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may be watching out for a tonga but if a car pulls over and a large man rises to his feet and serenades the hills with what is probably the most magnificent operatic baritone in the world, and that man is wearing a white suit and is outlined against a black rock, you’ve got your man.’
    ‘Sounds reasonable to me,’ said Carter but Joe noticed he kept his protective escort in place.
    The posse swept on, attracting much attention from the few people now on the road, and rounded the bend before the ill-fated Devil’s Elbow.
    ‘We’ll stop here and dismount,’ said Carter. ‘I’ll tell off horse-holders – two should be enough – and the rest of us will do a short sweep through the rocks.’ He looked up at the sky, judging the amount of light left to them. ‘Better get a move on. Where did you reckon the shot came from?’
    Joe pointed.
    ‘Right then,’ said Carter. ’Off we go! This is what’s called a gasht. Pushtu word. Suppose if this were the British Army it would be called “an armed reconnaissance”, perhaps even “a fighting patrol”. Call it what you will. Equally it could be called “sticking your neck out”.’
    The policemen formed a line and with rifles at the port set off to sweep into the hills, Carter in the centre, a police jemadar marking the right flank and Joe reluctantly marking the left.
    ‘I don’t know what on earth I think I’m doing,’ he thought. ‘I’m supposed to be on leave, for God’s sake! And has it occurred to Carter that of all this mob, I’m completely unarmed? Perhaps I should have said something? Ah, well, too late now.’ But a further thought came to him: Feodor had been a nice man – interesting, interested, talented, looking forward to the coming weeks, harmless – yes, surely harmless, and yet someone had shot him. And, so far as he was anything to Joe, he could say that he was his friend for however brief a time. Joe could turn his back on it but – he realized – he had no intention of doing so.
    The gasht moved up the hill at surprising speed and it wasn’t more than a hundred yards before Joe began to blow. Tirelessly, Carter led them forward. Resentfully, Joe floundered in his wake, glad to be out on a wing, deeming this to be, if there was such a thing, the position of minimum danger. And perhaps that was why Carter had put him there.
    After a sweating quarter of an hour, Carter held up a hand to call a halt and redress ranks and at once there was a call from the man to Joe’s right. He shouted something Joe did not understand and Carter replied. They closed in together to meet beside the discovery of whatever it might be.
    ‘Perhaps we have a clue,’ said Carter. ‘Hardly dared to hope for such a thing. Let’s see what we’ve got!’
    What they had got was the brass cases of two spent rounds. The man who’d found them was standing still and pointing at them, not, Joe was relieved to see, dashing in to scoop them up in his hand.
    ‘We don’t have the facilities to test these,’ said Carter, once again reading Joe’s mind, ‘but we can send them away to Calcutta if it’s relevant. In the meantime I’ll handle them with care.’ And he produced a fold of paper evidence bags from his pack. ‘.303,’ he said. ’You were right. From a British service rifle perhaps.
    ‘And look,’ he added, ’here’s something else. A cigarette end.’
    ‘Two cigarette ends,’ said Joe, pointing further up the hill.
    ‘Black Cat,’ said Carter. ‘Fat lot of help! Probably the most common English cigarette in India after the Woodbine. That won’t tell us much. Now if only it had been a Russian cigarette or an Afghani or a Balkan Sobranie, it might have told us something.’
    They peered together at the remains of the cigarettes held on Carter’s outstretched palm.
    ‘Nervous type?’ said Joe.
    ‘See what you mean,’ said Carter. ‘They’re only half smoked. A few puffs and they’ve been extinguished. Still, at least we know where the shot was fired from. Line yourself up with the black rock down there. My