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She rolled her eyes but otherwise didn't bother to reply.

Surprise number two hit me somewhere just short of the mid-Atlantic ridge, to judge by the map on the video screen showing the aircraft's position. Debbie's unexpected appearance had been an unwelcome complication, but number two was deadly.

Introductions over, Dalton and Zola had shared what Air Jamaica called lovebird seats on the Airbus. Debbie was dozing, stretched out on a row of seats by herself, and I was making my way to the toilet at the rear of the aircraft.

This time, the unexpected female was Cassandra. She was at a window seat on her own. She glanced up from a magazine as I passed, gave a slight, cold smile and carried on reading.

In the toilet, I locked the door, put my head against it and shut my eyes, feeling drained.

I had no way of knowing whether she had followed Debbie, somehow tapped into her phone, or whatever. Had she seen me in the concourse, speaking to Debbie? Did she know about Zola and Dalton? More to the point, was she alone? Would we be met by nasty people at Montego Bay? I thought not: I hadn't known myself we were Jamaica-bound until yesterday. Maybe Cassandra's job was to keep track of us until help arrived. In that case we would have to move swiftly. I toyed with fantasy images of armed Jamaican Yardies waiting for us at the airport, maybe even Jamaican police arresting me because of some story concocted by Uncle Robert.

I tried to look nonchalant as I passed her again, but it was a wasted performance: she hardly bothered to look up from her magazine. Her apparent indifference scared me as much as her presence. Back in my seat I scribbled a note:
Don't look round. Unwelcome company to rear of aircraft. Numbers uncertain. Pretend you don't know me. Suggest we clear off quickly at Montego Bay.
I gave it an hour and wandered off to the front toilet, dropping the folded note into Dalton's lap without looking at him. When I passed on my way back he and Zola were sitting upright, alert and staring intently out of the window into the blackness. Debbie was a tougher proposition to reach as we were both in full view of Cassandra, but shortly afterwards Dalton walked to the back of the aircraft and gave me the tiniest nudge on the shoulder as he returned.

Nine hours after taking off, the big aircraft was crawling bumpily over the Jamaican coast, outlined by scattered lights seen here and there through dark clouds. Montego Bay was a big cluster of lights with a black bite taken out of it by a giant shark.

There were half a dozen queues at the immigration booths. I found myself wedged inside a cluster of immensely fat black women who were chatting boisterously. Over to my left, Cassandra was queueing behind a wedding party. Debbie, Dalton and Zola were separated but in the same queue to my right. A thick yellow line, like a starting line, separated the queues from the immigration booths. An exhausted child was bawling somewhere behind me.

Debbie was through. She had the sense to disappear downstairs towards the baggage area rather than wait for us. In front of me, two of the fat women were beginning to argue with the immigration official. Cassandra and I eyed each other up like a couple of gunfighters, our respective queues inching forwards. She gave me another cold smile. Now just the wedding party lay between her and the exit. Voices were being raised at the booth in front of me: there was something wrong with a document. My queue had stalled and Cassandra smiled some more.

But then my fat women were suddenly through and the wedding party was snarling up at Cassandra's queue. There was no time to gloat. I trotted swiftly down the stairs, my heart thumping in my chest. Dalton and Zola already had my suitcase on a trolley. Debbie had vanished.

'Where the hell. . . ?' I asked. We made our way quickly to the exit. Outside, the air was like a furnace. There was a little square and a chaotic scattering of small buses and taxis. There were limited places for concealment. But then Debbie was waving and we made our way to a taxi, its doors open. The driver, a man in his thirties, bundled our suitcases into the boot with agonising slowness. Debbie took the front seat while Zola squeezed in between Dalton and me.

'Ocho Rios, okay?' Debbie said, turning to face me.

'Ocho Rios,' I agreed. Clever girl: we had booked into Sandals in Montego Bay.

The driver said his name was Stormin' Norman and proceeded to demonstrate why. The coastal road was narrow, potholed and littered with stray cattle and goats, all of which he saw as a challenge. To the left, powerful yellow flashes were lighting up clouds. Not English wimp lightning, I thought: real tropical stuff. I couldn't hear any thunder, but then Stormin' Norman's radio was playing lively pop music at maximum volume. The roadside was littered with shacks, lit up from within by naked lightbulbs or the flickering blue of television sets. In Falmouth, the taxi slowed to a crawl and picked its way through a square choc-a-block with young people, some of them dancing, others banging pot lids together. A youth, with dreadlocks hanging down from a red and yellow cap, slapped at my window, grinning happily and showing yellow teeth. His eyes were wide with excitement. Stormin' Norman explained that some folks was getting steamed up on account of the election, but it was nothing like 1980 when there was eight hundred killed in shootouts. We cleared town and headed swiftly into the dark. The gearbox was making whining noises. I looked out at the palm trees and the tiny wooden shacks, and wondered what we would do if the car broke down.

After two hours of this, with my nerves getting increasingly ragged, Debbie said, 'Up there,' pointing at an illuminated roof poking over some trees. Stormin' Norman took us through a security gate and up a long winding hill to a sprawling resort hotel surrounded by high illuminated fencing, like a prisoner of war camp. After Norman's air conditioning, the heat hit me all over again. The shrill screech of insects came from the forest surrounding us.

There was a self-catering apartment to spare. We were too exhausted to talk. Dalton and Zola took rooms with single beds, Debbie made for one with the king-size double, and I was left standing uncertainly in the kitchen.

Debbie reappeared. 'Harry, you have no place to sleep.'

'That's all right, I'll just stand here.'

We found some blankets and I spread them on the settee. I stripped to my underwear and slipped under a sheet. The insect noises were like a hundred squeaky fan blades. In the dark, a solitary firefly flashed on the ceiling.

Another image forced itself into my mind as I sweated on the couch and listened to the night sounds. Cassandra at the airport exit, asking about the distinctive party of four - they've left a wallet, where did they go? - finding the name of the local taxi driver who had driven them off, making a telephone call; Stormin' Norman, who liked to talk, talking too much; the Yale lock being quietly forced in the early hours of the morning.

The half-dream stopped there as exhaustion overwhelmed me. The last thing I remembered was the firefly, bright and silent, heading for me like a little cruise missile.

CHAPTER 23

The sky was just growing light when Debbie, dressed in a diaphanous white negligee, glided into the kitchen like a ghost. 'Wake up, Harry!' A light went on and she began to clatter cupboard doors noisily. 'No coffee!'
Clatter.
'No nothing!'
Clatter.
I pulled my trousers on under the sheet, suppressing my embarrassment.

Dalton appeared, wearing his Cool Jamaica gear. 'We'd better get away from here. They could trace us through Stormin' Norman.'

Debbie said, 'Surely that's just a fantasy.'

'Maybe. Would you like to bet your life on it?'

I said, 'I thought of it last night just as I was flaking out. They could be waiting for him to turn up at the airport this morning.'

'Or they could have got his phone number from the

tourist desk in the terminal last night. Maybe even his

home address.'

Debbie put her hands to her head. 'Holy Christ.'

'Get dressed, Debbie,' I said. 'We're going into town. And bring your purse.'

Debbie and I walked briskly past the swimming pool, out of the compound and down the hill we'd been driven up the night before. The air had been oven-like overnight, but now, with the tropical sun rapidly soaring into the sky, the temperature quickly rose into the nineties. Even the two-mile walk into Ocho Rios was exhausting and I began to feel lightheaded. At the edge of town a white cruise ship towered over the buildings like a giant in Lilliput.

We followed directions along the main street, already crowded and noisy, past craft markets, hagglers, tourist-junk shops. A mile along, beyond walking range of the cruise ship tourists, the town underwent a distinct change of character: it became a noisy, crowded, exuberant piece of Africa. We turned down a side street, stepping around a young man lying on the pavement, stretched out on a cardboard bed, and there was Sunshine Rentals, just where the receptionist had said it would be. An elderly, toothless Indian led us round to a back yard, kicked a squawking hen out of his path and waved his arm at a scraped and battered white Toyota, half covered with leaves from an overhanging papaya tree. Debbie rented it for the week and paid up front in US dollars. The man said it never give him no trouble but phone Mr Claybone if we get stuck.

Back at the resort, Dalton and Zola were waiting at the reception desk, baggage packed. Dalton's face was expressionless behind his cool shades; Zola was plainly anxious. We loaded the boot quickly while Debbie checked out. Then she took the wheel and drove us down the hill. Coming up the hill was a taxi. It had almost passed us before I recognised Stormin' Norman at the wheel. I couldn't make out the people in the back.

'Did you see that?' Zola asked.

'Yes,' I said. 'You think he saw us?'

'I don't think so. But I'm not sure.'

We waited at the security gate while the guard chattered to a friend. Debbie hummed under her breath, her fingers strumming the wheel impatiently. Then the barrier was up and we curved swiftly onto the road. I said, 'Hit the boards, kid,' and Debbie sang a verse of what sounded like a Norwegian Girl Guide song.

Debbie drove swiftly, and Dalton navigated from the back seat. He took us through Fern Gully, dull even in the Jamaican sunshine because of overhanging trees. Then it was a straightforward road, if winding and potholed, through the middle of Jamaica from north to south. We passed bauxite mines, the earth orange, drove along gorges, through a dozen little towns and past a thousand ramshackle homes and roadside stalls. The heat outside was tangible and I was grateful for the air conditioning in the old car. In a couple of hours we were through Spanish Town and on to a broad road taking us into Kingston, on the south coast, with the Blue Mountains soaring beyond and the Caribbean Sea sparkling to our right.

Kingston was not tourist Jamaica. Kingston had no sundrenched beaches or palm trees. There were no resort hotels, with holidaymakers carefully screened from the locals by high metal fences. Kingston was a Caribbean port bigger than Liverpool and twice as busy, and its traffic was not so much exuberant as lawless. Debbie was surprisingly calm in the midst of the chaos, and even managed a delighted squeal when we passed the Bob Marley Museum. It was a useful landmark: we passed it twice more over the next half-hour. Finally I saw something I recognised from the
Rough Guide to Jamaica:
the blue and white facade of the Ward Theatre. The lawyer's office, I knew, was close to it. Debbie took the car round the side of the building and parked. Zola stepped out to stretch her legs while Debbie, Dalton and I went on a lawyer hunt. After the air conditioning of the car, the heat was like a sauna.

'You know where you are?' Dalton asked. He had put on sunglasses and merged totally with the environment.

'Kingston, Jamaica,' I said.

He pointed. 'You're on the edge of Jones Town. With Trench Town just beyond it. Six hundred murders a year. It's one of the most violent locations in the Western hemisphere.'

'Thanks, Dalton. I feel a lot better for knowing that.'

The notice was white-painted on a strip of wood:

Chuck Martin

Attorney-at-law

Underneath was another strip of wood:

Caribbean Sparkle

Agricultural Services Ltd

registered office

Some nail-holes in the plasterwork suggested there had once been more registered companies. Next to the notices there was a narrow flight of stairs, cool after the sweltering heat of the exposed street. A short veranda on the first floor was protected from the outside world by a heavy metal grille. There was an open door and a stout woman behind a desk. Debbie said, 'My name is Debbie Tebbit. I would like to see Mr Martin, please.'

'You have an appointment?' the woman asked, looking doubtfully over her spectacles.

For all that she was a mere nineteen, Debbie could put on an imperious air when it suited her. 'No, but I've come from England to see him.'

The woman said, 'Oh my goodness. Wait here a minute,' and disappeared through a back door.

In a moment a small, wrinkled, thin man with grey hair appeared at the door and waved us in. His office was like something out of a Dickens novel, all dark 19th-century furniture and bundles of papers, yellow with age. He peered at us curiously over half-moon spectacles.

Introductions over, Debbie opened the conversation. 'You sent my father some papers from a late client of yours.'

The lawyer nodded. 'That is correct, Miss Tebbit. A Mr Winston Sinclair. It would've been nice if you'd telephoned ahead.'

'There wasn't time.' The Tebbit touch was again creeping into her voice.

Martin asked, 'Has your father given you authority to discuss this matter?'

'My father died last week,' said Debbie in a matter-of-fact tone. 'I've inherited all his property.'

'Your father died? I'm sorry to hear that.' The lawyer made a good show of looking sorry over the death of a man he'd never met. 'But I'm forgetting my manners. Would you like a coffee, or maybe a nice cold Coke?'