The wind that made white caps on the grey-blue sea ahead, tossed at the few trees that had survived the winter gales that came hard at the Devon coastline and blustered the flight of the gulls above. If they hadn't had the heater on, if they'd had the window of the Cherokee Jeep down, then he didn't reckon he'd have been cold. His way of sulking, making his protest, was to wipe with his shirt sleeve the condensation on the inside of the door window beside him and on the inside of the windscreen in front of him. He wiped hard, a small release for his stress, but as a way of clearing the condensation it was lousy work and the window beside him and the windscreen ahead of him were left smeared. He heard the guy who was driving hiss annoyance beside him. He bent his head and studied the map and won no help from it. His finger followed the thin red line of the lane across empty space towards the blue-printed mass of the sea and on the map there were names over the sea like Stoke Point and Bigbury Bay and Bolt Tail. He looked down at his watch. Shit. He looked back at the map, and the page spread across his knee was harder to see because the evening was closing down, and the width of the Cherokee Jeep filled the lane and the cut dark hedges were high above the windows. Shit. Goddam it…

The brakes went on hard. He was jolted in his belt. It was his way, whenever he was riding as passenger in a vehicle that went to emergency stop, to drop his right hand to his belt, it was the instinct from long ago, but riding as passenger in a lane in the south of Devon in the west of England meant that his belt was empty, carried no holster. And his way also, and his instinct, at the moment of an emergency stop to swivel his head fast, the pony-tail of his hair flying, to check the scope behind for fast reverse and the J-procedure turn. He grinned, the first time anything of a smile had creased his mouth since they had left London, a rueful twitch of his lips, because he reckoned the guy driving would have seen his right hand drop to his belt and seen the swift glance of his eyes behind.