I nodded and buttoned up my raincoat. 'I'm going to pick up the car. I'll meet you down beside the river in twenty minutes.'

He smiled again. 'I still think you're crazy, bringing that Mauser.'

I shrugged. 'Call it wartime experience. I started this work when it was mostly Sten-guns and plastic explosive. Doesn't it make you feel better, being backed up by a machine-gun battalion?'

He shook his head firmly. 'Not backed up… If you ever get around to firing that thing, I want to bebehind you.'

We grinned at each other. I thought of asking him why he'd gone stiff when I said I'd 'heard talk' of him. But that isn't the sort of question you ever ask a professional bodyguard-gunman.

Later on, I sometimes wondered if I should have asked it anyway. But I always tell myself that he would never have answered it – and that already it was too late.

The plan for the car was strictly from the old wartime rule book. Any sort of hand-over – of a car, arms, information – is the most dangerous time. It implicates two people, perhaps betrays two groups.

I had the car number. It would be parked in the Cathedralplace, alongside the Cathedral itself. Locked. Keys just under the left front-wheel arch, held there by a piece of sticky tape. Simple It was still raining, which would cut down any spectators. Not that it would need much: after half past ten, the only things on the Quimper streets are the street lamps. Their light rippled across the wet cobbles in theplace as I strolled down the line of cars up against the Cathedral. There were plenty of them: Quimper is mostly narrow streets, so the cars pile up in theplaces.

Ifound it: a black Citroen DS with the streamlined front end that always reminds me of a partly opened oyster. I slid along the left side and dropped a casual hand to grope under the wheel arch. No keys. I tried again, not so casually. Definitely none.

I straightened up and looked carefully round theplace, making my head move slowly. I had that vague, creepy feeling that's usually pure imagination – except that imagination is the only way to see round corners.

It didn't have to mean anything: people have forgotten their orders before, or misunderstood them. The keys could be on the other side, or he'd forgotten his sticky tape, or just decided to leave them in the dashboard. I reached for the door handle, just to try it. It eased open.

Then I knew exactly why the driver had forgotten his orders.

Fifteen minutes later I was cruising west on the Quai de FOdet. Harvey Lovell stepped out from under a cafeawning. I pulled up, and he peered in to make sure it was me.

The password is: Let Me Get The Hell In Out Of The Rain,' he said. He slammed the door behind him, and slipped his Air France suitcase down on the floor by his feet. He made another quick movement that looked like shifting the gun from his waist to his ankle.

I pulled away and kept going west.

He peeled off a thin plastic mac and threw it on to the back seat. 'All go okay?'

'Not quite. We've a problem.'

'No gas or something?'

'Petrol's all right. Just look on the floor at the back.'

He turned and leaned over. After a few moments he slid back into place. Then he stared at me. 'Yes,' he said softly. 'He does look like a problem. Who is – was he?'

I turned right, away from the river, on the N785 signposted for Pont l'Abbe. 'I assume he's the man who was sent here to deliver the car.'

'You fade him?'

'Not me. I just found him as he was. Whoever it was had just left him there, with the keys in the dashboard.'

He thought about it. This, I don't like. They just left the car and keys and all, hey? Maybe they wanted to see who picked it up.'

'I'd thought of that. But if anybody follows us, we'll know.'

'D'you know how he got it?'

'Shot. Don't know what by. I was hoping you'd give an expert opinion when we're clear of town.'

He didn't say anything. I glanced sideways at him; he was peering ahead with the instrument lighting showing a faint frown on his face.

Then he said: 'It isn't the end of the business I'm good at, but I'll try. Then what?'

'We off-load him down at the beach or somewhere.'

'And just keep on as we planned?'

'It's what we're being paid for.'

After a while he said softly: 'Looks like maybe we're going to earn our money.'

Once we were clear of the town, I started trying the car out: shoving on the accelerator, throwing it into bends, stamping on the brakes. I hadn't driven a Citroen DS for a couple of years, and while it's a damn good car it's also a damn peculiar one. It has a manual gear-change but without a clutch; a front-wheel drive – and everything works by hydraulics. Springing, power steering, braking, and gear-change – all hydraulic. The thing has more veins in it than the human body – and when they start to bleed, you're dying.

Also, in the last two years, they'd hotted the engine up a bit. It had always had a top speed good enough for most French roads; now it had some real push in the acceleration as well.

We slipped into the typical fast scurrying motion, a series of small shocks mostly damped out, curling round the bends without a hint of a roll. On high beam, the big yellow headlights lit the road like carnival night.

Harvey said: 'Is there a heater in this thing?'

'Somewhere.'

'Let's find it.'

It didn't feel that cold to me. The rain was the slow, steadydrizzle ofawarm front, so the temperature was probably rising. On top of that, the thought of our friend on the floor at the back was keeping me fairly warm. But maybe riding with a corpse takes people's temperature different ways.

I fiddled around and switched on the heater and demister. There weren't any big villages or resorts on the big beach for which we were heading, but the local road stayed good and wide, if over-cambered. We wound between dry-stone walls, with occasional disused windmills showing in the headlights.

We passed through Ploneour-Lanvern and headed for Treguennec, one of a stack of old Cornish-Celtic names in this part of the world. We hadn't seen a person nor a car since leaving Quimper, and if anybody was following us he was doing it by radar and not headlights.

Harvey didn't say anything; just stared ahead through the drizzle being wiped off the windscreen.

As we reached the sign for Treguennec I slowed down and dipped the lights, then went on to the parking lights. It held us right down in speed, but now we were only a mile or so from the sea, and the road didn't go anywhere else. I didn't want anybody wondering why a Citroen with a Paris number was driving down to the sea on a night like this.

Finally, the road petered out into a wide sprawl of sand and gravel. I stopped, and switched everything off. When I opened the door we could hear the casual crunch of the sea over a slight rise ahead.

'End of the line,' I said.

Harvey reached back and got his mac. 'What do we do with our new old friend? Plant him somewhere?'

'Something like that. You take a look at him while I explore.' I opened the briefcase down by my leg and decanted a bundle of local 200,000-scale Michelin road maps on the front seat. Under them was a big wooden holster. I opened the top, took out the Mauser, fumbled around for the magazine, and rammed it in. Then I reversed the wooden holster and clipped it on the back of the Mauser butt to form a shoulder piece. Then I got hold of the bolt, and cocked it. Then I was ready.

Harvey said: 'I should have timed you on that. I don't think you'd have beaten Billy the Kid on a fast draw.'

'I haven't been practising. I might get it down to five minutes yet.'

'I heard Billy was faster than that even.'

'On a night like this we wouldn't either of us hit anything. It's only the sound that matters. I'll sound like a machine-gun.'