He lost the sense of time.
He would not have known, or cared, whether he followed the boots' tread for an hour or for two hours.
He had seen the weapon and moved with considered caution. It did not cross his mind that he should turn on his heel, tramp back to Westdorf and go to the little brick building where the island's policeman lived. He did not have a friend in authority on the island, did not have a friend in the world – except Gertrud. He crossed the dunes, a wraith, and every few paces he would stop, listen, then go forward with his head low and his eyes searching for the tread marks.
If he had not, for a short moment, been upright, Oskar would not have seen him.
The man was briefly visible at the top of the dunes; below him would have been the soft sand that fell away to the beach and the sea. The man bent again, as if to satisfy himself a last time, then – abruptly – began to retrace his steps. On his stomach, Oskar Netzer, nine days short of his seventieth birthday, ducked and crawled into the last of the scrub. A dozen metres from him, seen through a tangle of branches, the man stopped, took a cloth from his pocket, ripped a strip from it, and tied the strip to a branch, as if for a marker. Then he was gone. Oskar saw his face as he passed, sallow and stubble-covered: the face of a stranger who threatened paradise.
When he came out from the cover and gazed back, he saw a second cloth marker knotted to a scrub bush.
He went forward, where the man had been.
At the top of the dune, where it looked over the sand, the beach and the sea, a triangular support had been made from a length of driftwood and two dead but solid branches. The pieces of wood had been driven into the ground and lashed together with string to form a cradle. In it was as large a flashlight as Oskar had ever seen, facing the beach and the surf. He believed he had found a light that would be used after darkness to signal to the sea. He believed that the two men would come in the black of the night, using markers left to guide them, unencumbered by the weight of the light. Why? He had no idea, no interest.
With clinical ferocity, he tore apart the string that held the light in place, kicked in the glass face and the bulb, then used his hands to scoop out a hole in the sand. He dug and dug, then he buried the broken light, and the glass shards, and felt some small pleasure at having safeguarded paradise.
After they had gone, the professor went out on to the veranda and dropped heavily, exhausted from the emotion of the encounter, into his favourite chair of woven rushes. He had been shown the photographs, magnified almost to life-size, of his son, and had been told they were taken from illegal travel documents.
He had been asked if he could identify them. He believed that, in their search for information, the political police had visited many scores of homes – any family where a son had shown an early trace of opposition to the regime, then disappeared. He had not been able to hide his recognition and he had seen the boredom of many denials flee the two men's faces; his nostrils had scented their excitement. He had dumbly nodded his agreement. Any father would know a photograph of his son, even when he had not seen or heard of him for a decade. Was he alive? He had not been told. Where was he? A second refusal.
What had he done? Their backs to him, they had headed for the door. Now he sat in his chair and thought of his son, Anwar, who was betrayed by his own father. He had heard their car speed away, and knew they would be going fast to the police headquarters in Alexandria on Sharia Yousef. He wept and thought that his own flesh and blood had destroyed him.
As he shrugged out of his overcoat and hitched his umbrella handle on the hook, Gloria gave him the signal received, via the Cairo station, from Alexandria. He read the name, then said it out loud as if that reinforced its weight: 'Anwar Maghroub…
Well, Mr Maghroub, I think I hear the clink of handcuffs on you/
Gaunt listened and she played him the tape from the answer-machine, then passed him the transcript she had typed.
'All tightening nicely. Please, what's in my diary this afternoon?'
'You are seeing the nurse, the annual health review, blood pressure, et cetera – I did tell you.'
'Be so kind, cancel it.'
She mimicked horror. 'The AHR is set in granite, about as compulsory as anything gets.'
He grinned, acted sheepish. 'Cancel it, thank you, with abject apologies, and plead an appointment with God,'
He began to smack his console's keys furiously. For fifteen minutes, in a document he entitled 'Rat Run', which was littered with typographical errors, he wrote the report, some material sourced from provenance and some not. He spilled down through the paragraphs: what had been told him by a pensioner widow; the story of an unpaid debt; the heresies of an expert in Islamic studies; the nightmares of a Thames House colleague at Belmarsh magistrates' court; the detail given by a harbourmaster; where Polly Wilkins was, and the hired hand she had recruited…
After he had finished, Gloria tidied and printed it.
Carrying his report, Gaunt went to heaven by the elevator, briefed the assistant deputy director, and requested that a meeting should be called for early afternoon.
Back in his room, he lowered his blind and shut out that perfect, privileged view of the river. He loosed his laces, kicked off his shoes, swung his heels on to his desk, tilted back his chair – and reflected that a chaotic, confused investigation was now close to satisfaction, cursed himself for presumption – then cat-napped.
'Come on, what have you seen?' She knew he held back but could not fathom why.
She was cold, chilled to her bones by the wind, and the old man kept a distance from her. She had been up on the platform when he had come back. He had not joined her but had squatted down against the pole she had helped to strengthen. She had come down the rickety ladder and had sat beside him, but then he had stood and moved away from her. She had closed the distance between them, and again he had moved.
Had he walked the shoreline? He had nodded, non-committal.
Had he seen anything of interest? He had pointed down to the little patch of spread feathers, then pointed up and away into the distance, and she had identified the harrier above a reed bed.
Had he watched people out in the wilderness? He had shrugged, as if the movement of people was of no matter to him. Had he noted the presence of strangers on this part of the island? He had snorted, then looked away.
She shivered, and the motion made the words in her throat croak.
'I think, Oskar, that tonight my business in your paradise will be finished. After it is finished, I will never return… I am here to find strangers who have come to Baltrum… Oskar, I need your help in finding them.' She spoke softly, tried to find gentleness.
'Please, if you have seen strangers, where was it?'
But he showed her his back and gazed down on the ducks. She had heard of, but never met before this week, men who lived their lives as hermits, cocooned in isolation. They found a refuge beyond the need of others. She reflected. This man, living with the stink of old sweat and old dirt and old damp, ran from reality – as did Malachy Kitchen. God save her – two recluses, the one trapped on this nowhere island, and the other trapped on an inner-city sink estate. Just her bloody luck to get two of them, and need them, in a single week. She sought to honey her voice.
'Oskar, you are running. You can tell me – what from?'
He faced her, and smiled at her, as if he believed himself sane and her an idiot, and he said, 'I run from the sight of the dancing bare feet of children.'