needed a spotter.'

'A spotter is trained, has the same level of skill as a sniper. Touch it and your hand'll be filthy. It's for dirty work.'

'Are yours?'

'Obvious, and you've seen it. Touching it, you're sucked in. It gets a hold on you. You're not the same man afterwards. It makes you think you're set aside from others and that's right because you're not fit company for decent people. It's for killing with. You're altered by it.'

Jonno said softly, 'I think I am already. I wouldn't leave you here alone God knows why, but that's how it is. We'll go out of here together.'

'It's barely my quarrel. It's nothing of yours.'

'That's not important. I repeat it "out of here together". I'll make some coffee.'

The Blue Bottle bar had few takers at midday, but the Latvian policeman was escorting a Slovenian broadcaster, who claimed he was unable to work in the afternoons without a beer at lunchtime.

The Latvian policeman said, 'It would be good to think, but naive, that we can dismantle an organised-crime group and so affect the marketplace. We can't. I'll be frank. If there's a real triumph during the day, then that evening you can't get into this bar. Only very occasionally do we have cause for celebration proper interference with trade and a shortage at street level. On such a day, Josip, you wouldn't want to be here. You wouldn't be able to fight your way to the bar.'

They gulped their drinks and walked to the next appointment.

Myrtle Fanning would have been loath to call herself an expert on the fashions of interior decoration, but she knew what she liked. Izzy Jacobs's furnishings were hideous. A potentially light room was darkened by mauve velour curtains, and the furniture was from Ikea in Malaga.

'If I'd gone back, Myrtle, I'd be spending my last years in the Scrubs, Wandsworth or Pentonville. I wouldn't get a place in an open gaol because all those politicians and accountants have taken the beds. They'd catch up with me, bang me up and leave me to rot. I'm not going anywhere. And this place is shot to shit.'

His place was hurt to her eyes, and Izzy Jacobs was no beauty. He was shrunken with age, had loose, lined skin on his face and clawlike hands. His scalp was blotched with sun damage, and his clothes hung loose on him. That day his socks didn't match. But he had the smile of an angel.

'Of course he should have called you. Of course, my dear, you're right to be concerned. We'll go together. We'll go when I've made a call and taken delivery of a small item of gear from a friend. The advantage of this trade is that I have many friends with many items of gear.'

'I'm not snitching.'

'I wouldn't expect it of you.'

'My family's never snitched, never turned anyone in. I don't expect to see my Mikey, and I've never had wet eyes. But we don't forgive and we don't forget.'

'I'll be with you, just as soon as I've that item of gear. We're old and we stick together. It's about all we've left because the place is shot to shit. It was once so good.'

'We were blessed, so many famous people rubbing shoulders on any street.'

'Now? Go to the Rotary, go to the Lions, and you've people putting it about that they were celebrities. They say, "Do you know who I used to be?" Miffed if you haven't any idea. What I said, Myrtle, shot to shit, and so much that's second rate.'

'Like the light's gone out. Go and get that bit of gear, Izzy.'

He was gone. She looked at a magazine, property for sale on the Costa. She did the TV zapper. Turned some more pages of advertisements for discounted villas and apartments. On the screen she saw the beach and the police, the sack a woman officer carried. She knew enough of the language and didn't bother with the subtitles they flashed up. A senior man said that it was likely to be a feud between foreign criminals, but he was surprised that the legs they'd found indicated an elderly victim.

He had raked the leaves and cut the grass. He supposed there were other ways to prepare his mind for acting as a witness co-conspirator to a killing. He didn't know them. Jonno had left Sparky upstairs. It was not Jonno's business whether the grass was long or short, or that Villa Paraiso was now clean enough for a Tidy Homes competition. It was not his business to be involved as accessory to a murder. He had thought that the raking and mowing would give him an idea about the limits of his 'business'. Now there was a heap of leaves beyond the cat's grave, and the grass looked scalped. He would aid and abet in the death of a man he had never seen, whose name he didn't know.

He came back in.

He took a mug of coffee upstairs to Sparky.

The rifle was across Sparky's lap he was sitting in Snapper's old chair. It was further back now and Sparky was deeper in the room's shadows than Snapper had been. He'd made the coffee as he knew Sparky liked it.

'You shouldn't have stayed. You're a burden to me.'

'I did the milk as you have it.'

'You've no skills or training. You're a waste of space. You're not wanted is that clear enough?'

'And I put in the half-spoon of sugar.'

'You've no reason to be here. You're a nuisance and a liability. The best favour you could do me if you're so anxious to help is to pack your stuff and get the hell out. You might catch the afternoon plane to Stansted.'

Sparky was reaching into his hip pocket. His wallet came out, leather scratched and old. He flipped it open. There was a picture of a woman. She sat on a bench in a small park and the trees above her were bare. One side of her face was blurred behind a cloud of exhaled smoke and she had a cheroot in her mouth. Sparky was dragging euro notes out of the wallet. 'You need more than three hundred? More than that to get a plane out?'

'I'm not going anywhere.'

'You're a burden because you can do nothing to help me. If I want coffee, I'll make my own.' The wallet was left on the table. A hand went to the mug, hooked it up, aimed it and threw it out of the window. Jonno heard it break on the slabs below. The money pulled out was beside the wallet. He saw veins prominent on Sparky's forehead and his hands were clasped, which didn't stop the shaking. 'What do you think is going to happen when I fire? It's an aimed shot, on one target. How many of them are there? Four, five, six? What will they do, less one? Wring their hands, administer first aid and say prayers? They'll come hunting. It'll be assault rifles, automatic weapons, maybe heavier stuff. Unless you're extraordinarily lucky, and no reason why you should be they'll probably start up the chipper again. I can't take down more than one or two, max. And they'll come hunting. Why are you here?'

Anything that Jonno might have said would have sounded trite. He knew, far inside himself, that he was staying and would be there at the end. The next time he was asked he would struggle towards an answer. He went to make a sandwich, then to pick up the shards of the coffee mug. He had heard the chipper's throbbing engine, the whine of the chain saw, and there had been the depth of trust shown him by a maimed cat. He was a changed man, and . . . he did not say why, on his Costa holiday, he would work to kill a man.

The Major gazed around him and absorbed what he was told. The Romans had founded the town where they had had lunch. Roman engineers had built the road on which they had driven from the town, and Roman legions had tramped past the lay-by where he stood. Those Romans would have seen a vista not greatly changed from the one confronting the Major. There was a valley of scrub, trees and low foothills that sloped gently up towards bluffs and escarpments of bare stone. The sun burned down on the landscape's green shades that the rain had freshened. The lawyer talked and Ivanov translated.

'It was an eco park, but there were what we call "negotiations" with local planning officials and the designation of the park was changed. We were able to insert the word "amenity" in our development proposal. The steering committee of the interested parties prepared for investment in the valley were confronted with supposed "difficulties" from protesters who challenged our proposals concerning water availability and the route of the rambling path it goes from the Spanish coast to Greece, crossing the valley and the habitat of the Imperial Eagle. Many difficulties arose, but each one was removed when we had gained the friendship of a relevant official. It was an expensive process. The clearance is legal but we require capital.'

'Everything I see?'

'Everything you see, Major. Eight million square metres of land, nine thousand hectares. The site would be the most prestigious in the south of Spain. You play golf?'

'No.'

'Neither does Pavel, nor his people. I have never played golf. I'm told it becomes an obsession. Men pay well to satisfy the compulsion, which they say is better than being with whores. Permission has been obtained for two courses, a large five-star hotel and other accommodation for the affluent who will come to indulge their passion. The plans are for four hundred villas and four hundred apartments in small blocks. That is the scale of the project. We're told it will destroy a wildlife habitat and a wilderness of great value. We counter that with an argument that's hard to dismiss in harsh economic times. We will bring jobs to this place where there is nothing.'

'Who made the initial investment? Why am I, an outsider, invited to take a profit?'

'It's a difficult climate. Two of the prime investors have been declared bankrupt. Additional investors have faced "misunderstandings" with the financial police and are awaiting trial at the Palace of Justice, in Malaga. Others contributed earlier but have become shy of further exposure. A new investor, who kick-started the project which has considerable potential for profit could have an excellent wall of anonymity.'

'How is that done?'

'I can register a company for a fee of three thousand euro. Or I can register a similar company cheaper in Gibraltar, which is UK territory, not policed. I would suggest that the investment is in Spain, and we can provide the names for directors. We've learned here, Major, that foreign investors do best when they work through a discreet network of local personalities. There are other services we can offer our clients.'

'They would be?'

'I would not refer to such matters had I not Pavel's assurance of your reliability. My legal practice has a fine track record in cleaning money. I can promise you that a suitcase filled with five-hundred-euro notes will reward its owner with a most considerable sum after washing. An equivalent of a million pounds sterling, converted to euros, in low-value notes, weighs fifty kilos and fills two big suitcases. With five-hundred-euro notes we have the equal of two kilo bags of sugar. We would handle any currency, and offer favourable rates.'

'I have friends who seek out such opportunities.'

He thought of them, walking the inner corridors of the Kremlin, labouring in large rooms in the Lubyanka where they occupied wide desks. They had dacha homes on land 'bought' from its old owners. They ran utilities and ministries but needed the bagmen and gave, in exchange, a roof and good rewards.

'The people I might direct to you would be irritated if monies were misplaced.'

The lawyer paled. It was a reaction with which the Major was familiar. Many who had known him in the KGB's Field Security had shuffled in his presence. If he smiled, everyone smiled. If he scowled, they backed away.

Pavel Ivanov intervened: 'Anyone I deal with has my utmost confidence and is of the highest integrity. It's a good deal, as you can see.'

He thought it a place of extraordinary beauty. Grigoriy, too, was captivated, as was Ruslan, but the Major's eyes didn't linger on the wild valley, the small farms where cattle still grazed among the scrub and where the sheep would soon be brought in for the winter. His astonishment that a scheme for two golf courses, a hotel and eight hundred units of accommodation could be contemplated was scraped from his face.

He spoke in Russian: 'If the bastards who believe themselves to be the elite, the siloviki, were ripped off, I would be held responsible. I wouldn't last a week. No contact could save me or you.'

'This week a mother-fucker came to my home and was casual about an investment that had failed. He went into a chipper and was given to the gulls in the mountains. I would do that to my lawyer, if I thought he had stolen from or lied to me. He knows it. An old man came to me this week and told me I had lied. His body was burned in an old car, but not his legs. We left them on the beach. My lawyer knows he cannot run far or sufficiently fast. Have you seen enough?'

'I have.'

'With the financial collapse much can be bought cheaply. They would concrete the whole coast for cash.'

They walked to the cars.

'May I ask one thing?'

The Major grimaced. 'Many things if you wish it.'

'You threatened the Gecko with the open door, and he jumped. Had you been blind to him? Had he already betrayed you?'

'No, he had not.' The Major looked away from the valley and the hills, the grazing beasts and the ground climbing to the rock walls. 'I'm certain of it.'

'I won't go,' Winnie Monks said.

'To the bitter end?' Kenny intoned.

'Has it screwed things up even more, Boss, with Xavier bunking off?' Dottie had her screen on, her feet on the desk.

'I'm staying,' Winnie said. 'I'm hoping for blood in the gutters and I'll stay until it's settled.'

'Boss, if Xavier's quit then who'll hold Sparky's hand when he runs?' Kenny asked.

She gazed across the graveyard and watched the dribble of old ladies who came each afternoon with fresh flowers. 'Fuck Xavier. Sparky'll have to do his own hand-holding he's a big boy.'

Dottie swung her feet off the desk. 'I'm suggesting more thought, and a conclusion. You should be out of here tonight, Boss, all wrapped up, gone. If the shit's in the fan, I'd want you back in London, lost from view.'

Kenny chipped, 'It hurt, Boss, but it's for the best. There's a flight this evening. If a witch-hunt starts you shouldn't be here, exposed. It's a worst-case scene, but-'

'It was for the Fenby kid. Dottie, Kenny, you stood with me on that hillside in Buda-bloody-pest, and in that morgue when we saw him. We saw how those people had kicked the life out of him and hacked off his hand. We pledged ourselves to get them. Didn't we owe it him, all of us me, you two, Xavier and Caro? To leave him, walk out on it, not sure I can.'

'Not a lot you're doing here, Boss,' Dottie said.

'Best you're on the evening flight,' Kenny said. 'I wouldn't fret about Sparky. Bit of a passenger. I'd put my shirt on it that he's already gone. I'm not often wrong.'

She reached for the telephone but Kenny's hand caught her wrist.

Around her, they started to pack. They'd have read their answer in Winnie Monks's eyes. She sat at her table and lit a cigarillo. She didn't doubt what she'd been told.

In the corridor, Kenny said to Dottie, 'It was a good slap you gave her.'

'She'll tell the world she walked into a door. Suppose he hadn't run for Malaga and she was there. Can you imagine if she'd been at that bloody villa, breathing balls into Sparky? A disaster on a mega scale. I had to hit her.'

Kenny took Dottie's hand, leaned forward and kissed her cheek. She blushed. 'It's the end, survival time, and she knows it.'

Posie stood at the edge of the group. She heard Snapper say, 'I'm really surprised. I'd have called it a certainty. Do you reckon Sparky's stuck in traffic, maybe couldn't get a taxi?'

Loy said, 'He'll be hard on our heels.'

Xavier said, his back to her, 'Don't know why the Boss sent him. Useless, those people. Truth is, he's out of his comfort zone and knows it.'

Snapper said, 'The way I see it, he'll be on the highway, scampering to catch us, but there's plenty of flights.' He waved at the board. Departures were scheduled later for Manchester, Leeds-Bradford, Glasgow, Gatwick and another into Stansted.

'Will he have the sense, before he bugs out, to bury that weapon?'

The flight was called. Most of the camera stuff was hand baggage, and they shared it out among the three of them. Posie had been introduced to Xavier but he had ignored her. Snapper had done the tickets and shoved hers on a credit card. She'd had to give him the phone number at her bed-sit, so that an accounts department could recoup the airfare. They walked, laden, towards the airside gates and Snapper handed out the boarding cards. None of them had mentioned Jonno as if he didn't exist, had never been there. She could see, a half-step behind them, that the three of them were on one side of an aisle and she was on the other. When she squinted over a shoulder, she realised they would be a handful of rows ahead of her. There would be nothing at the far end no gratitude from Loy, no thanks from Snapper for the sandwiches she'd made him. Tears streamed down her face, but no one noticed.

Snapper said, 'It's the way, isn't it? You win some and you lose some. Still, my pictures will cause heartbreak. Don't I always say, Loy, that worse things happened in Bosnia? Right?'

'Or Baghdad or Benghazi it's what you say, Snapper.'

They went through. Had she tried, Posie couldn't have stopped the tears.

'Of course, we let it slip.'