‘It’s not easy to kill a man without a weapon.’

‘No.’

MacConnachie looked at him.

‘If we hadn’t killed him, we’d still have our hands tied behind our backs.’

‘He might not have been carrying a knife.’

‘You pays your money, and you takes your choice. You can’t raid a village with your hands tied up. You can’t rob a man either. You kill him, or you leave him alone. We killed him, and we’re free.’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘That’s right.’

MacConnachie began to reassemble the weapon. Ansell said,

‘What happens now?’

‘We move to a position from which we can see the village. When we’re ready, we go in.’

‘How soon?’

‘Not later than midnight.’

‘That’s too early.’

‘We can’t wait. We’ve got to be in, out, and as far as we can by dawn.’

‘Will we be out of the first box of search by then?’

‘No.’

Ansell took a breath, and asked the question he had hesitated to ask until this moment.

‘How far have we got to go?’

MacConnachie operated the working parts of the gun, clipped on the magazine and rose before he replied.

‘About four hundred miles.’

‘That far?’

‘That far.’

From their new position they could see what few lights still burned in the village. A café of some sort remained open, a fierce glare escaping from its farther side, where a lamp would be hanging at the door. Every now and then a figure emerged to cast an elongated shadow down the street. But apart from this, and perhaps a dozen other isolated glimmers at slatted windows, the village lay dark.

The well was situated in a square that opened out from the main street. The surrounding buildings were all of wood – low, rickety-looking huts. The place had a temporary, tacked-together look, as though it might be abandoned tomorrow to leave a dark, rotting stain on the neat fields that hedged it about, palely glowing in the soft light which transfused the entire area.

MacConnachie said,

‘We’ll go in, one up, one down, along the main track. Anywhere near those fields we’ll show like a shilling on a sweep’s arse.’

‘I agree.’

‘First we want water – and something to carry it in. Then food. Anything small that’ll last. Chocolate, sugar, tinned stuff. Finally whatever we can use. Tools, waterproofs, money – and something to carry that in, too. A haversack, if possible. That’s very important.’

‘Right.’

‘I’ll wear the Goon clothes and carry the knife; you take the gun. Cover me as deep as you can. If anything comes up, I’ll deal with it. Don’t interfere unless you have to. And don’t use the gun unless we start a war.’

‘Right.’

‘Blacken up now, and tear off any hanging bits of cloth.’

While MacConnachie stripped off his trousers and added them to the bundle at his waist, Ansell scraped up a handful of dirt, mixed it into a paste with spittle, and smeared it over his forehead and cheeks. But when, having torn off two or three strips of dangling sleeve, he made to throw them aside, MacConnachie said, ‘No, put them in your pocket. They may come in useful and I don’t want to leave a trail.’ Finally, MacConnachie pulled the full-length native coat over his jacket and blackened his own face. He still had his boots on and Ansell laughed.