The old lady crossed her hands at lap level, and said nothing for some time. When she spoke again she addressed Thirdlow directly.
‘She asks if you are the Lion’s woman.’
Thirdlow said, ‘Tell her yes. I am a friend of the Lion.’
The old woman nodded, and fell silent again. If I ran a tune in my head it was a hymn. One of those nice harvest festival ones. It seemed appropriate. When the old woman spoke again she was still looking at Thirdlow.
‘She says there is a small church where a hermit lives.’ The boy had a shrill piping voice. He was proud to be able to translate the conversations. ‘On the back road to Varisia. Perhaps five or six English miles. You take the right-hand fork alongside the river – it runs north.’
‘Yes?’ Thirdlow asked him.
‘Your brother is probably dead. She says a lot of brothers have died – yours and ours. She says ask there.’
The old lady sought the boy’s hand with one of hers. I noticed for the first time that her eyes were milky: she was nearly blind. He took her back to the house from whence they had come. The shutting of its door came as a clear sound in the clean air. The birds and the insects, which had fallen silent, started sounding off with an almost shocking suddenness.
Thirdlow shrugged. ‘No point in hanging about here.’
We got back in the Humber, and continued south and deeper into the Troodos, looking for the junction that would lead us back to the north, and the tree-smothered river valleys.
Once we were rolling something occurred to me.
‘I wonder if we have to go back the same way, or can cut south or east?’
‘Why?’
‘We’re hardly going to be welcomed with open arms once they realize what we did this morning. Holding up our hands, and bleating not our fault, isn’t going to satisfy anyone.’
‘It wasn’t our fault.’
I thought about it.
‘I’m not so sure. We could have kept on driving.’
‘And they would have shot up the next unarmed civvy car that came along,’ she retorted. ‘If ever I have to talk to God about that fight I think you’ll find we came out morally ahead.’
‘You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?’
‘My job.’ She had our map on her lap. She read it like a man. ‘We want the next road on the right. It will probably be a dry track, but wide and firm enough for us.’ I wondered if she ever lost her focus, and decided that she probably didn’t. What had Collins said a hundred years ago? God help any man who ends up with her. He must have had a reason for saying it.
An hour later we found the small stone chapel. It had a pigsty built onto one side of it. I’d seen other buildings in Cyprus which couldn’t make up their minds whether they were residences for humans or animals, but they had all been farms or smallholdings. This was the first church with a split personality I’d encountered so far. There were chickens, and even a scraggly turkey, pecking in the dirt around the chapel door.
We parked the Humber up under the trees across the road. When we got out, stiff from the bouncing the track had given us, Thirdlow reached back in and grabbed her Sterling, which she looped over her shoulder by its carrying strap, and held out in front of her as we advanced on the building. Thirdlow was always ready for anything; I’ll bet she never even went out without an emergency pack in her handbag.
We both saw the movement in the pigsty at the same time. An aimed pistol, I thought, attached to a sunburned hand and arm, over the dry-stone wall. I fumbled for my own pistol, but was far too slow of course: one day I’ll learn. Thirdlow didn’t hesitate. Four rounds maybe . . . five. Pop, pop . . . pop, pop, pop. The impact of the bullets threw the man back into the pigsty. I heard a pig squeal. When we reached it, and looked over the wall, the man lying spreadeagled in the shit and the blood was Pat Tobin. His gun, an old-fashioned service revolver, had fallen on my side of the wall. I picked it up. No bullets. I had been behind Thirdlow. Maybe he just hadn’t recognized us. Balls.
He was still alive. His short-sleeved KD shirt already saturated, wet and red. I reckoned he’d taken three slugs at least. He made eye contact with me, and, although his grave facial expression did not change, something softened in his eyes just before he died. He was probably just pleased someone he knew was there to see him off. His lower lip quivered, almost as if he was about to cry, and then he died. It was one of those moments when I felt like crying myself. It was over so quickly.
When I looked at Thirdlow her eyes were as dead as his had become. All she said as she turned away was, ‘Silly beggar. He only had to shout.’ She had no doubts about herself. Where do people like that come from?
To tell you the truth, I felt like pulling the trigger on her myself. They call that sort of thing ‘friendly fire’ these days, to make the relatives feel better. Let me tell you something: there’s nothing friendly about a fucking bullet. Never was, never will be – except maybe the one that comes out of the pistol you’ve put in your mouth to kill the pain you can no longer bear. I can see that one coming one day; when I’m old.
The door of the small church was open. We stepped inside. Thirdlow’s weapon carried the smell of burned propellant with it. The priest, praying on his knees on the packed-earth floor before the small altar – a
