Maxim was suddenly tired of the whole Tyler letter business, of Mrs Jackaman and her whisky breath. Next time. But he had to make sure there would be a next time.

"The first thing," he said firmly, "is to get away from here. Forget the car, the boat, everything. Don't worry about the cost. I've said that others could find you just as easily as I did. You do see that?"

She moved her head, half nod, half shake.

"Is there anybody you can stay with?" Maxim asked. "A friend, not a relative, somewhere it would be difficult to trace you?"

"I can think of one or two. If you haven't found a few friends by my age…"

"I'll drive you wherever you want. An airport or main-line station. A hotel."

"It's like that, is it?"

"This is the first division, Mrs Jackaman. With the Cup Final coming up. Three people have been killed about that letter already."

He'd over-done it. Her face was tight and suspicious. "Really? I'll pack my case."

She went through into a cabin in the bows that must be a bedroom. Maxim tore a small orange apart for himself, dunking the segments in his whisky and chewing them angrily. The oblong aluminium-framed windows were misting over, but he could still see the gentle green lines of the far shore. How can anybody live in Ireland and not believe that people get killed for politics?

She came back with her black coat on, carrying a heavy suitcase of battered fawn leather, held together with plenty of straps. Maxim took it. She turned off the hidden stove, gave one look around, then led the way out.

He had stowed the case in the back of the Escort when she joined him, rattling the houseboat keys.

"I'll take the car into Nenagh and leave it at the garage there. It's quite all right, Major," She had seen the look on his face. "I was sick when you weren't looking. I'm never sick when anybody is looking. I learnt that much from the Diplomatic. I can drive." She opened the Citroen. "You go ahead."

He was parked about twenty yards in front. He had backed away perhaps another twenty when her car exploded.

There was no sharp noise like a normal explosive. Just a heavy thud and flames surging out of every window as if there had never been any glass in them at all. Then it was a shapeless blistering bonfire, rolling black smoke into the air and reminding Maxim of something… He began running towards it, but mostly so that he could later say to himself that he'd done so.

There was nothing he could do, not even get within ten feet of the furious blaze. Perhaps if she'd rolled out in the first two seconds, and without taking a breath… but she hadn't.

He remembered now. A Land-Rover loaded with petrol cans that some idiot had managed to drive over a land-mine in the Yemen… He also remembered what had been left when the fire died out. It wasn't enough even to be horrible. He got into the Escort and drove away from the smoke signal.

The letter wasn't in the suitcase, not even in the lining, though he hadn't really expected it to be anywhere. Perhaps somebody in London would complain about lost evidence; if so, he could tell them precisely where he dumped the case, weighed down with rocks, into the Lough.

After that, he drove on up to Nenagh and turned back southwest on the main road to Limerick, bypassing Ballina and the Lough-side road. There probably wouldn't be any Gardai checkpoints set up yet, but it would be silly to get involved at all. An innocent man can be convicted, but not a man they don't even know exists, have never met.

How had he got to thinking like that? He'd joined up to be a simple soldier, hadn't he? The rain blattered down again, and he grinned sourly. That should wash out his tyre-marks in the lane, and the lane's mud from his tyres. How had he got to thinking like that?

In Limerick he found a telephone and rang the number that was probably some MI5 office or safe house. A man's voice, perhaps a different one, said: "Yes?"

"H here. I'm afraid the project's been terminated. There was some prejudice, extreme prejudice."

There was a silence at the other end. 'Terminate with extreme prejudice' was CIAese for 'bump off', or so Maxim had heard; he hoped the man had heard that, too.

The line crackled. "I see. Yes?"

"I don't think they'll even bother to send us a letter about it." He was proud of that sentence, though God alone knew how he'd explain it if anybody was listening in.

"Right," the man said. "I'll ring the Automobile Association for you, as well." The phone clicked.

Maxim stared blankly at it. The AA? What had they… Then he realised that they were Agnes Algar's initials, as well. So that was her office name, or one of them.

He hurried back through the rain to the hotel and sank himself in another hot bath. For a commercial traveller, he was being remarkably clean. Then he listened to the six-thirty radio news, but there was no mention of the fire.

The beef at dinner was over-cooked.

The ten o'clock news had two sentences about a body in a burnt-out car near Ballina, County Tipperary, but nothing about what the Gardai thought of it. Maxim lay on his bed and tried to watch them work – assuming they went about it much the same way as in Belfast after a car bomb.

First, put the fire out, if somebody else or the rain hadn't done it already. After one look inside, there then wouldn't be any hurry. Block off the road with plastic cones, seal off the area with white tapes tied from hedge to hedge, and maybe poke around a bit. In Belfast there wouldn't be any doubt about what had happened. Down in County Tipperary they would have less experience in jumping to the right conclusion.

So they'd wait for the experts to arrive and the wreck to cool, which could be a fair old time after such a fire. Meanwhile, the job was identification. The car's number plates might still be readable, and they'd know it was a Citroлn GS, so all they'd have to do was call at the nearest farmhouse door. You might stay secret in the middle of a city, where nobody wants to know, but never in the countryside. He'd proved that by finding her so quickly. Come to think of it, so had somebody else.

Now they knew she lived on the houseboat. Knock on that door, and get no answer. Would they then kick it down? Why should they? If it was an accident, then there was no point, and if it was murder then they might be lousing up the evidence.

They wouldn't be looking for an important letter.

The Lough ran north and south at that point, so he came from the south, against the damp chill wind and the noises drifting down on it. He had spent half an hour waiting in the parked car for his eyes to adjust, and there were glimpses of a quarter moon above the restless clouds, so he could move accurately. Even then, after two minutes creeping through the reeds and nettles at the water's edge he was soaked through, particularly his feet, in bedroom slippers. But he also had somebody else's raincoat, pinched from the hotel coat-room. He felt worse about that than concealing evidence of a murder or being about to effect a burglarious entry, but his own coat had to look fresh and clean tomorrow.

Up beyond the field there was a faint glow among the trees where the Gardai were still working on the burned car. Ahead, the houseboat was just a dark shape on slightly less dark water. He lay and listened carefully, feeling cold but confident. Nobody out there in the night belonged as much as he did. It might be their country, but darkness and stealth were his trade.

There was no-one on or in the houseboat, no lights, no sounds. And why should anyone be there? What was there to guard? He crawled the last twenty yards because he would be outlined against the Lough, and crawled the creaking gangplank, too.

He worked his way all around the boat, trying the windows and a hatch on the foredeck, but they were all shut tight. It had to be the cabin door. Like most boat doors, that slid rather than swung on hinges. He took a small metal beer-can opener, rather out-dated since cans had grown pull-rings but still hardly a suspicious possession, and started levering at the top glide track. It came loose gradually, except for one sudden jerk and a crack that sounded nuclear, but probably wouldn't carry twenty yards against the wind. Then the door sagged loose, hingeing on its lock, and he slipped inside.