I shrugged. 'He turned rough when he thought he was getting cheated. You know what these types are like: they'll lose thousands on some crazy gamble, they give it away in handf uls inside the family – but you cheat them out of a penny and they feel you're trying to castrate them.'

Ken finished his plate-load except for the houmus. 'Who was cheating him, then?'

'We were – in way. If we'd let the post go through, and Sergeant Papa had, too, that authentication would've gone straight to Aziz.'

Ken grunted. I went on: 'And before that, the Professor himself was.'

'Oh, come off it, Roy.'

'Well, I'll give you odds Aziz thinks so. Look: 'the Prof found the sword over a year ago, right? Some time before he got arrested, anyway, because he had time to get it hidden and have that authentication drawn up. Yet he never told Aziz anything, not then, not after he got out of jail and that was six weeks ago.

What d'you expect Aziz to think? He's got twelve thousand dollars on this horse and the jockey cuts him dead in the street.'

Ken shook his head. 'You're trying to have it both ways. You can't say Bruno was cheating by not sending him the authentication when we know he was.'

'So he changed his mind. We know he changed it enough to shoot himself: suicide isn't long-term planning.'

'Or is, if you look at it another way,' Ken said gloomily. 'You still prefer a suicide verdict?'

I shrugged. 'I'm not the coroner. But posting that letter sort of fits. Irrevocable step and all that.'

'It's still bugger-all use if it doesn't tell you where the sword is. And you're only taking Aziz's word that Bruno didn't contact him.'

'I suppose I am.' And I began wondering why I was.

'Still,' he perked up and snapped his fingers for the waiter, 'that isn't our immediate problem. We've got to get the aeroplane out of hock.'

I looked at my watch. 'They should just have taken off – but 'we don't make any move until we've confirmed they got on that flight.'

'Agreed.' He did a quick check of the bill and dealt some scruffy notes on to the table. 'Then what?'

'Should we try for a lawyer?' I asked.

'Hell, no; the length of a lawsuit increases by the square of the lawyers involved. Aziz'll have enough already. Anyway, this town doesn't work on law, it works on pull. We need some pull.'

'And where do we find that on a Saturday afternoon?'

He looked slyly happy. 'At the races? We never cancelled that date there…'

17

Beirut Hippodrome is a fairly standard sort of course for that end of the world: an oval sand track with a fancy colonnaded wooden stand on the south side by the finish, an open-aircafé next to it and the ring and stables and stuff somewhere behind that. Two things make it different: you come in through the north gate so you have to walk clear across the track to reach the stand, and most of the middle is a forest so that spectators can't see the north side and most of the last turn to home.

Some say this is so you won't notice what's happening on the back straight, others that it's a bluff to make you think something's happening there instead of it all being arranged beforehand byle Combine with its go-go and stop-stop pills. Oddly, the locals don't seem to get angry about this: le Combine is just another factor to consider along with the jockey, recent form, hard or soft going, distance, whether Orion is in Venus and whatever else racegoers worry about.

Me, I have no opinions bar one: that the first time I bet on a Beirut horse it'll be because I saw a tout in a vision and he had nail-holes in his wrists and ankles.

We just missed the first race, so by the time they let us across the track people were drifting back from the rails tearing up tickets and calling for another jar. The stand looked about half full, thecafé area more so, with Jehangir at a front table, his tin leg stuck stiffly out and his smile gleaming in the sunlight. He waved us in and I introduced Ken and we sat down.

'Three more beers,' Jehangir called, and a crumpled old waiter took off at a hand-gallop. For once, our style of dress -if that's what it was – didn't seem too far out of place. Royal Ascot this wasn't, though there were still a number of city suits around. But Jehangir himself was hi candy-pink trousers and striped shirt, and a lot of the crowd had had similar ideas.

'You see that man in the glasses?' Jehangir pointed inconspicuously. 'Seventeen years ago, he assassinated the President of Syria.' He seemed pleased by the thought, like a man recommending a horse. The man looked fiftyish, but still lean and hard; a policeman wearing a carbine that had gone green, I meangreen, around the breech wandered up, saluted the assassin smartly. Jehangir nodded approvingly.

Our drinks arrived. Jehangir said: 'Now we can drink beer and talk champagne. But first, you must let me mark your cards for you.'

We hadn't even bought race-cards, since they come only in Arabic – which tells you about how many tourists come here -but Jehangir bent studiously over his own. 'I know nothing about the second, but in the third and fifth, ah…'

I said: 'On her death-bed, my mother made me promise never to take sweets from strangers or advice from friends.'

Jehangir grinned. 'You will die rich.'

'I'm sure half of that's true.'

Ken asked: 'Are you feeling lucky or knowledgeable?'

Jehangir shrugged deprecatingly. 'A little of both. But surely you don't believe all these stories aboutle Combine that one hears from losers?'

'I knew a man here who bought an ex-racehorse, just for some exercise, and he swore it wouldn't get up in the morning without him shouting "The joint's raided! " '

Jehangir grinned automatically. 'Who wants to hear stories about honest dealing and hard work?'

'Not me,' Ken assured him, and both of them smiled.

I said: 'Were you doing any work for Castle Hotels when they were still in business?'

He bent his head gracefully. 'They asked me to be host on the opening night – and bring a few friends from Rome. Some say I run the best non-political party in Beirut.'

I nodded. So the 'champagne' would originally have been delivered, maybe not direct to him, but certainly close to him.1 glanced at Ken and knew he was following the same thought-prints.

Jehangir looked at his fingernails. 'Am I to take it, from your arrival in Beirut, that Mr… er, Kapotas is no longer an interested party?'

Ken said: 'He's a busy man, a lot of things on his mind. We don't want to see him overworked. You know how it is?'

'Oh, I know,' Jehangir said softly. Then, to me: 'So, if all the documentation is still complete, one might just go ahead as if nothing as heart-breaking as Castle's failure had happened?'

'Onemight,' I said.

'Apart,' he added, 'from the matter of the delivery charge?'

So then a tall young black man in blue jeans came up to the table and gave Jehangir a wad of money the size of a club sandwich. Ken stared. 'Jesus. Was that the first race?'

Jehangir flapped the wad casually. 'It looks more than it is. But you haven't met Janni, have you?'

The Negro shook hands and gave me a quick, slightly uneasy smile showing a lot of very white but uneven teeth. He was very dark, with a bluish sheen on his skin but a sharper nose than you'd expect; East Africa, somewhere, which went with a Muslim name. That apart, he had shoulders like a bulldozer blade and a chest like a concrete mixer, but carried his weight lightly.

'Gentlemen,' Jehangir said gravely, 'you have just shaken hands with the next heavyweight champion of the world.'

Now I could see the thin pale scars above and below the eyes. Janni smiled again, but not until we looked at him.

Ken sounded impressed. 'Are you a fights manager as well?' It fitted, of course: horses, Via Veneto parties, boxers – they went together. And boxes of guns, too?