“Is it always as hot as this?” she snarled. “I mean, it’s September. Summer’s over.”

“It’s the hottest September for fifty years,” said the receptionist.

“I can’t move in this heat.”

He gave an indifferent shrug. Agatha was to find that the receptionist was Turkish and that Turkish hotel servants have had a servility bypass.

“Why don’t you go for a sail?” he said. “You’ll get one of the boats round at the harbour. Cooler on the water.”

“I don’t want to waste time,” said Agatha. “I’m looking for someone. A Mr. James Lacey. Is he staying here?”

The receptionist checked the records.

“No.”

“Then can you give me a list of hotels in north Cyprus?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“We haven’t got one.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! Can I hire a car?”

“Next door to the hotel. Atlantic Cars.”

Grumbling under her breath, Agatha went out and into a small car-hire office next door to the hotel. Yes, she was as told, she could hire a car and pay with a British bank cheque if she wanted. “We drive on the British side of the road,” said the car-hire man in perfect English.

Agatha signed the forms, paid for the car hire, and soon she was behind the wheel of a Renault and edging through the crowded streets of Kyrenia. The other drivers were slow but erratic. No one seemed to bother signalling to the right or the left. She pulled into a parking place on the main street, remembering she had a guide to north Cyprus in her handbag, which she had bought in Dillon’s bookshop in Oxford before she left. It would surely have a list of hotels. The guidebook, Northern Cyprus by John and Margaret Goulding, she noticed for the first time, was actually published by The Windrush Press, Moreton-in-Marsh in the Cotswolds. That seemed to her like a lucky sign. Sure enough, the hotels in Kyrenia were listed. She returned to her room at The Dome and called one after the other, but none had heard of James Lacey.