George hardly had time to reply.

“You can give me a lift then. I might have to bring a friend.”

“I wanted to talk to you anyway.” George spoke quickly. Rob had got what he wanted and would be expecting to ring off. “It’s about Tom French.”

“I can’t stop now. I’ve got an experiment to finish before I leave. I’ll see you at about five thirty at the flat.”

He knew that they would be there and did not wait for confirmation.

They went to London first, to Queen Anne’s Gate, where George had worked, and collected the report from a plump and giggling secretary. Molly was driving. She enjoyed the drama of driving through London, and her temper improved as they left the centre of the city. She drove fast and not very well.

“What is it that we’re going to see?” she asked.

“Greenish warbler.”

“Is it pretty?”

“Not very, but it’s a tick. It’s not even very rare.”

“How can we justify driving all the way to Cornwall to see a bird that’s not even pretty?”

“You enjoy it.”

It was true. She did enjoy it. She had no interest in the birds, but had become passionately enthusiastic about twitching. Each trip she became tense, excitable with panic, worried that the rarity they had travelled to see had disappeared, but then she hardly bothered to look at it. It was the chase which she enjoyed. When she was a child, the youngest in a county family, she had been taken each year to Scotland where her parents and their friends shot grouse. She had hated the friends and the blood, but even then had been fascinated by the hunt.

George read the report as she drove towards Southampton. He did not discuss it and she knew better than to ask. He did not speak at all until they stopped outside the big, ugly terraced house where Rob had a flat.

Rob’s friend surprised them. He had been accompanied on their trips by a number of girls, but they had been beautiful and usually silent. Tina was big, not overweight, but tall and big-boned. She was very dark and had strong almost masculine features. She wore tight jeans tucked into long boots, and a leather jacket and beads. She was not silent. It very soon became clear that she was an obsessive ringer. She spoke in sharp, aggressive bursts about traps, nets and rings. More than the rest of them she was, Molly felt, a hunter.

So they drove south to see greenish warbler, and there was the same tension as on every trip, the same anxiety that it might be gone; and there was the same smell, as Rob, lying on his back in the van, smoked roll-up after roll-up, and the same sound as he sang tuneless Bob Dylan. Tina crouched beside him, aware and predatory. Then there was the same conversation about other trips they had made, birds missed and birds seen. No one mentioned Tom French. In Exeter they stopped for a pint and a Chinese meal. It was nearly midnight when they started again, and when they reached Cornwall George knew that it was too late for him to sleep. He would sleep when he had seen the bird.