No curtains hung over the bathroom window at the back of the house, and in daylight there was a fine view from here, the best view from the house. From the bathroom window he could see the dull-lit and empty square, around which were built two storey concrete apartments. He could see the narrow road that sloped down to the shoreline and the older homes that fronted onto the road. He could see the wind-stripped trees that formed a wall between the community and the beach, and the old piers. The water beyond was white-flecked and the foam of a boat’s wake cut at the water. The local people called the water the Salzhaff, and he gazed across it to the dark shape of the peninsula. He had never been there: it was closed to the local people. The peninsula was a military camp.

A wavering light climbed. It was engulfed by the cloud. A flare burst, was muffled by the cloud, then fell in brilliance over the water. Before it splashed down, another had soared, burst, and another. No longer the darkness over the Salzhaff. It was a panorama laid out for his entertainment. The tap water gurgled down the drain, ignored.

He saw the small fishing boat bucking across the water, He saw the cascade of the flares. He saw the ripple lines of the tracer bullets as they swept out from the shoreline, red tracks dying in the water, seeming to hunt and probe for a target.

Then he should have turned off the tap, forgotten about washing his face and his armpits and about brushing his teeth. He should have gone out of the bathroom, crossed the landing and closed the door of the bedroom behind him. He should have turned his back on the brilliance of the flares over the water of the Salzhaff, and the lines of the tracers, and the wake of the fishing boat closing on that place in the water where the bullets died. He should have gone to the bedroom where his wife slept and buried his eyes and his ears in the hardness of the pillows.