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table.
    He considered attending the private showing that evening. It was a long time since he had been to anything vaguely formal on the island, and only the thought that he would have the opportunity to meet and talk to Caroline again persuaded him to go.
    He reached into his trouser pocket and held the mereth, reassuring himself.
    At nine he began writing. He was working on a novel set in Cairo in the late sixties. It was a follow up to his most critically acclaimed novel Tangier , and while he usually shied away from committing follow-ups or sequels, the female protagonist of Tangier had demanded that he write about her further exploits in Egypt in the summer of ‘72. While he found it painful to write about Sam, who had existed as a real person, once upon a time, it was also an act of catharsis to extend in fiction a life that had been cut tragically short in reality.
    He arrived at the end of the scene just before midday, put away his manuscript book and pen, and walked into Sarakina for lunch.
    He passed Caroline’s villa on the way into the village, but saw no sign of her; no doubt she was over in Xanthos, making last minute preparations for the exhibition.
    The writing had gone well that morning, and he was in good spirits as he strolled towards the taverna. But the sight of the fat Englishman, wrestling with a newspaper in the slight sea breeze, put a damper on the prospect of a quiet lunch.
    He took his usual table beneath the awning. At least from here, close to the entrance of the taverna, he had a view of the Englishman, and not vice versa. To have eaten his lunch under threat of scrutiny would have been unbearable.
    He ordered squid, with salad, and his usual glass of local retsina.
    The Englishman had chosen a table in the shade when he had arrived, but he had reckoned without the movement of the sun. Now he was in its direct light, and it was basting him like a wild boar on a spit. The simile, Langham thought as he ate, was not inappropriate. The man was porcine in more than just his surplus of blubber; he had a turned up nose and rheumy eyes, and ginger bristles instead of real hair. Langham decided to use his physical aspect in the next scene of his novel. His heroine was due a run in with a particularly vile military policeman. The Englishman would suffice as a template.
    He wondered if, his suspicion constantly primed, he had taken against an innocent tourist. He had first seen the man a week ago, when he’d convinced himself, on flimsy evidence, that he was a grubby journalist.
    Langham chastised himself for being so uncharitable - and then he saw the man produce a book from an overstuffed hold-all beside his chair, and he knew that his initial assumption, and subsequent irritation, was fully justified.
    The book was a hardback first edition of Langham’s third novel, In Khartoum .
    There was something almost arrogant in the way the man pulled it from his hold-all, thumbed through it negligently, and began reading the book at arm’s length. A minute later he decided it was too hot in the sun. He moved into the shade, and consequently closer to Langham’s table. Langham knew it to be a ploy. Soon the man would find some pretext with which to start a conversation.
    But not if I can help it, he thought, and quickly finished his squid and gulped down the wine. He hurried into the taverna and paid Georgiou, then slipped out again behind the broad, sweating back of the journalist and escaped up the road leading from the harbour.
    In the shade of the pine trees, put out at having his usually leisurely lunch curtailed, he wondered if he was being paranoid. Perhaps the Englishman was not a journalist at all, but some innocent tourist who enjoyed the novels of Daniel Langham.
    But he had Fleet Street stamped all over him, and Langham knew he had not seen the last of the man. Battle lines had been drawn. He was content in the knowledge that he would vanquish his foe, as he had in the past. They might come after