Cordite sharp in the lungs, someone coughing, the fat man coming in again and surprisingly fast and I couldn't do anything with him until he made a mistake and left himself open and I found his face exposed and went for the eyes and reached one of them but it galvanised him and he insisted with me, an arm round my neck again and squeezing as Vicente came in with the knife and I waited until it swung up and then turned and left Nicko as the target.

I don't remember when it was that they began gaining. It took time and much had passed. Vicente was losing blood because I'd managed to turn the blade and rip into him somewhere before I lost my grip on the handle and let it go. I had injured Nicko, perhaps with one of the nerve strikes I'd been working on, but he was still surprisingly strong and very quick, vicious in his anger because he wanted his cake and he'd been looking forward to it and I was trying to take it away from him, take my death away.

They had both spent a lot of time trying to reach their guns. At first they hadn't wanted to make any more noise after the hammering boom of the Suzuki, but then they'd realised I might get them both under control and they'd stopped worrying about making a noise. I'd sent the first gun – Vicente's – over the rail without any trouble because he was so busy with the bloody thing that he forgot about the combat and left himself open and I'd gone in with an eye strike and got the gun away from him while he was protecting himself.

Nicko was more difficult and we'd fired a round with his finger on the trigger and the gun pointing nowhere, but then I'd found his throat and he'd panicked and I'd got the gun and lobbed it overboard and this worried them and they became excited. I could have killed Nicko when I'd found his throat exposed but I didn't want to. That had been Proctor he'd phoned from the cabin and I wanted the number because it had become the focus of the whole mission, the only access to Proctor we'd got.

The stars were swinging through the black reaches of the sky and when the boat heeled as it sped across the surface I began losing orientation, just momentary flashes of knowing nothing, being nowhere, momentary but critical, potentially lethal. I didn't know where the boat was taking us; we knew it was running wild, that was all, the helm free and the throttles open, and the first thing Vicente or Nicko would do if they could get clear of me would be to break for the cabin and get control. I didn't want that to happen because if we hit another vessel and didn't totally smash up I'd have a chance of getting away.

The stars swung and the bows hammered across the swell and I lurched sometimes, mentally lurched into the oblivion that was waiting for me out there, a limitless void that was there to gather the end of things, the bric-a-brac of lost endeavours, the tattered rags of hope, where – for Christ's sake stay with it don't give up stay with it yes indeed, perhaps I'd taken the blade in somewhere and was losing blood, it felt like that, the onset of lassitude, stay with it, exactly so, but they were gaining, I tell you, they were gaining on me. Twice I found an arm exposed and worked my thumb into the median nerve with force enough to produce great pain but there was no sound, no jerking to free the arm, and after a time I realised that we were locked together, these two men and I, across the body of the Cuban.

'Nicko,' his voice, Vicente's voice, sounding stifled, with not much breath to spare, 'we've got him, Nicko,' speaking perhaps to boost the fat man's morale, or not speaking to him at all but to me, knowing the value of despair if one can instill it in one's adversary.

He failed, because I knew the danger, but the thought stayed in my mind on an intellectual level, the thought that they could have got me now, they could be within seconds, shall we say, of bringing me my doom, here under the swinging stars as -

Dazzling lights swarming against us in the night, their brilliance rising in a wave, towering, the lights of the city breaking over us as the boat hit and the night exploded and I was flung headlong as the hull burst open and glass from the smashed windows in the cabin flew in a bright shower in the light from the shore, then the sensation of falling and the flat sheen of water below and I hit the surface shoulder first and the lights flared and then darkened as I went under.

Nowhere.

It wasn't dark down here, not now. They'd set up a generator and floodlights, or perhaps it was one of the fire trucks with its search lamps going. The coloured flashes of the police cars dappled the surface above me and I could hear sirens dying towards the quay. I could see sharp outlines close to me, debris turning as it sank, and blurred shapes farther off, the huge body of the boat angled bows down with the stern breaking the surface.

But he was nowhere, Nicko.

I was, yes, losing blood: I could see it now, blackish whorls forming in the water as I moved, blowing like smoke. But it couldn't be anything serious, worth surfacing for. I had already been up a dozen times to breathe, for a while floating face upwards to reorientate, having to take the risk of being seen. I didn't want to be hauled out and questioned, at least until I'd found Nicko, or they had. If they found him, I'd know: I was watching their progress every time I surfaced.

I would rather find him myself. I had something to ask him: the telephone number. The access to Proctor. It wouldn't be easy to ask him if they found him first and put him into an ambulance; I'd have to make out I needed medical attention so as to go with him, stay with him. But I would have said that the chances of finding him alive by now were thin, unless he was bobbing on the surface somewhere among the debris and they hadn't seen him yet.

Sound of a helicopter vibrating through the water, then more light came flooding down, silvering some of the bits and pieces that had been blown out of the boat. I dived lower, using the light, one hand on an anchor chain to keep my bearings, and there was Fidel below me, his arms and legs opened out, his face turning towards the light and then vanishing, the dark smoke of blood still curling from his skull. He would be going down there to wait for his little Juanita, to wait a long time for her in the limbo of the lost, his arms and legs windmilling slowly, disturbing the slime where a fish flashed in the light, then another, scenting his blood.

I surfaced again and floated, drawing flotsam around me and sighting along the surface. There was more noise here, the thin wail of the sirens piercing the boom of the chopper's rotors; the surface was ruffled by the airstream and the debris was tossed in circles. Then it rose suddenly: I suppose it had come lower to look at something, ready to deploy the salvage net. On the jetty a frogman was settling his mask and flip-flopping towards the water.

I took a final breath and went down again into the half-lit netherworld and saw him almost at once, Nicko, his arms stretched out as the Cuban's had been, the current tugging at the cloth on his little fat legs, and as I swam towards him the light was mottled with the slow drifting of leaves, rising and whirling and spreading out, some of them touching his hands, Nicko's hands, then drifting away, turning and catching the light and darkening again, hundreds of them, puzzling me until I saw they were banknotes, the suitcase on the surface somewhere among the other things, burst open and empty now.

Still losing, I was still losing blood, the muscles languid and the mind starting to wander a little, mesmerised by the whirling of the banknotes, but I went for him, scissors-kicking through the light and shadow and missing him the first time as the current turned him so that for a moment he was upright, standing there with his arms reaching to touch his windfall, to play with it, while fish darted at his face, at the hollows of his eyes. I got close to him at the second attempt, and danced with him as I caught the folds of his clothes and began searching the pockets; but the lungs were pulling for air and I had to surface and float there taking in a snatched breath and then another until I could breathe rhythmically, taking the necessary time but worrying because he could drift away, Nicko, and I might lose him.