I'd forgotten that aspect of the routes to Kyrenia. On the map, it's on the sea about fifteen miles due north along an easy road that runs over a pass in the coastal range. But from Nicosia to the pass is all Turkish-Cypriot territory: no Greeks wanted today, thank you. So Lazaros would have to take a forty-mile swing out west, around the end of the range through Myrtou or Larnaka, and back in on the coast road.
We went north. It took us a while to untangle from the Saturday night traffic, but then we were out in the dark, with big notices saying we were welcome tofree Cyprus skimming past at the fringe of the headlights. On a clear straight road, the Escort station wagon got the wind up her tail. From the mile-ometer I'd guess she was only just run in, which might account for some of Kapotas's reluctance in lending her – but either we were getting faster at talking him into things or he was getting defeatist by now. Anyway, I reckon that if a car will do sixty on that sort of road then itshould do sixty.
After a while, I said: 'When you say "scramble" I'm old enough not to ask why – but nowd'y ou mind telling me why?'
'Sure. I've just been admiring your driving.' He sounded just a little breathless.
'Thank you. Do you think the Prof really said something in that call to Jerusalem?'
'I'm bloody sure he didn't. Bruno wouldn't even give his right name on an open line to a Jerusalem Arab.'
'D'you think the Israelis would-?'
'It doesn't matter what they would; it's just a risk he wouldn't take.'
'So…?'
'So the phone call was just to make sure Gadulla was still there, or something like that. So there had to be a letter to follow it up.'
'Two letters. Damn. And I only got one off Papa. Sorry.'
The station wagon hit a rut on a bend and its unladen rear end got slightly airborne. I twitched the wheel here and there and we got back to straight-and-level. I let the speed drift down to fifty.
Ken said:'Thank you… I suppose Papa would choose the Jerusalem letter because it related to the phone call. Bruno may have dropped some sort of hint – and anyway, if the call was in English the letter would be, too.'
The road began to climb, then hooked right, riding up the shoulder of the hills. Raw rock and splashes of sand glowed in our lights. We'd done over ten miles by now; just over the pass and we'd be in sight of Kyrenia itself.
Suddenly, almost too suddenly, we were at the Turkish 'frontier', just a sentry box and an armed Turkish National Guard waving us down sharply. I suppose we were a bit suspicious, at that speed and at that time and in a car that didn't look as if it belonged to a tourist.
A dark wary face with a big moustache peered in at me.
I said: 'Evening. We're a bit late for a party in Kyrenia. D'you want to see my passport?" It didn't matter much what I said: I just wanted him to get my pure English accent.
He grunted and flashed a torch past me at Ken, who was already holding up his passport. 'Is your car?'
'No, our hire car broke down and the hotel lent us this one.'
He swung the torch and searched the back of the car, then grinned vividly. 'Hokay. Have good party.' He waved us on with the Thompson – without a magazine in, thank God.
I steamed off at a gentler speed. Now we were in a sort of no-man's-land, theoretically patrolled by the United Nations when they weren't throwing punches at me in the Atlantis Bar and Grill. Tonight, we didn't see a thing, and probably wouldn't until almost Kyrenia; the Greeks don't usually bother to man their own roadblocks.
I asked: 'Any idea where Papa's house is?'
'Out west, a bit up the coast.' He picked a road map off the plaited cloth atop the dashboard and turned it over to look at the town plans. 'Go in as far as the Town Hall and turn left for Lapithos.'
We came over the crest and started down in gentle swirling curves towards the twinkling lights of the coastline. No lights nearer than a mile, maybe- -except the lights of a parked car. Instinctively, I braked. Our own headlights swung across a bright blue Volkswagen.
Ken said: 'I've seen one like that parked by the hotel.' Maybe I had myself; I braked down to a stop and slipped the lever into neutral. A gun flashed and cracked in the Volkswagen.
Then we were out on the road, rolling and scrabbling for the back of the Escort. Another shot. We huddled in cover, Ken untangling the Smith from his inside pocket. Without any fuss, the Escort began to roll gently away from us. On hands and knees, we scuttled after it, heading towards but past the Volkswagen.
This'd be a great idea if we'd intended it,' Ken grunted. The Escort got faster, and we shifted to a crouching hop, like playing monkeys. The gun banged thinly.
Then the Escort ran off the road, dropping a wheel into a shallow ditch with a groan and a twang. Its headlights stared into a bush; the Volkswagen had become a dark hump behind its own pale parking lights, perhaps fifteen yards away.
Ken leant the Smith and an eyebrow around the rear end of the Escort, the tail light glowing on the side of his forehead and the exhaust huffing in his ear. I heard the hammer click back. I whispered: 'Hold on. I don't think he's shooting at us.'
'He picks his nose damn loud then.'
But I was pretty sure I was right. You can hear a bullet that's meant for you, and it isn't a whistle but acrack: a miniature supersonic bang, in fact. All I'd remembered hearing was the pistol itself – fairly distant. Not even a shot crunching into the Escort, which he could hardly miss. Ken said: 'He's in the Volks or behind it.'
'I think he's bugging out.'
'Well, I'll take the Volks.'
'Don't let's rush into things.'
'If you don't think he's shooting at us, what're you worried about?'
'Being wrong.' Either side of the road, the rocky, bushy hillside staggered in blurred shapes up to meet the starlight. You could hide a battalion out there, I said: 'Anyway, militarily I'm stark naked.'
'So distract him.'
I crawled around to the front of the Escort, took a deep breath and stood up in its headlights and shouted: 'Come out of there! ' – and threw myself flat into the ditch.
Ken's gun banged twice, the glass in the Volkswagen wentspang, and he was zigzagging across the road, firing once more, ripping open the driver's door.
A heavy body slumped out on to his feet. Ken jerked aside into a crouch.
Far down the hill a pistol snapped, like a last farewell. Ken pointed the Smith into the dark, then jerked it down angrily.
I reached into the Escort, switched off the engine and lights, and walked across to look at Sergeant Papa.
'You didn't kill him,' I said. 'Not unless you ricochetted one to come in under his ear. With nice close powder burns, too.' Papa was still warm and limp and there was a tang in the air that was partly powdersmo Ke and partly something stronger.
'Did I hit him?' Ken asked tonelessly. He was standing guard beside us, looking somewhere else.
'You hit him.' There was a starred hole in the Volkswagen's windscreen and a frontal shot had ripped away a lot of Papa's left cheekbone. But the bone glittered white in my match-light, with no more than an ooze of blood. His neck wound was something else, on both sides. It isn't like a gun in the mouth, but it's still a messy way to go. Quick, though.
Being careful where I put my hands, I rolled him on his back and started on his pockets. 'I'd guess somebody beside him in the passenger seat, holding a gun to his neck.' The passenger door was slightly open.
Ken said distantly: 'Papa would have to be under the gun to drive up here at all. As a Greek he'd know it was a dead end for him.
'Sorry,' he added.
'That makes it a nice quiet place for an execution.'
'He wouldn't plan to leave Papa here.'
'Papa maybe, the car no. He'd want that -1 assume it's Papa's car – to get down the hill again. To his own car, probably.'
He looked down to the lights of Kyrenia, glittering as calm as the stars. 'So the bugger's down there somewhere, running like-'
'Nothing we can do.' I finished with Papa's pockets, then turned his head gently to look at the back of his neck.
Ken said: 'You think he was shooting just to scare us off?'
'That's my bet. Even if he knows us he couldn't recognise us by this car. We just stopped; if we'd passed on, then nothing.' I stood up.
Ken turned, glanced quickly at Papa in the starlight, then at my hands. 'Did you find the letter?'
'Now, what do you think?' Papa had put on a nice fresh dove-grey suit, regimental tie, clean black lace-up shoes. And he'd filled his pockets with the usual keys, coins, banknotes, identification… and maybe other things.
Ken waved the Smith at my hand. 'What did you take?'
'Some of his money.' I shoved it in my hip pocket.
After a moment, he shrugged. 'Why not? So what now?'
I peered into the Volkswagen at the space behind the back seat. Nothing. Then wrapped a handkerchief around my hand, pulled the bonnet hood release, walked around and lifted the lid. Crammed in above the spare wheel were two suitcases. When I prodded them, they felt full.
'What next?' Ken repeated.
I slammed the lid. 'What does your average honest citizen do when a body falls out on his feet?'
He considered. 'Stuff it back and get out at the speed of a tiger-fart?'
'Correct. But we aren't average or honest. We don't even stuff him back in.'
The Escort came out of the ditch without, apparently, a scratch on her. Ken scuffed the roadside to wipe out any tyre marks and climbed in. 'Home, James?'
'Not through Turkish territory – that guard saw us once; I don't want to give him a reminder. And while we're at it, dump the gun.'
He looked at it regretfully.
I said: 'It's almost empty anyway.'
He nodded slowly, wiped the gun clean and threw it up the hillside. 'Naked again. Champagne for breakfast?"
'For Christ's sake.' I started us rolling downhill.
Kyrenia's narrow streets were bright but quiet. In a week or two they'd be busy and the harbour-frontcafés and bars would be swinging. But we turned west before the seafront and headed out on the coast road.
As we cleared the town again, Ken said: 'Papa's house should be out here soon.'
The seaward side of the road was a straggling wide-spaced line of small hotels, holiday homes, closedcafés and Coca-Cola signs. I slowed down. 'We can't stop there – hell, his mother may be home.' 'I doubt it. No, I was thinking: if somebody finds out we were over this way anyhow, we'd better have a reason.'
'We could go back to Kyrenia and get offensively drunk.'
'That's an idea – hold on, there's the house.'
I stopped. The only clue was a small signboard, a carefully irregular 'rural' shape, saying: Grosvenor House. A stony drive stretched away towards the sea.
I backed the car diagonally to throw our headlights on the house itself, fifty yards up the drive. It was a square modern stucco box, painted a streaky cream and with all the architectural charm of a rat trap. The metal-framed windows looked small and mean, and you could tell there was a garden because there were some plants and bushes that couldn't have died in that climate without some help. But not a light showed anywhere.
'Jesus,' Ken said, instinctively whispering, 'to think a man could live in Cyprus and want to retire to a place like that. And call it Grosvenor House.'
'D'you want to go and press the bell so we can say we did and nobody answered?'
'If we're sure they won't… Well, it's an alibi of a sort.' He got out.
'Don't rush: Lazaros should be along in anything over ten minutes.'
I parked a bit past the house, on a track on the inland side, and left the car facing away from the road. It looks less suspicious, somehow; people don't think they're being watched by theback of a car.
The sea muttered on the rocky coast beyond the houses, the countryside made all those creaking and groaning noises that are so much louder and less reasonable than city noises. I found my half-smoked pipe and lit it, then remembered to switch the interior light so it wouldn't come on when I opened the door. A few cars went by on the road, all fast.
Then a quarter of an hour had passed. No lights had come on in Grosvenor House. How long does it take to find a bell-push? Hell, the silly bastard wasn't trying to burglarise the house, was he?
I got out of the car and stood listening and not getting anything new. Then, down the road to the west, a car's headlights, moving jerkily, like somebody looking for an address…
I started to run, then remembered not to. Just briskly across the road and up the rutted drive of stones, with the headlights creeping step by step in on my left.
It took me perhaps two seconds to find the bell and morse out a quick SOS on it. Nothing happened, but I'd pretty much expected that, by then. I started around the side, away from the headlights, my rubber soles crunching in the stones, and me wondering why I hadn't picked out a Colt for myself from the collection I'd sprinkled into the sea so freely. I could use the comforting feel of heavy metal in my hand, the sense that one trigger-pull could cause instant fire and noise and death. It's a helpful way to get around a dark corner, even if you're flattering yourself about causing 'instant death'.
I put one hand against the wall – flakes of old paint, wet with dew, pulled off on my fingers – then took a wide step around the back of the house. And almost fell over Ken.
He lay on his face on the concrete patio that stretched out flush with the drive and with a lot of stones spilled over on to it. For a moment I thought… well, a lot of things, but my fingers were already feeling for a pulse in his neck. Before I found it, he said: 'God bugger it. Thathurts'
'Sorry.' So he'd been put out with some neck grip, on the carotid arteries, I think it is. 'Howd'you feel? '
'That's a bloody stupid question,' he grumbled, lifting carefully to a sitting position against the house. 'Did you get him?'
'No. Who?'
'Idon't know.' He put both hands under his chin and lifted gently.'Jesus!'
A car revved in low gear and tyres bit into the driveway. I stepped close to the house. I whispered: 'That'll be Lazaros. D'you want to meet him?'
'Only one person I want to meet-'
'Then on the feet, hup.' I got him effectively upright and we staggered across the patio towards the sea, keeping the house between us and the glow of headlights brightening in the driveway. There was no garage, no outhouses, no cover bar a few scruffy ornamental bushes before the ground began to crumble towards what Papa had probably described as a 'deserted beach'. True, but the sand had deserted it, too.
I helped Ken collapse behind one bush, then found my own. We waited.
Lazarostook his time. He rang the front bell, and again, then walked slowly round the house and tried the french windows that led on to the patio. Then he poked at a few windows, and even gave a drain-pipe a shake. Then he lit a cigarette and stared out seawards and we stopped breathing.
But at least there weren't any other buildings to snoop into, and Lazaros wasn't actually expecting people to be parked behind bushes, so he stood there and puffed and probably wondered what the hell else he could do to justify an eighty-mile round trip. Eventually he must have thought of something, because he went back and the car door slammed and the engine started.
I said: 'Stay there,' and ran around the other side of the house. Lazaros's car – a small blue Mazda – hesitated at the bottom of the drive, then pulled away towards Kyrenia itself. I waited until the noise had faded.
When I turned back, Ken had reached the corner of the house by himself and was leaning on it for a breather. 'He's gone into town,' I reported. 'I was a bit scared he'd just sit and put a watch on the place. Now let's get weaving.'
He looked longingly at the house. "The letter might still be in there.'
'For God's sake. If it is, you'll never find it. And Lazaroshas probably gone to make his number with the local coppers. When Papa gets found, this place is going to get as lonely as Piccadilly on New Year. Let'sgo.'
So we went.
I didn't say anything until we were halfway along the coast road towards Lapithos. Then: 'How's it feel now?'
'Bloody sore.' He moved his head carefully.
'How did it happen?'
'I was just snooping around, trying doors and windows – he must've come up behind me. God! – I'm getting slow. I shouldn't have been caught like that.'
'You weren't expecting trouble-'
'Ishould have been-'
I over-rode him. 'So we're dealing with a man who's queer for necks,'
'Yes, it must've been the same man… but what did he come back for?'
'Something he hadn't found on Papa.'
'So the lettercould be still-'
'No. Look: we know Papa was travelling and it could only have been to Israel. There's plenty of boats go from Limassol to Haifa, and they sail at all sorts of times. So he'd either take the letter or burn it; left behind, it's just evidence he fiddles with the mail.'
He thought for a moment. 'He'd need passport, tickets, money, traveller's cheques… I suppose they got pinched, too.'
'I imagine. But he missed one thing: Papa had a hundred Israeli pounds in with his cash. That's the maximum you can take into Israel.'
'That'swhat you took. And I thought it was just your pension plan. So that's another bit of evidence we've concealed.'
They'll find out. It'll be routine to check with his bank, but they won't bother till Monday.'
The car hit a bump and Ken winced. I said: 'Sorry,' and slowed, but not much. If Papa had got found, they might just try a roadblock on the coast route; once we were round the corner of the mountains there were too many roads to make it worth while.
The road forked and I stayed with the coastline, passing the lights of Lapithos on the left.
Ken said: 'So whatdid he come back for? He can't have planned on coming or he'd have pinched Papa's keys.'
'Maybe he didn't have time. One thing I didn't mention: Papa had been tortured. Cigarette burns on the back of his neck.'
'Jesus! Sothat was the smell.' After a pause. 'So he wanted Papa to tell him something… d'you think he talked?"
'Not enough. I think he killed Papa because we stopped. That was the first shot.'
'So we got him killed.'
'Balls. He went up there to get killed. We just speeded things up, before the torture was finished, before he thought of taking the keys.'
There was suddenly a sign for Róndemenos, an early rough road over the end of the coastal range rather than around the end. But I took it, just to get off the coast road.
It was narrow and winding but now I didn't need to hurry. What I could see in the headlights was lonely moorland, and beyond, the black hills against the stars. A bit like the road where Papa had died.
For a long time, Ken said nothing. I knew that, absurdly but understandably, he felt worse about shooting a dead man than a live one. And the wrong man besides. And then getting jumped from behind… It had been a bad night, though how you balance those factors – but I don't think he was doing much balancing.
At last, he said calmly: 'Papa must've known this character. Thought he was a friend, or partner.'
'Likely enough. He wasn't fool enough to think he could do a million-dollar deal all on his own. He'd need help.'
We were over the top, weaving downhill; ahead, the flat central plain stretched away into the night, pinpncked with tiny lights.
Ken rubbed his neck carefully. 'I wonder why the bastard didn't kill me, too. He could've done by just pressing a bit longer.'
'Perhaps he's managed to cut it down to one a night.'