If I'd hoped to startle him into an admission I was disappointed. His expression didn't change at all. 'So someone told you,' he said easily. 'Now I wonder who it could have been? I'd say Ronnie Jones, wouldn't you?'

'Whoever. And if anything happens to any of those men you'll be in even more trouble than you are now – if possible.'

'I'm in no trouble,' he said.

'You will be if Sadiq strings you up the nearest tree.'

'And who'd tell him?'

'I might.'

He shook his head. 'Not you, Mister Mannix. Mister Kemp now, he might do that, but not you.'

'What makes you say that?' I hadn't meant the interview to go this way, a chatty debate with no overtones of nervousness on his part, but the man did intrigue me. He was the coolest customer I'd ever met.

He grinned. 'Well, you're a lot tougher than Mister Kemp. I think maybe you're nearly as tough as me, with a few differences, you might say. We think the same. We do our own dirty work. You're not going to call in the black captain to do yours for you, any more than I did. We do the things that have to be done.'

'And you think Sisley had to be killed. Is that it?'

'Not at all. It could have been any one of them, to encourage the others as the saying goes, but I reckon Sisley was trouble all down the line. Why carry a burden when you can drop it?'

The echo of Sadiq, both of them using Voltaire's aphorism so glibly and in so similar a set of circumstances, fascinated me against my will. 'I don't need lessons in military philosophy from you, McGrath,' I said. 'What you did was murder.'

'Jesus Christ! You're in the middle of a war here and people are dying all around you, one way or the other. You're trying to save hundreds of lives and you worry about the death of one stinking rat. I'll tell you something. Those other bastards will work from now on. I'll see to that.'

'You won't touch them,' I said.

'I won't have to. You found out; the word will spread to everyone, you'll see. Nobody else is going to turn rat on us, I can promise you

… and nobody is going to touch me for it.'

'Why did you really do it, McGrath? Loyalty to Wyvern Transport?'

'Be damned to that, Mannix. I want out of this and I want out alive and unhurt. And the more we've got pulling for us, the better chance each man has. You have to have unity on this. You owe it to your people, and they to you.'

There at last was the political undertone I'd been expecting. I said, 'All right, what are you, McGrath? IRA or Ulster Loyalist?'

'Do I have to be either.'

'Yes, you do. Unity in face of oppression, casual shooting, kneecapping threats – it's all there. And I'm not one of your American pseudo-Irish sympathizers. As far as I'm concerned, both of your bloody so-called movements can fall into the nearest bog and the sooner the better.'

As I'd hoped, this sort of talk did get some rise out of him. He shifted one hand instinctively to his right-hand coat pocket, arresting the movement almost instantly. But it was a dead giveaway.

'All right,' I said, having achieved what I wanted. 'We won't talk politics. Let's change the subject. Where did you get the gun?'

'I found it in the tank we salvaged.'

'And where is it now?'

'In my cab.'

I shook my head gently, hefting the shotgun very slightly.

He actually laughed. 'You're in no danger from me, Mister Mannix. You're one man I look to to get us all out of this mess.'

I said, 'I'll have that gun, McGrath – now.'

With no hesitation he dipped into his pocket, produced the pistol and tossed it onto my lap. There'll be others,' he said.

'And from now on, you can consider yourself under open arrest.'

Now he gave me a belly laugh. 'Ah, it's the military ways you're picking up, Mister Mannix. Just like old times.'

'Old times in what army, McGrath? And just by the way, I suppose that isn't your real name. No doubt you're on a good few wanted lists, aren't you?'

He looked pensive. 'They were the days, all right. Well, the name now, that's something of a convenience. I've had several, and passports to match in my time. All this -' He waved at the darkness around us, '- this was going to be a bit of a holiday for me. Things were getting a little hot at home so I thought I'd take a sabbatical. Now I find it's a working holiday.'

I wondered what to do. Keeping McGrath around would be like leading a tiger on a length of string. He was a killing machine, proficient and amoral; a most dangerous man, but extremely useful in times of war. I couldn't trust him, but I found that I couldn't quite dislike him, which troubled my conscience only a little. And I felt we could work together for the moment at all events. There would be a showdown one day, but not yet.

I could hand him over to Sadiq, and he might be strung up from the next telegraph post; but quite apart from my liking the man, it would be a course of action very deleterious to our morale. The crew were civilians and nothing scares a civilian more than summary military law. I thought about McGrath's views on our relative toughness, and said abruptly, 'How old are you, McGrath?'

He was mildly surprised. 'Forty-nine.'

So was I; and only an accident of birth had prevented me from being even more like him than he realized. In spite of what I'd said about Irish politics, I could to a degree understand the motives that drove him, and saw that they might have been my own. It was only chance that my weapon had become a boardroom rather than a gun. 'Listen carefully,' I said. 'If you don't keep in line from now on you won't make your half-century. You were right, McGrath – we do think the same. But from now on even more so. Your thoughts and your actions will be dictated by me. You won't do one single goddamn thing. without my say-so. And I'll pull the plug on you any time I feel it's better that way. Am I understood?'

He gazed at me steadily. 'I said you were a tough man. I know what you're thinking, Mannix. You're thinking that I'd be a good man to have around if things get tougher. You're thinking that you can point me like a weapon and I'll go off, aren't you? Well, I won't argue with you about that, because I feel much the same myself. And speaking of guns -'

'You're not getting it back.'

'Oh, that's all right,' he said. There's nothing so easy to come by in a war as a gun. All I was going to say was that I've not had a chance to clean it up yet. Careless of me, I know. You'll want to do it yourself, I imagine.'

I secured the safety catch on the shotgun and lowered it to the floor of the Land Rover. 'Just remember this, McGrath. I'm never going to stop watching you.'

'On probation, am I?'

'Not at all. You're awaiting trial. Be sure and stay around. Don't go jumping bail, will you?'

'Out there on my own? You have to be joking, Mannix. Now what did you think I went to all this trouble for, if not to prevent that very thing from happening with my lads… and I still wish I knew for sure which one came running to you. It wasn't really necessary now, was it?'

I waved a hand in dismissal. I felt no sense of danger from McGrath for the moment, and he must have had the same feeling about me, for he raised a hand and ambled away.

'We'll all be needing a bit of sleep, I think. See you in the morning, Mannix. Thanks for the chat,' he said and was gone.

I sat for a while longer wondering if I was doing the right thing.