‘Shall I bring the suitcase?’

‘Of course.’

Outside, Ansell stooped to check on the old lady, who was deeply unconscious. MacConnachie hissed at him,

‘I don’t make mistakes. Come on!’

At the edge of the square they checked all round their field of view: silence, stillness. MacConnachie said,

‘Which one?’

Ansell counted down the houses on the other side of the street.

‘The seventh.’

‘Right. I’ll go in with the knife. You take everything else, cover me from across the street. When I signal, join me.’

Ansell waited until a gap of fifteen feet had opened up and then he followed MacConnachie down what was, to them, now the left-hand side of the street. With the canteen round his neck, the gun in one hand and the suitcase in the other, and with the skirts of his long coat brushing about his ankles, he felt ridiculous trying to be stealthy. All was quiet.

Opposite the house, MacConnachie paused. Ansell unslung the canteen, put down the suitcase and crouched in a firing position. He watched as MacConnachie flitted across the street in the pale light, but then lost him in the shadows at the side of the hut. For ten minutes nothing happened and the village was absolutely still.

Then a darker shadow appeared in the front of the building as the door opened. Ansell gathered up their possessions and ran to join MacConnachie. As soon as he was inside, MacConnachie shut the door and whispered, ‘Quiet!’

In the first hut there had been some light reflected from the café. Here it was pitch dark. Ansell waited for night vision to come. Suddenly he screwed up his eyes as light flared directly beneath them: MacConnachie had struck a match and was lighting a candle-end at a table. Ansell went forward to remonstrate, but MacConnachie gestured him to silence. When he had screened the candle with a vase from the far end of the room, MacConnachie came close and put his lips to Ansell’s ear.

‘We’ve got to take a chance. It’s after one. Search as quick and quiet as you can. They’re asleep at the other end.’

Ansell’s eyes were growing accustomed to the flickering light and he saw now that, in one case at least, ‘asleep’ was something of a euphemism. The woman lay sprawled half out of bed, a patch of blood showing at her left ear. She breathed heavily. Her husband, for different reasons, was equally stertorous beside her. MacConnachie said,

‘See if you can find more matches, and some oil for the gun.’

They set to work. Their swift, silent search uncovered one tin of condensed milk; an old safety razor which Ansell would have rejected, but which MacConnachie added firmly to the contents of their case, now open on the table; a tin of some sort of grease which MacConnachie sniffed, tasted, and elected also to keep; a narrow bottle of vegetable oil, almost empty, with a little of which MacConnachie immediately oiled the accessible working parts of the gun; one box of eleven matches, and one of seven; another candle; a little more sugar, which went into their tin; and some money, which MacConnachie added to that already in his belt.