Yes, that Turnip at the Camino Real hotel. It was one of the quaint decencies of English law that well-behaved murderers served only half their terms. An internet search on Beard's name would lead to Lordsburg easily enough, and to the site. So what? Despite the air conditioning, he felt the pricking sensation of sweat forming above his upper lip, and a tightness across his chest that caused a pain at the base of his throat. The pancakes came, twenty in each stack, the friendly lady said, and a pitcher of maple syrup to douse them with, a pile of streaky bacon six inches high, and a top-up of coffee of palest brown.

'Nirvana!' Hammer said, banging his hands together, still in the mood that had just deserted Beard.

He had always known this moment must come, but he had grown used to knowing it, and he had thought there was a good chance that Tarpin would serve his full term, and that time would dilute everything, and prison weaken him, and that, after all, it was Patrice who obsessed him, that she was the one who did for him at the trial. In fact, Beard's true accomplishment, a masterstroke of self-persuasion, was to half believe that Tarpin, because he was violent, because he had been tried and found guilty and was in prison with other guilty men, was tainted by association, and was indeed guilty, and not only that, but he knew it and was resigned to his fate. Beard, after all, had killed no one, and his story in court was unarguable, his witness from the Institute of Physics impeccable. As the years had passed, those events, on the morning he had returned from the Arctic, had begun to appear dreamlike, unprovable, without consequences. But lying below these appearances, like a stratum of impervious rock, were other assumptions, no, certainties, that in his busy life he had managed not to dwell on. Just as Beard had dreaded that the police and Patrice would assume that he, the jealous husband, had murdered Aldous, so Tarpin was bound to think so too. Who else would want to frame him with the tools from his bag? So what did an unjustly imprisoned violent man, working out his bitter rage in the prison gym every day for eight years, do on his release? No shortage of cheap flights to Dallas.

As long as the sheriff and his friend were there, on the next table, Beard felt safe. All the same, when the café door swung open with a bang against its frame, he started, and the tightness round his chest intensified. It was a boisterous group of four local teenagers, three boys and a girl, wanting Cokes. The presence of two cops did not subdue them. They greeted each other like family members. Perhaps two armed policemen could do nothing against Tarpin. He might be ready to kill Beard in full view, and spend the rest of his life in the cells, morbidly content with a settled score. No shortage of handguns in this part of the world, and as easily purchased as fishing tackle.

'Off your food, Chief?' Hammer had finished his stack. 'Bad news from home?'

'No, no,' Beard said automatically, though even as he said it, he saw below Patrice's name a message marked urgent from Melissa. 'Just something I need to sort out. But I'm not hungry. It's too hot. Have mine.'

He pushed his plate across and Toby started in on his twenty-first pancake as Beard, after a half-minute's hesitation, opened Melissa's message. He supposed he should read it before he was killed.

'Michael, phone me, please. I need to talk to you about the other night.'

The other night? He struggled with this. Then he remembered Terry, the symphonic lover. She had dumped Terry, or she was marrying him. Beard could not decide at that moment which he would have preferred. If the latter, he would hide in Darlene's trailer. Tarpin would be no match for her. Or he would kill them both. He was not thinking straight, and he was in no condition for a matters-of-the-heart exchange with Melissa. He never would be. He scrolled through the names on the other twenty-seven messages – all but one was work-related, most in the pure, exalted domain of artificial photosynthesis. He opened the one from Darlene.

'Come quick! Something to tell ya!!!'

He did not deserve these distractions. They were encircling him, women, an Albuquerque lawyer, a north-London criminal, the unquiet cells of his own body, in a conspiracy to prevent him making his gift to the world. None of this was his fault. People had said of him that he was brilliant, and that was right, he was a brilliant man trying to do good. Self-pity steadied him a little. He and Toby were due to meet the engineers for a final inspection of the site that afternoon. Then Beard would give a speech to the assembled team. They should get on. But to drive towards Lordsburg was to drive towards Tarpin. The sight of Hammer's pancakes, or rather, the vision of him eating so many, doused in syrup, topped with the partially burned strips of the flesh and fat of pigs, sickened him. Muttering an excuse, he went through the caf̩ to the men's room, believing that he might be able to think more clearly if he could be sick. He stood waiting, slightly stooped, like a diligent waiter, over the porcelain bowl. How sparkling clean it was, just when a little disgust, the chocolate arabesque of another man's excrement, might have helped him empty his stomach. But nothing came. He straightened and dabbed at his forehead with a tissue. So what should he do? Either his life was at risk, or he was a hysterical coward. He considered the elemental fact РTarpin was coming to see him. What good could come of that? Even now he might be sitting on the edge of a bed in a motel room on the Lordsburg strip, oiling his gun. Clearly, he was well motivated. For psychologically, logistically, even financially, it was not easy for an ex-con to fly about the world. He would need to lie about his criminal past on the US visa-waiver form. But no one would know. So it was foolish not to panic. The sensible thing might be to slip away, plead modesty and let Toby handle the opening ceremony, go down to Ṣo Paulo, for example, where a woman he knew, Sylvia, a fine physicist herself, would be more than happy to let him stay. He flushed the lavatory, washed his hands slowly, trying to make a decision before going back to the table. Yes, fine, Ṣo Paulo, but he could not speak Portuguese. He could not stay down there for ever. He would miss Darlene. So then what?

Hammer was standing to settle the bill. On a smeared plate, four pancakes and one bacon rasher, snapped in two unequal parts, and a toothpick remained. The glass syrup jeroboam was empty. It was a miracle the man was thin. He said, 'We're due in forty minutes and it's forty-five miles. Let's go!'

Beard could think of nothing to say and so, morosely, he followed his friend out into the blinding light of the parking lot towards the car.

They headed north across the grasslands towards the interstate, both men silent, though Hammer at the wheel whistled random notes, as though performing some earnest avant-garde piece. Beard was generally adept at avoiding inconvenient or troubling thoughts, but now that his spirits were low he was brooding about his health, and staring at the reddish-brown blotch, a map of unknown territory, on his wrist. The biopsy was in. Doctor Eugene Parks had confirmed in the morning that it was a melanoma and that it had grown just a half-millimetre deeper into the surrounding tissue than he would have preferred. He named a specialist in Dallas who could remove it tomorrow and start the radiation therapy. But Beard wanted to be in Lordsburg for the opening and told Parks he would come back within the month, as soon as he was free. Parks, in his engaging, neutral manner, told him he was being irrational. No time to lose, on the edge of no return, metastasis a possibility.

'Don't be a denier,' Doctor Parks had said, appearing to refer back to their climate-change chats. 'This won't go away just because you don't want it or are not thinking about it.'