palm trees and a sunset. Around the building stood half a dozen wooden benches and plastic topped tables. A rusting motorcycle leaned tipsily against one wall.
'I am definitely overdressed,' said Dawn, picking her way awkwardly over the shingle.
'Whereas my pimp's outfit is spot on.' Alex grinned.
As they approached Pablito's they saw that they had taken a very indirect back route and that, in fact, a narrow road led straight to the front entrance. The swing doors in front of the building were half open. Inside, the place looked more spacious than its exterior suggested. A bar ran the length of one wall and on one of its stools a fat, heavily tanned man in a sarong, perhaps forty-five, was watching football on a wall-mounted television. Behind the bar a twenty something woman with bleached blonde hair polished lager glasses. A cigarette smoked in an ashtray at her elbow.
As Dawn and Alex peered over the swing doors, the woman assumed a practised smile.
'Come on in, loves. We're still in injury time, as you can see, but make yourselves at home. What can I do you for?'
Alex turned to Dawn. From the corner of his eye he could see the blonde woman staring at the dressings on his face.
'What's it going to be, pet?'
Dawn smiled sweetly at him.
'Ooh, I think a Bacardi Breezer might just get me going!'
'One BB coming up. And for you, my love?'
'Pint would be nice.'
The man on the stool scratched his stomach and looked up.
'Tell you, that Patrick Viera's a bloody liability. Someone's going to put his lights out one of these days. Staying locally, are you?'
'Puerto Banus,' said Alex.
'Very nice. Come over on the 1615?'
Alex nodded, helped Dawn on to a bar stool and with due consideration for his lacerated thigh, sat down himself 'Exploring the area, then?'
The features were pufFy with alcohol, but the eyes were shrewd. And beneath the gross brick-red body, Alex saw, were the remains of a disciplined physique.
On the broad forearms were the marks of tattooes removed by laser.
'We wanted to get away from things for a few days.' Alex winked at Dawn and allowed his hand to stray to the dressing on his cheek.
'And as you can see, I've had a bit of a bang-up in the motor. We reckoned we were due some quality time.'
'Well, you've come to the right place for that.' The fat man's eyes flickered over the knife wounds.
'What game you in, then?'
'Den, love, leave the poor man alone,' said the woman, clattering over to the optics in her high-heeled mules.
'He hasn't set foot in here more'n two minutes and already you're.
'No, it's OK,' said Alex.
'I'm a physical training instructor. And Dawn, well, Dawn's one of my best customers, aren't you, pet.'
She giggled.
'I hope so.'
This was the explanation that they had agreed on. If pressed, the suggestion was to be that Dawn was mar ned to someone else.
The fat man nodded and returned to the football, shaking his head at intervals to mark his disapproval of Arsenal's failure to wrest control of the game from Sturm Graz. As the final whistle blew he swung round on his bar stool and extended a large hand to Alex.
'I'm Den. Big Den, Dirty Den, Fat Bastard, whatever.' He moved behind the bar and slapped the woman s tight, white-denimed rump.
'And this is Marie. Pull us a bevvy, love.
'Leave off! And for Gawd's sakes put on a bleedin' shirt.' The woman reached for a lager glass and winked at Dawn.
'He wouldn't stand for it if I went about with my chest hanging out - I don't see why I should when he does!'
'When you've got a body like mine,' said Den, 'you should share it with the world.'
He emptied a half-glass of Special Brew in a single swallow, slapped his vast belly, reached for his cigarettes and leant confidentially towards Dawn.
'You know, I'm known locally as something of a fitness guru,' he murmured.
Dawn giggled again.
'Well, I approve of your gym,' she said, looking around her at the football pennants and the signed Eas tEnders posters.
Other customers began to arrive. Alex and Dawn nursed their drinks at the bar and listened to the amiable banter around them. Everyone else, it was clear, was a regular. Equally clear was that this unremarkable beach bar was a meeting place for expatriate criminal aristocracy. For the most part they were expensively if a little garishly dressed. The women looked a lot more like Marie than Dawn, favouring bleached-blonde feather cuts and uncompromising displays of orange cleavage. The men went for Ross Kemp buzz cuts pastel leisure wear and extensive facial scarring.
Den acted as host, drinking steadily and determinedly himself and ensuring that others' glasses were full. To Alex there seemed to be no clear line between paid for and complimentary drinks. No money was demanded of him and he assumed that he and Dawn were running up a tab.
At nine o'clock on the dot the Dunbars appeared, nodded courteously to Dawn and Alex, shook hands all round, drank a whisky and soda and a gin and tonic respectively, and left.
'The old boy flew Spitfires over the Western Desert,' Den told Alex afterwards.
'Ten confirmed kills. Now he's living on twenty-five quid a week. I let him run up a tab and then cancel it when Remembrance Sunday comes round. Least I can do.'
Alex nodded.
'I get him talking sometimes,' Den continued, lighting a cigarette.
'Dogfight techniques. Aerial combat. And I tell you, get him on to all that stuff and you see the old hunter- killer light come back into those eyes. Know what I mean?'
Alex nodded again. He could feel the ephedrine now, racing through his system. Beside him Den ashed his cigarette and took a deep draught of Special Brew. The big man was sweating. Behind them the wives shrieked, Dawn among them.
Alex excused himself He needed a piss.
Edging through the crowd he made his way outside into the neon twilight and peered around. By the palm trees would do. Behind him he heard feet crunching on the shingle some other bloke on the same errand, he guessed.
Then something determined in the tread some grim regularity told him that it wasn't. As he half turned, glimpsing a heavy-set silhouette topped with the shine of a shaven head, a massive forearm locked chokingly round his throat.
'Forget the fitness bollocks, chum, who the fuck are you and what the fuck do you want?'
The voice was low almost a whisper. Alex struggled desperately to break free and lashed back with heels and elbows. The blows landed on flesh and bone but without result. The arm at Alex's throat was as solid as teak and tightening.
Pinpoints of light appeared before his eyes and there was a rushing at his ears. His attacker clearly didn't expect an immediate answer.
It was probably the ephedrine that gave Alex the extra couple of seconds of consciousness in which his scrabbling fingers found the other man's crotch.
Grabbing a sweaty handful of trouser, he clamped his left fist tight over the other man s scrotum and
