Three Great Novels by Henry Porter

into some order but instead of laying out his bed-roll, he propped himself up and tried to block out the smell of drains that seeped from under the wall. Any fears he had about falling into too deep a sleep soon vanished with the sounds that came from the house, the unmistakable noise of a woman being beaten and taken by force.

    Khan looked over to Skender who raised his hands above him hopelessly. ‘In what neighbourhood in London you were living?’ he asked by way of distracting them from the murderous noises next door.

    Khan replied that he had shared an apartment in Camden Town with some students.

    ‘I am living in Hoxton,’ Skender said. ‘ There was I happy.’ His cough began again, with a more rasping note.

    Khan listened for a while then reached down to the bottom of his trousers and silently made a little opening in the seam. From the cavity in the material he withdrew a roll of money slightly thicker than a cigarette. He got up, crab-walked over to Skender and placed the four twenty dollar bills - half of what he had left - in the palm of his hand. ‘This will buy you a visit to a doctor and some medication. It seems that I may not need it now.’

    Skender shook his head but his hand closed around the money. ‘Thank you, Mister Khan.’

    ‘I want you to do something for me in exchange. Do you have a pen?’

    He produced a stub of pencil from his pocket and handed it to Khan, who quickly wrote a message on one of the three remaining postcards.

    ‘I want you to send this to America by airmail. If I am killed, please write separately to the address and tell them how and where I died. You understand? Tell him what is happening to me.’

    Skender took the postcard and slipped it into his clothing. Khan scuttled back to his bundle to await his chance to escape, reflecting that he had never been in as wretched and menacing a place. Berisha was, he thought, probably mad. He felt that anything could happen to a human being who came into Berisha’s orbit. For a time he listened to a young woman’s voice alternately wailing and remonstrating until the volume of the TV was turned up and a soccer game drowned her words.

    Next thing he knew it was daylight. He woke to see Berisha sitting not far from him, holding a cup. He was dressed in sports kit - trainers with a gold Nike flash and an outlandish American football jacket with a dragon emblazoned up one side. Beside him stood Skender and two men in uniform.

    ‘Mr Berisha has made decision,’ said Skender apologetically. ‘You must go with these men from police.’

     
    Isis Herrick was met at Newcastle station by her father, who had bought himself a new car, a replacement for the dark blue Humber Super Snipe that had met with an unspecified end a month before. The Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire was older and less sedate. Herrick eyed it with little enthusiasm, but the journey to Hopelaw village fifteen miles over the Scottish border passed without incident and the car did seem to make her father happy. As they climbed through the moorland, upholstered in the soft green of new bracken, her spirits lifted and she told him that she was coming round to the Siddeley.

    They didn’t talk properly until after lunch, when they took a walk up to Hopelaw Camp, an iron-age fort above the house. They reached a flat rock pitted with ancient cup and ring carvings and sat down. The discussion was new for them: they had never spoken about her job, let alone discussed individual operations, and she thought they would find it awkward. But he listened to her acutely, gazing south, his eyes watering slightly in the breeze, occasionally pressing her for detail.

    ‘When your mother died,’ he said, ‘I thought the best thing I could do was to keep you out of this business. But it wasn’t my choice, was it? You did what you wanted and you never asked my advice.’ He searched her face. ‘But at least you’re doing so now.’

    He picked up a field snail’s striped