“Yes, I think it could be done. With me along it’s just possible.”

“Then you’ll come?”

He leaned forward eagerly, a hand on my shoulder, but I wasn’t going to be caught that easily.

“I’ll think about it.”

He didn’t smile, showed no emotion of any kind and yet tension oozed out of him like dirty water and in a second he was transformed into the man I’d always known.

“Good lad. I’ll see you later then. Back at the villa.”

I watched him climb the path and disappear. For the moment I’d had enough shooting. The sea looked inviting and I moved a little further along the beach, stripped and went in.

At that point the cliffs merged into hillside sparsely covered with grass, and wild flowers grew in profusion. I climbed half-way up and lay on my back, the sun warm on my naked flesh, staring through narrowed eyelids at a white cloud no bigger than my hand, allowing my whole body to relax, making my mind a blank, another trick hard-won from those months in prison.

The world was a blue bowl and I floated in it, drowsing in the scented grass and slept.

Waking was a return to a heavy stillness. I was aware of flowers, the grass at eye-level like a jungle, the woman watching me from a few yards away. Was it an accidental encounter or had she been sent by Burke? I wasn’t angry, but strangely calculating considering the circumstances. I watched her through slitted eyes, apparently still asleep, making no move. She stayed perhaps two or three minutes, her face quite expressionless, then went away carefully.

When she had gone, I sat up, dressed and went down to the beach again feeling rather excited. In a way, the whole thing had become a kind of game with Burke making a new move as I countered the old one.

The cards were where I had left them together with my box of ammunition and when I moved to the firing line, I had never known such power, such certainty. I drew, fired and was reloading within the second, my old self again, the Stacey from before the Hole… and yet not the same.