THREE

When you have travelled half across the world, with the background of the man you are going to meet gradually being filled in for you, a picture of him inevitably forms in the mind. There was the suspicion, too, that it was he who had arranged for us to be followed on our arrival in Lima, may even have planned our death by that gully on the old road up to the pass.

Twice I asked Ward about this, the first time just after we had come out of the cloud on the eastern slope of the pass and had caught our first glimpse of Cajamarca far away in the valley below, and then again when we stopped at the Baños del Inca to ask our way, the hot springs steaming beside the public baths. Each time he had given a little shrug, as though to say, ‘We’ll see’, and left it at that.

But even if he had given me a direct answer, I don’t know that I would have believed him. He had such a talent for self-dramatisation that I wouldn’t have put it past him, on finding that plunger, to have invented the whole thing – except that I had watched in horror as he deliberately forced the wretched mestizo over the edge, thrusting at his face with that dummy hand until he had disappeared into the gorge below. I couldn’t make up my mind about him, regarding him at times as some grotesque theatrical maniac, at other times as no more than a pleasant, if somewhat mysterious, travelling companion.

There was no such dichotomy in my mind when picturing Gómez. By the time we were enquiring for the Hacienda Lucinda he was growing in my mind as something wholly evil, as deformed and monstrous as Victor Hugo’s hunchback of Notre Dame without the saving grace of simplicity. This view of him had been built up gradually, partly as a result of that interview with Rodriguez back in Mexico City, and partly from the bits and pieces of information Ward had let fall.

There were some Indians camped by a stream in a meadow of coarse grass below the sepulchre hill with its rows of necropolistic apertures. The whole hill had the appearance almost of a skull, the apertures like teeth exposed in a grin and black with decay. Ward got out and walked across to the Indians. They had been drinking chica and swayed as they stood up. A lorry rolled past us along the road, its crumbling body bright with painted pictures plastered over with dust. And behind it were two Indians riding a mule, brown ponchos draped over their shoulders, straw hats jammed on their heads and held with leather thongs under the chin.

‘Straight on,’ Ward said as he got back into the driving seat. ‘Just over a kilometre there’s a track to the left with an arched entrance gate.’

We were almost there and I wondered how he would behave when he was face-to-face with Gómez, what he would say. And Iris Sunderby, was she really with him in the Hacienda Lucinda?

We reached the gateway and turned in under the adobe arch with the name Hda LUCINDA plaster-embossed in large letters. A long driveway, with a lake on one side and flat, flowered meadows on the other, the dark shapes of cattle grazing. ‘He’s part Sicilian, part Irish,’ Ward reminded me. ‘Just remember that. And part God knows what else,’ he muttered.

His words emphasised the racial element in the picture my imagination had formed of him. Angel of Death. The Disappeareds. A killer who was the son of an Argentinian playboy and a nightclub singer from somewhere near Catania. Christ! What sort of monster would he prove to be?

A few minutes and I was shaking his hand, completely dumbfounded by the physical perfection of the man, his elegance, his charm. There was a virility about him that showed in his every movement. He was like a Greek god, except that his hair was black and the nose had a slight curve to it that gave his broad, open features a somewhat predatory look.

He met us in the hacienda courtyard dressed in white shirt, white jodhpurs and black riding boots. He had a riding crop in one hand and a clipboard in the other. He didn’t ask us our names. He just stood there, a moment of shocked surprise as we got out of the Toyota. ‘Yes?’ He seemed at a loss for words, and Ward made no attempt to help him. Then he was smiling, coming towards us with the charm turned on. ‘What can I do for you?’ He spoke in English with only the trace of an accent.

‘You are Mario Ángel Gómez?’ Ward’s voice was flat as though he were carrying out an official enquiry.

‘Connor-Gómez. Yes. What do you want?’

‘Señora Sunderby.’

There was a momentary hesitation, so that I half expected him to say she wasn’t there. ‘You wish to see her?’

‘No. Ah’ve come to collect her.’

‘You have come to collect her?’ He was staring at Ward, his eyes gone hard, almost black in the sunlight. ‘Why?’ The broad, open face was no longer smiling. ‘Who are you?’

‘Ah think ye know that already. Ye know who we are, when we arrived in Lima, also that we left the capital drivin’ north up the Pan-Americana.’

‘You have come up from the coast then? How was the road?’

Ward told him about the two diversions below Chilete and the need to switch to the old road that ran along the lip of the gorge. He said nothing about the road being blocked behind us, or the man he had flushed out of the mist-shrouded mountainside and forced over the edge into the gorge below.

‘Your name is Ward. Correct?’

‘Iain Ward.’ He nodded.

‘And you are here about the boat, is it? The boat for this expedition. Are you the man who put up the money to buy it?’

‘Ye know damn well Ah am.’

Nobody said anything for a moment, the two of them standing there, summing each other up. The silence was broken by the clip-clop of hooves as a horse was led from its stable at the far side of the courtyard by an Indian. ‘And your name?’ Gómez had turned to me, and when I told him, he nodded. ‘You’re the wood expert, right? So now we have all the crew of the boat gathered here, except for the Norwegian, and I believe there is an Australian expected. Also we need a cook.’

‘Ye have agreed then?’

‘Agreed?’

‘To act as navigator.’

Gómez hesitated. ‘Per’aps.’

‘So ye know the exact location of this vessel her husband saw. And ye have seen it yerself, from the air?’

He didn’t answer that. Instead he said, ‘How did you know where to find me?’

‘Look, laddie, Ah’m askin’ the questions. Just ye tell me now, have ye seen that old wooden ship down there in the ice, or no’?’

‘And I asked you a question, Mr Ward.’ It was said with studied politeness. ‘How did you know where to find me?’

There was a moment of silence, the two of them facing up to each other, a clash of wills. To my surprise it was Ward who backed off. ‘Rodriguez,’ he said.

‘Ah yes.’ Gómez hesitated. ‘You have met him, of course.’

‘Aye. In Mexico City. Ah’m sure he will have told ye that on the phone.’

‘And you have read his book, I suppose?’

‘Of course.’

Silence again. Horse and Indian had now stopped close behind Gómez.

‘There are many inaccuracies.’ He shrugged. ‘But what can you expect from a man like Rodriguez. It is sad to have to make a living by grubbing around in the dirt of a national calamity.’ He gave another shrug. ‘It is all –’ he hesitated – ‘what I think you call water under the bridge, eh? It is a long time ago and what matters now is the future. Always one must look to the future.’

‘Aye. So let us talk about that old ship.’ Ward glanced at the house, a low, one-storey building sprawled across the end of the rectangular courtyard. ‘Can we go in?’ He nodded towards the open door. ‘We could dae with a clean-up. It’s been a long drive. A little tiresome at times, too.’

‘There was no need for you to come.’ Gómez looked at his wristwatch, which was of heavy gold. The watch, and a gold signet ring on his little finger, glinted in the sun. ‘This is the time I normally ride round the hacienda. We produce alfalfa, rice, cattle, and with mainly Indian labour it is necessary to oversee everything.’

Ward waited, saying nothing, and in the end Gómez said, ‘Very well, come into the house.’ The tone of his voice was distinctly unwelcoming. ‘But when you have had a wash I must ask you to leave.’

‘No harm in yer askin’, laddie.’

They stared at each other, and I wondered why Ward had thickened his native Glaswegian accent.

‘The normal courtesy would have been to phone ahead for an appointment.’

Ward nodded. ‘O’ course. Then ye could have prepared yersel’.’ And he added, ‘Now we are here, perhaps ye will send someone to inform Señora Sunderby.’

‘No.’ The frostiness of his tone had hardened. ‘She is my guest here. And at the moment she is resting.’ There was a pause, and then he said, ‘I have no doubt she will be joining you at Punta Arenas, as arranged – when she is ready. Alors.’ He gestured towards the front entrance to the house. ‘The cloakroom is the first door on the right.’ And he added, as he led the way, ‘You both look as though you could do with some sleep, so while you are refreshing yourselves I will telephone to a hotel in Cajamarca where I know the owner will look after you very well.’

Ward thanked him, but said it would not be necessary. ‘As soon as Ah’ve talked wi’ Iris Sunderby we’ll be on our way.’ He was moving towards the house then, but suddenly he checked. ‘Och, Ah almost forgot. Ah’ve a wee present fur ye.’ And he turned back to the Toyota, reaching in to the rear seat and coming out with the blasting plunger. He held it out to Gómez. ‘Well, take it, man. It’s yers.’

For a second, it seemed, Gómez’s eyes changed, a glimmer of some wild emotion mirrored in his features. But it was so fleeting I couldn’t be sure. ‘Not mine,’ he said, staring hard at Ward.

‘No, no, o’ course not. A present. Ah told ye.’ There was a long, awkward silence. Finally Ward said, so quietly I hardly heard him, ‘Ah think we understan’ each other now.’ He chuckled softly to himself. ‘Call it a souvenir, shall we?’ He thrust it into the man’s hands and strode past him, making for the open doorway set in the centre of the long white portico that ran the length of the house.

Gómez said something to the Indian, then hurried after him. A moment later the two of them had disappeared into the house, leaving me standing there in the sunshine, feeling suddenly weak at the knees. God! I was tired.

The horse was led back to its stable and I walked to the far end of the house, where there was a lawn of coarse-bladed grass, brown with the heat, some exotic-looking flowers in a stony border, and cushioned garden chairs standing bright in the dappled shade of what looked like a cherry tree. I adjusted one of them to the reclining position, lay back in it and closed my eyes.

I must have fallen asleep, for I dreamed that a girl was kissing me open-mouthed, the touch of her tongue light as a butterfly, and her hand caressing, and I woke suddenly to find I was thoroughly roused. There was a figure sitting in the chair beside me. Her face was in shadow against a shaft of sunlight, framed by hair that gleamed a brilliant black.

I sat up and she withdrew her hand.

It was Iris Sunderby. I could see her now that my eyes were in the shadow of a branch. Her lips were parted and her breath was coming in quick gasps as though she had been running, the breasts, looking naked under the light silk wrap, rising and falling. But it was her eyes that startled me. They were wide and very intent, the pupils dilated, and an expression of most extraordinary expectancy on her face. She wasn’t looking at me. She was staring straight past me, sitting very still, as though waiting for somebody to come out of the house.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

But she didn’t seem to hear me. I repeated the question, louder this time. There was still no response, no change of expression. It was as though she were in some sort of a trance, a pallid undertone to the sun-dark skin, the nostrils of that straight nose slightly flared; even the jaw seemed to have lost some of its determined thrust. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’ She said it in a long, sighing breath, still staring, almost avidly, at the side of the house.

I turned then, for I could hear voices. There were open sliding glass windows at the side of the house and in the dim interior I could just make out two figures standing. Ward’s voice was saying something about long distance aircraft, Gómez answering him more audibly, ‘It’s not possible. Not now.’ They had moved towards the windows. ‘Things are not the same. I am no longer a serving officer in the Fuerza Aérea. Why don’t you get your people …’

I could see them quite clearly now. They were not looking at us. They were facing each other, Ward saying, ‘We have nothin’ that could make it there and back.’

‘The Hercules. You have the Hercules at your Mount Pleasant base on the Malvinas.’ And when Ward said it hadn’t the range, Gómez replied sharply, ‘But I think it has. It flies regularly to South Georgia and back for a mail drop to your garrison there. That is eighteen hundred miles the round flight. It is slightly less than that from the Malvinas to the region of the Weddell Sea where this ship is locked in the ice. So no problem. That cargo plane of yours has a range of three thousand, six hundred sea miles. That is with minimum payload.’

‘They would need a bigger margin than that to mount a search down there at the bottom of the world. It’s not exactly a Mediterranean climate.’

‘Then why not refuel in the air? That is how I arrange it.’

‘Aye.’ There was silence then and I thought I saw him shake his head. ‘No, we’ll do it my way.’ He turned to face the glass of the sliding windows and his mouth suddenly opened with surprise. ‘Ah thought ye said she was restin’ in her room.’

‘¿Qué?’ Gómez showed clearly then, peering over his shoulder, staring straight at us. Then he moved, brushing past Ward, and at that moment Iris Sunderby reached out, seizing me by the shoulder and letting out a scream as she fell to the ground, pulling me down on top of her. I finished up with a hand on her breast and my face within inches of hers. Her eyes still had that dazed, almost glazed look, but beginning to focus now, though not on me, on Gómez, and she was screaming all the time.

Suddenly she stopped, and there was a look on her face … I can only describe it as naked lust. It was as though she were in a sexual frenzy, completely transported by the excitement of her passion. Her lips stretched in a rictus smile, a satisfied look on her face, like that of a child who’s got at the strawberries and cream, and Gómez was the cause of it.

A hand fastened like an iron clamp on my shoulder and I was flung off her, Ward bending down and shouting at her, ‘Ye silly, stupid bitch!’ His voice was thick with fury. And then he slapped her, twice on the face. ‘Come on! Pull yersel’ together, fur Christ’s sake!’

I was lying on the grass, seeing it all from a low angle, Gómez moving in and Ward turning on him. ‘Ye fuckin’ shit! What is it? What have ye doped her with? Coke, I suppose.’ He stretched out his dummy hand, and the metal fingers clawed at the man’s arm. ‘How did she take it – orally, or did she snort it?’ The fingers were clamped tight and he was shaking Gómez back and forth, his features livid with anger. ‘Or did ye inject it?’ He was jabbing at the man with the clenched fist of his other hand, and Gómez, taken by surprise, was trying to hold him off. ‘If it’s crack Ah’ll fuckin’ kill ye, man.’

Gómez shook his head violently. ‘Is not crack. I don’t have any crack. I think perhaps it is the cocaine I keep for medical purposes, pure, straight cocaine. The best. I don’t mix it with anything.’

‘How did ye give it to her?’

‘No, I don’t give it to her. She must have got it from the room where I keep my guns. There is a box with all the things necessary in case of accidents. Cocaine is for anaesthetising against pain.’

Iris had got to her feet. ‘Let him go.’ Her voice sounded slurred and she was tugging at Ward’s arm. She made an effort and pulled herself together, drawing away from them and saying with great dignity and a careful enunciation of her words, ‘You must not q-quarrel, you two. We shall be a long time in Isvik. We will be living together in a very small space. You must be friends.’

‘He’s comin’ with us then?’ Ward was looking, not at her, but at Gómez again. ‘Is that right? Ye’re comin’ with us?’ And when Gómez did not answer, he swung round on her and said, ‘Does that mean he knows where the ship is?’

She stared at him, her eyes gone vacant again.

‘Does he, or does he not know where the ship is?’ He said it slowly as though talking to a child.

‘He thinks he can take us there.’

Ward stared at her a moment. By then I was on my feet and I could see her face, the cheeks marked by the slaps he had given her, the eyes showing signs of intelligence again. She seemed to have pulled herself together, but she didn’t answer him.

Ward’s head swung back to Gómez. He looked like a bull about to charge. But then he restrained himself and said in a quiet voice, ‘Know anythin’ about sailin’?’

‘Some.’

‘And ye’ve seen this ship we’re goin’ to look fur?’

There was a moment’s hesitation, then he nodded. ‘I think so. There was low cloud, white drifts of mist close down on the ice. But yes, I think I see it.’

‘And ye pin-pointed the position?’

‘Yes, I have the position.’

‘Have ye given Mrs Sunderby the co-ordinates?’

Gómez did not answer, and Iris Sunderby said, ‘No. He refuses to say.’ And she added, cheeks suddenly a-flush and her voice wild, ‘I tried very hard to get it out of him. Didn’t I, Ángel?’ She pronounced Ángel with a short ‘A’. ‘I do everything you want, but you don’t tell me, do you? I crawl, I kiss your arse, do everything –’ She had worked herself up into a state of almost incoherent fury, like a child in a tantrum, tears streaming down her face and her whole body shaking in a sort of passion as she suddenly flew at him, clawing with her nails.

He held her off, quite easily, standing there, smiling, and the look on his face was one of pleasure. He was a powerful, very fit-looking man, and he was obviously enjoying the mental distress he had caused and the fact that he held her powerless in his hands.

‘Ye bastard!’ Ward’s voice was a harsh mixture of anger and contempt.

Gómez, still smiling, still holding Iris Sunderby at bay, said over the top of her head, ‘That’s one thing I am not.’ He said it with extraordinary force, his face reddening below the dark skin and the eyes gone black again with anger.

Ward looked at him then with intense interest. ‘Ye don’t like bein’ called a bastard?’

‘No. Nobody likes being called that.’

‘Och, that’s not altogether true. There’s some it doesn’t upset the way it does ye. It’s even a term of endearment to some people.’ He gave a little laugh. He was suddenly relaxed, his voice almost casual. ‘So yer mother and father were married, right?’

‘Of course they were married.’ The angry flush was still there on his face. ‘So don’t call me a bastard.’

‘Ah’m sorry. My apologies.’ Ward was smiling. He was enjoying himself so much he almost bowed. ‘Very vulgar of me. Or perhaps Ah should say very stupid. Ah seem to remember it is all there, in that book by Luiz Rodriguez. Yer father married a nightclub singer. Then, when the family heard of it, they packed him off to Ireland, arranged fur the marriage to be annulled, and he married the Connor girl.’

‘This is nothing to concern you.’ Gómez began to turn away, but Ward stopped him.

‘No, of course not. Ah was only makin’ certain Rodriguez had got it right. A very tightly written little thumbnail sketch. If Ah remember rightly, he says the Gómez family already had Irish connections, so it was fairly simple fur them to find an impoverished landowner with a beautiful daughter goin’ spare. That’s where the Connor side of the name comes from, isn’t it?’

Gómez nodded.

‘All done in a hell of a hurry, with yer grandfather, Eduardo Gómez, obtainin’ a special dispensation, or whatever ye call it, from the Pope.’

Gómez nodded again, waiting and watching, his eyes intent.

‘And they were married in Ireland, at Rathdrum in County Wicklow, right?’

‘Yes, but they returned to Argentina almost immediately.’

‘So who is yer mother? Wasn’t she the nightclub singer, Rosalli?’

‘No, of course not. I am half Irish.’

Ward laughed. ‘So yer mother was that Irish girl, Sheila Connor. Is that what ye’re sayin?’

‘Of course. I tell you …’ But he stopped there, realising suddenly what that would mean.

‘Sheila Connor – Mrs Juan Gómez – is also Iris Sunderby’s mother.’ Ward said it very quietly. ‘That makes ye and Iris brother and sister. Ye realise that?’

Silence, and Ward turned to Iris Sunderby with a smile that was very near to a smirk. ‘Ah just like to know the company Ah’ll be keepin’ down there in the Southern Ocean.’

Her face had paled. Hadn’t she realised that her infatuation for the man was incestuous?

‘Mother of God!’ Ward was looking from one to the other. ‘The tae of ye will need somethin’ more than a dispensation from the Pope, Ah would think, if ye go on like this.’ He turned back to Gómez, his head thrust forward. ‘But perhaps ye have made a mistake and it is really the Sicilian woman …’ He let it go at that, smiling to himself as he suggested to Iris Sunderby that she go up to her room and put her things together. ‘We’ll be leavin’ just as soon as Ah’ve had a final word with our friend here. Ye go with her,’ he said to me. ‘Give her a hand with her packin’. It’s wearin’ off, but she’s still a wee bit confused.’

She was more than a wee bit confused. I think, if I hadn’t been there, she’d have gone to sleep right away. ‘The bastard!’ She said that several times, walking round the room. I wasn’t sure whether she was referring to her brother or to Ward. Then suddenly she flung herself down on the bed and closed her eyes.

‘Where’s your suitcase?’ I asked her as I began opening drawers to see how much had to be packed.

‘Under the bed. Where do you think?’ I had to kneel on the floor to reach it and her fingers fastened in my hair. ‘You don’t approve, do you?’

‘What?’ I had got hold of the suitcase and with the other hand I unclasped her fingers from my hair.

‘How else was I to try and get the location out of him?’

‘And did you?’

But now she had gone to sleep, or into a coma, I wasn’t sure which. I put the suitcase down on the other bed and began packing the contents of the drawers into it. It was mostly warm-weather gear, light cotton and silk dresses, blouses, skirts, jeans, tights, panties, bras, the whole lot smelling of her, a mixture of scent, talc, perspiration and her own peculiar body odour. By the time I had packed the things from the wardrobe and stuffed her toilet things on the top I could barely shut the case. I dumped it outside the door with her anorak and a crimson and gold coat on top. Shoes! I had left out her shoes. And when I had put these into a plastic bag that I found lying beside them under the dressing-table, I put my hand on her shoulder, about to shake her. Instead, I found myself staring down at her, remembering that moment alongside the Cutty Sark when our eyes had first met.

She looked so peaceful and relaxed, lying there with her eyes closed and no expression on her face, just the good bone formation and the smooth flesh with the bloom of healthy, slightly darkened skin, like a madonna, very beautiful. It seemed a pity to wake her. She was breathing so quietly I could hardly see the rise and fall of her breasts, and those lips of hers looking fuller than I remembered, the mouth wider, and the line of the teeth just showing very white. ‘Mrs Sunderby …! Iris!’ I shook her gently. The eyelids flickered and the lips moved slightly. ‘We’re leaving,’ I said.

‘No.’ The eyes were suddenly open, strongly blue and very wide. But no expression in them – just wide, and the blue very deep, almost violet. ‘Not unless he comes.’ She spoke slowly and with some difficulty.

‘Come along,’ I said, tightening my grip on her shoulder.

Her lips moved again and I bent down to her. ‘What was that?’

‘I said – he is not – my brother.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t follow you.’

‘That’s what you think, isn’t it?’ She was suddenly sitting bolt upright, staring at me. ‘You and that Iain Ward. I tell you, he is not my brother. He says he is, but he’s not. I know that. I feel it – here.’ She pressed her hand to her stomach. ‘In my guts.’

I didn’t know what to say. ‘According to Rodriguez …’

‘To hell with Rodriguez. I know. When I am lying with him, and he is inside me – that is the moment I know for sure.’ She swung her feet off the bed. ‘Now, let’s get going, yes.’ She lifted her feet, waggling her toes at me. ‘My shoes. I’m not walking barefoot.’

I got her a pair of tough brogues from the plastic bag and all the time I was putting them on her she was looking at me with a vacant stare, her eyes still very wide, the pupils enormous. I took her things out to the Toyota. No sign of Ward, but I could hear the murmur of voices from the direction of the stable block. I called out that we were ready, but there was no answer, and when I returned to the bedroom I found her lying back full length on the bed, her eyes open and gazing up at the ceiling with that same vacant stare. ‘You all right?’ But I might have been speaking to a corpse, she was so pale and still and silent.

Somewhere somebody was playing a pipe, a sad fluting lament in the hot air. I pushed the sliding glass of the door to the patio further back to listen. There was no tune, but the notes had a pattern nevertheless that was very compelling. The primitive sound of it stirred something deep inside me as though it were Pan himself, not some Indian labourer, playing those haunting notes on that rude instrument.

I looked at Iris, wondering whether she could hear it. But she hadn’t moved and I began thinking about how I was going to get her out to our vehicle.

The piping stopped abruptly and a horse neighed. I went out through the glass doors to the edge of the little patio. It was the same horse, the Indian holding its head and Gómez just swinging up into the saddle, Ward standing in the stable doorway. Gómez said something, smiling, his teeth white in the broad, handsome face. He looked young and carefree, almost like a boy.

A lift of his hand and then he had picked up the reins and, with a quick dig of his heels, went straight into a canter. Ward watched him, without any expression on his face, as he rode out through the arch, turned right and was lost to view behind the outbuildings that formed a part of the square courtyard. He turned then and came across to me. ‘How’s our little skipper?’ He sounded in a jocular mood, no sign of tiredness.

‘Come and see for yourself.’ I said. ‘We’ll probably have to carry her.’ And I added, ‘How did you get on with Gómez?’

‘Connor-Gómez. Please!’ He was almost grinning. ‘We understand each other now.’ And then he said something that struck me as rather strange: ‘He’s made up his mind now. He’s comin’ with us. He’s suddenly quite determined about it.’

‘Why?’

‘Ah. Ye tell me that, laddie, and it’d save me an awful lot of time.’ We were back in the bedroom then and he stood for a moment looking down at her. ‘Ye’re right.’ Her eyes were still wide open, a blind stare that was without any expression of intelligence. ‘It’s not speed,’ he said. ‘It must be crack. That’s the worst way to cut the damned stuff. Ah wonder where he got the paraldehyde?’

‘Is that what you mix it with to get crack?’

He nodded. ‘Like cocaine it has anaesthetic qualities. Ye only need about three goes of crack and ye’ve got yerself an addiction problem. Och, well, we’ll know soon enough.’

We picked her up then and carried her out, dumping her, limp as a sailbag, on the back seat. ‘Where are we going?’ I asked as he began fixing the rear safety straps so that she wouldn’t roll off the seat if he had to brake suddenly.

‘Back down south.’ He was fussing over her, arranging a sleeping bag under her head as a cushion. ‘Accordin’ to our hero, there’s another road back to the coast by way of Cajabamba and Huamachuco. It’s passable, he says, and it leads direct to Trujillo. We’ll spend the night there, and then, if she’s recovered, we’ll go on in the morning through Lima to Tacna in the south of Peru. We pick up the plane for Punta Arenas at Arica, just across the Chilean border.’

He had it all worked out and he wasn’t wasting any time. ‘Ye drive,’ he said and got into the passenger seat.

‘Where’s Gómez gone?’ I asked as I started the engine.

‘Doin’ the rounds of his estate.’

‘As long as he’s not fixing for another of his boys to play around with this alternative route through the mountains,’ I said.

‘No, he won’t try that again.’

‘So what’s the hurry?’

He was silent a moment and I thought he wasn’t going to answer that. But then he said, ‘Ah don’t know. Just a feelin’ that the sooner we’re on board Isvik the better. Once he’s joined us it’ll probably be okay, but till then …’ He paused. ‘Ah’d just like to check her over, make sure nobody starts playin’ silly buggers with the engine or the seacocks, somethin’ like that. A fire on board …’ He turned to the back seat as I swung under the arch and headed towards the Baños del Inca. ‘Ah wonder if she has any idea what it is all about. Did ye ask her?’

‘Ask her what?’ I was trying to memorise the road.

‘She comes up here, throws herself at a man who may or may not be her brother, but who is undoubtedly mixed up in a very unsavoury episode in his country’s history, lets him persuade her to fool around with a very dangerous drug … Why? And why should he go to such pains to stop us comin’ up here?’

‘That’s simple,’ I said. ‘A girl as attractive as Iris Sunderby, if you’d got her alone in your hacienda …’

‘Ye mean ye’d be willin’ to try and kill off her friends just to keep her to yerself?’ He shook his head. ‘That man is as cold-blooded as a snake. No, there has to be some deeper reason. And to suddenly decide he’ll come with us …’ He was looking at me, a hard, interrogative stare. ‘What is it about that ship? He knows where it is. He’s willin’ to pilot us there. Why? What’s he know about it that we don’t? And when we find it, what then?’

I shook my head, my attention half on the road. There were quite a few people about, women as well as men, nearly all Indians, some of them on mules. Donkeys, too, and because it was hot, with only the faintest breeze, many of the men had their wide-brimmed hats pushed to the backs of their heads, held there by the leather thongs that were really chin straps. Occasionally a garishly painted truck passed us, raising a cloud of dust, and away to the west, hanging over us and clearly visible now that the clouds had lifted, the coastal range of the cordilleras towered pale and trembling in the heat. I think what attracted me most about the country round was its Englishness, meadows deep in grass and wild flowers, and willows wherever there was water.

It wasn’t truly English, of course. It had a different feel to it, a different look, a different smell. And there was Iris Sunderby’s recumbent body sprawled in the back. Nevertheless, the countryside reminded me of East Anglia, the willows in particular making me realise how far I was from home.

At Cajabamba we joined a slightly better road, and soon afterwards we turned west and headed up into the mountains through Huamachuco, climbing all the way. I don’t know how high the pass was, but even with the sun casting long, black shadows, there was none of the fearsomeness of the journey we had made only that morning. No storm mist shrouding the slopes, no rain, no lightning stabbing, no thunder rumbling, the clouds all swept away as though by magic, the sky blue, the mountains looking quite serene now, almost kindly in the late afternoon light.

Inevitably the road worsened as we neared the pass, the surface rutted by trucks and still awash with water spilling down steep gullies. An abandoned truck, its snout rammed into the steep bank of a cut, caused me a moment’s panic. Ward was asleep. I was climbing in low gear, my eyes searching the vehicle and the bank behind it for any sign of movement.

‘It’s all right.’ He must have sensed my hesitation, his ears alert for any change in the note of the engine. ‘Ah didn’t tell him which route we were takin’. That truck has been there at least three days.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Use yer eyes. The road’s dry under the chassis.’

He was asleep again before I had edged the Toyota round it. Shortly after that we came over the top of the pass and started down towards the coast. The sun was setting and there were moments when I, too, felt like ‘stout Cortés’ and thought I could see the Pacific. Perhaps here, from the vantage point of the Andes, I would see the green flash as the upper rim of the sun slid below the ocean horizon to leave a prismatic glimpse of the spectrum’s final colour.

Twice I ran perilously close to the edge, my eyes dazzled and eyelids drooping. I was beginning to feel sleepy and I began to sing, softly, to myself. I was singing ‘All things bright and beautiful …’ I don’t know why. I just felt that way. And then a voice from the back said, ‘Where the hell am I?’

‘We’re taking you down to the Pacific for a bathe,’ I told her.

‘Like hell you are! Where’s Ángel?’ She was leaning forward.

I was on a tricky bend, the road falling away sharply and badly in need of a grader. I couldn’t turn my head, but I could smell her, feel her breath on the back of my neck.

‘Stop the car!’ Her voice was shrill. ‘I said stop the car. Turn round and take me back.’ And then, when I said nothing and kept on driving, she said, ‘If you don’t stop, I’ll jump out.’

I braked a little harder then and turned to look at her. Her face was still very pale, the skin shining with sweat, but the eyes were almost normal now, the pupils no longer dilated. I could see them quite clearly, the blue formed of all sorts of colours, like sapphires picked out in the sun’s last rays.

‘Where are you taking me?’ She started to wrestle with the nearside door, but Ward had locked it and in the end she gave up, lying back again and muttering something about remembering now.

‘Our little skipper more herself, is she?’ The way he said it I knew he meant to goad her. She flared up on the instant, turning on him and almost yelling, ‘You bought a boat, that doesn’t mean you bought me. Now tell our pest control officer here to turn round and drive back to the hacienda.’

‘Why?’ Ward’s face was suddenly contorted with anger. ‘Why the hell dae ye want to go back there? Are ye in love with him? He fills ye up with coke, uses ye like a whore … And he’s yer own blood.’

‘How dare you!’ Her face was flushed and angry. ‘He’s not my brother.’

‘All right, yer half-brother then.’ And he added, turning the knife in the wound, ‘Christ almighty! Ye’re a Catholic and you have an incestuous relationship …’

‘I do not. I do not.’ She banged her fists on the back of his seat.

‘Okay, but what are ye goin’ to say to the priest next time you go to confession, eh? How are you going to explain that ye’re playing around …’

‘He is not my brother,’ she repeated. ‘And I do not commit incest.’ And then she went over to the attack again. ‘Can’t you understand, you great big stupid asqueroso, was close to getting it out of him, the information I need to prove my husband is not imagining things. And I would have got it, if you hadn’t come blundering in.’

‘Balls! Ye’d never have got it out of him in a million years. Ye’re besotted with the bastard. That’s the real reason ye’re holed up here in the mountains …’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, stop your play-acting.’ And she added, maliciously, ‘All right. He’s a beautiful hunk of male virility, something you’ll never be, and I enjoy playing around with him, as you so delicately put it.’

That was when I scraped the fender on a protruding lump of rock. It’s not often you find yourself an enforced eavesdropper on two people screwing each other up with murder in their hearts. And when he said, ‘Ye start playin’ around with the bugger on board Isvik …’ I slammed on the brakes, stopping with a jerk that almost threw her on the floor.

‘Shut up!’ I shouted. ‘Both of you. The road’s difficult enough without you yelling at each other, and I’m tired.’

An abrupt silence followed my outburst. I think they had both been so wrapped up in themselves they had quite forgotten my existence.

‘We’re all tired,’ Ward said at length.

‘Yes, but you’re not driving.’

‘Want me to take over?’

‘How far to the coast?’ I asked.

‘No idea.’

‘I’ll drive till the sun sets,’ I said. ‘I want to see it drop into the Pacific.’ I let the clutch in, jerking the vehicle into motion again, my driving suddenly vicious. I think I was scared again. I had every right to be if there was going to be this sort of hostility between the two of them all the way down into the ice. And Gómez? There was Gómez, a catalyst for disaster.

My mind went back to the scene in that bedroom and the sliding doors to the paved patio. I seemed to remember statuary and flowers – hibiscus or something flaming red, roses maybe, in great urns – and there were doubtless other bedrooms leading off it with similar softly sliding glass doors. I should have questioned her then. Still mazed with whatever the drug was she had taken, I might have got the truth out of her. Was he her brother, or wasn’t he? She said not. She’d been very positive about that, not just here in the car, but she had said it to me in the bedroom while I was packing her things and she was still in a mentally uninhibited state. And if he wasn’t her brother, what were his real origins? And was she in love with him? Well, not in love perhaps, but besotted. I remembered the charm of the man, that almost blatant virility. And Ward had said it was all fixed, he would join us on Isvik and navigate us to within sledging distance of the trapped vessel.

And then, suddenly, there was the Pacific, and the sun, a great crimson ball, like the tuning indicator on a giant music centre, dipping its lower rim on to the hazed line of the horizon. I stopped right there, where I had an uninterrupted view, and watched the rim of it flatten out, spreading fire along the ocean’s edge.

It didn’t take long. It just sank slowly and steadily below the ocean’s horizon, and suddenly it was gone. No green flash, nothing, and the sky above fading from blue through green to the beginning of Stygian darkness. Suddenly a star showed.

‘Venus or Mercury? Venus, Ah think,’ Ward said, and I realised he, too, had been watching the spectacle in absolute silence. ‘That was the star that brought Cook into the Pacific – the transit of Venus. Tae centuries ago.’ He was silent then and I had the feeling he was thinking of all that Cook had done, first in Endeavour, then in Resolution and Discovery, ships not much longer than Isvik. And he had taken them down into the Southern Ocean, not as far as we were going, but far enough to be in amongst the ice, circumnavigating the whole land mass of Antarctica in waters no man had ever sailed before.

‘Ah’ll take over now,’ Ward said.