I paid my bill and left Tina's daughter a fifty-peso tip, then headed out onto the narrow concrete walkway that was Sabang's equivalent of a promenade, stepping over a couple of three-year-old kids playing on the ground with a mangy-looking puppy. I made my way along the beach, past a group of local men who were stood watching a cock-fight on the sand in front of the boats, then cut into the narrow, dirty backstreets of the town. The journey took me past the ramshackle stalls selling raw meat and fish, where the women gathered to barter in staccato tones; through gaggles of raucous schoolkids, heading home in their immaculate uniforms; past cheap tourist shops and girlie bars; across planks of wood that acted as bridges over the streams of effluent-laced water trailing beneath; under washing lines; through people's backyards; past noisy games of pool played under tin roofs. And all the way I nodded to people I knew, greeted a few of them by name, breathed in the hot, stinking air, and thought how much I loved this place. The vibrancy, the heat. The freedom.

When I emerged at the other end of town and stepped back onto the promenade, the sun was setting in a blaze of gold and pink above the headland in front of me.

It was beautiful. It should have made me happy.

But I was too busy thinking about the fugitive coming from across the sea, and wondering whether he was going to be the man who ruined it all for me.

3

Two days after the meeting at Tina's Sunset Restaurant, I drove the potholed road from Sabang to Puerta Galera, a gun in my pocket and a lot on my mind.