I said I'd never met anyone like her, been searching all my life, so forth, repeated the time and place and let her ring off first. An instant of regret as I put the phone down, because if I ever met her again it'd have to be without the ticks in tow and that was unlikely. Painfully inexperienced, arch, gauche, coy, but hungry and demanding, like a half-starved waif, wanting to learn and then going for it hard the moment she got the message, God, I've seen them do this in a film, wanting to do everything and do it now, as if it was going to be for the last time, Clive, I didn't know it could be like this, some of the dialogue, presumably, from the same film, though she meant it, and finally you bastard, for some reason, oh you bastard, meaning this too and leaving blood on me with her nails. It seemed fairly clear that she'd made the mistake of marrying a slide-rule and couldn't think of anything to do about it except play about with a flickering projector in a girl-friend's cellar.

Slight progress made: I'd confirmed they had a bug on her phone and there would obviously be others here and there among the Ming. She didn't know about it, or with her Victorian attitudes she wouldn't have said what she did on the phone just now, and she certainly wouldn't have done what she did last night. Another point of interest was that she couldn't meet me tonight because she had to do something she didn't particularly want to do, and conceivably she had to do it in Room 192 at the Golden Sands Hotel, because Flower had told me that the only time she'd made a definite movement was when she'd gone expressly to that hotel and stayed the night.

If they picked me up today and I shook them off they'd know where to find me again if I checked out of the Cathay, or at least they'd think they knew. I supposed I'd have to send another magnum and a dozen gardenias or something to the El Caliph Room tomorrow night; that snivelling old crone in Accounts was going to fracture a whalebone at this rate.

The sunshine bright as I went down the steps, the smell of the sea much stronger here, the ragged banners of the sails in the typhoon shelter and the throbbing of power boats.

'Want taxi, sir?'

'Yes.'

Because they knew the dark blue Capri. I left it when it was and got into the cab. 'This is for you.' I gave him ten dollars. 'You drive the way I tell you and there'll be another ten when you've finished. What's your name?'

'Kwan.'

Not much more than a kid, a bit scared of me, eyes very wide, didn't know who I was, knew I wasn't the police or I'd have just flashed my ID.

'All right Kwan, get down into Yee Wo Street and head for Causeway Road, quick as you can but don't break the speed limit unless I tell you.'

'If I break speed limit I lose licence and they -'

'Shut up and start driving.'

I began checking for tags the moment he turned left into Cannon Street. The odds against a tag at this point were a thousand to one and that's one of the ways you can get pushed right off your perch, by thinking what the hell, it's a thousand to one we're all right.

I told him to take Sugar Street and turn left and make one slow pass through the operational field and I saw the Toyota parked under the trees by the park entrance and the Hillman a hundred yards farther north.

'Kingston Street,' I told him quickly and he did rather well: most people would have overshot and we'd have had to traipse all the way round the block and come back and risk losing the action and showing our hand by blinding along to catch up. 'Very good, Kwan. Now go to the end and turn round and stop.'

It was an hour's wait. I wondered if she was changing her schedule like this because she'd spent a sleepless night and was tired or because it had some bearing on the fact that she was going to break her routine again tonight.

This man is London, yes, eliminate him. They'd done it before, of course. If this man had been Hong Kong police or Hong Kong Special Branch they'd have let him run for as long as he wanted to: there'd been an official enquiry into Tewson's death and either of those departments could have decided to re-open it unofficially by watching his widow for a bit, see what they could pick up. I was damn sure this Pekin cell was confident they'd never pick anything up even if they went on looking forever, so why make a fuss and get in their way. If this man had been Washington or Moscow or Paris or Bonn they would have shot out a foot and asked him what the hell did he think he was doing. But this man was London, and he had to die with his teeth clean, just as the other man who was London - George Henry Tewson - had died with his feet wet.

Jensen.

'Kwan.'

Hillman.

'Please?'

Toyota.

'Follow that Toyota.'

He nodded and stood on it and I nearly got whiplash. Going down through the park I said: 'Notice that it's dark grey and rather dirty, and that it's registered in Taiwan. Remember it has that aerial on the roof. Try and keep two or three cars between you and the Toyota, because I don't want him to see that we're following him all the time. If there's anything you don't understand, ask me.'

'Is okay, all okay.'

'Good.'

Down Leighton Road and heading south-west, Jensen, Hillman, Toyota, taxi - Christ, all you wanted were the flowers, I didn't tell him to keep an eye on his wing mirrors as well because he'd have quite enough to do in the lunch-hour traffic. His off-side mirror was too high from where I sat, but the right-hand end of the interior mirror gave me a couple of inches if I sat well in the corner and the chrome on the pillar beading was nice and clean and picked up primary colours.

I wasn't really expecting an easy ride. They knew I was London, they knew my face and they knew I was interested in Nora Tewson. Wherever she went, they'd look for me: and you can calculate fairly precisely - all other things being equal-just how long you can keep up a tag in a taxi before they get the vibrations and close in. It isn't very long.

The knife flashed and the skin of the pineapple came away like a flower unfolding. His hands were so quick that I was reminded of a stopped-action film, the fruit seeming to peel itself in a series of jerks without anyone there. One of the Americans was crouched on his knee, squinting and turning the focus ring of his camera; and three small Chinese children stood porcelain-still and hand in hand, watching the fruit seller with their luminous black eyes unblinking.

The Jensen was parked a hundred yards away near Queen's Road Central, and I could see most of its windscreen from here. It was pointing this way and couldn't go anywhere without passing me: a U-turn was impossible on this stretch and there weren't any side streets available. Her bright head moved in the sunshine and she stopped again: they were mostly jewellery shops in this area.

I couldn't see the Hillman because Flower hadn't been able to find a slot when she'd pulled in, so he'd come past and left it somewhere out of sight, passing me on his way back to look for her. He didn't see me, or know I was there. It was much brighter than it had been in the Orient Club last night and I saw him clearly for the first time: a rather intense-looking boy with a Tudor haircut and very pale skin, a lot of pens clipped inside his breast pocket, one of them probably full of tear gas: they go in for gadgets at that age.

I couldn't see the Toyota either but I knew where it was. We'd all been here a good thirty minutes and I'd taken a loop on foot to see if there were any short cuts available in the travel pattern Flower had given me: along Hillier Street and down Jervois - nothing but bloody snake shops, they give me the creeps - and back into Queen's Road, finding the Toyota and passing it and coming up far enough to see the Jensen. It was the thin one, with glasses, and he was standing over there at the entrance to the silk emporium.

I still wasn't quite sure, but it had looked very like a sudden pincer movement. We'd been tooling along Des Voeux Road in line astern when a bus had pulled out and three or four cars had bunched, two of them quite unnecessarily because they could have got past without any trouble. I just left ten dollars on the seat and was inside the dry cleaner's and out through the back before anyone had time to ask any questions, picking up a taxi in Wing Kut Street and telling the driver to wait, because I'd been quicker than the traffic. The jam was just clearing and I saw the Jensen coming past and told him to slot in there. No harm done, and I had in fact seen the doors of those two cars coming open when they'd bunched behind the bus, though of course they might have just decided to get out and walk, such a lovely lot of windows here to look at, so forth.

The smell of pineapple was in the air and the man was telling me I ought to buy one, it was pure and delicious and quenching, so I moved on, he was quite right: static surveillance from obtrusive corner was asking for it, if that really had been a pincer attempt in Des Voeux Street.

A rickshaw man went padding past, the wickerwork creaking, a pair of girls on the seat laughing delightedly. 'C'est mieux que le Metro!'

'Mais un peu plus cher!'

The sunshine of the early afternoon was slanting across the rooftops, lighting the windows on the other side of the street, where it was reflected across the two lines of traffic. I saw her bright head moving again as she turned away from me and began going towards the Jensen. The lights had changed and a No. 5 double-decker was leading the pack from the Wellington Street intersection, and for a couple of seconds I couldn't see the thin Chinese; then the traffic strung out a little and I had him in sight again. He hadn't moved.

She hadn't stopped anywhere for lunch yet: we'd been kept on the move the whole time since we'd left Jade Imperial, and I needed a chance to break off and get closer to Flower and make a rendezvous for whenever she holed up somewhere; then I could get his report and take his notes and tell him to book a flight. She was nearing the Jensen now and the next phase was ready to open: the Chinese would wait till she was in the car and then he'd turn suddenly and come down this way on the other side with that gangling head-forward walk of his and be in the Toyota with the engine running by the time she came past.

I'd have time to make a brush contact with Flower and give him the rendezvous and let him get to the Hillman.

But it didn't work out that way because when she reached the Jensen I looked at Flower to make sure he'd seen. He obviously had: he was turning and making his way down on the other side, hurrying a little and trying not to show it. The pavement was a bit crowded and as far as I could see he stepped off the kerb at the wrong time and someone shouted and there was the fling of an arm and then a long red smear where the wheel of the bus went dragging.

Chapter Six.

BREAKTHROUGH.

'Wai?'

'What is the goose?'

'It is gold.'

'This is for London, immediate.'

'Wait.'

I listened carefully, thinking he was warning me, 'Yes?'

He'd just been getting a pencil. 'Mandarin. They picked the flower. Wing.' 1 could hear his breathing as he wrote it down: he'd been in the shop below when the telephone had rung. 'Yes.'

'Please repeat.'