‘I don’t know as much as you think I do,’ Roth said, acting falsely accused and stung. ‘All I was told was there’d been a disturbance. Hey, I’m on the level, man. And you know who I am. I’m your old compadre from back in the day, right? Who else could I be?’

‘You’ll have to do better than that, Roth. You’ve been keeping me in the dark from the moment I turned up on your island.’

Roth was silent for a moment. Ben was waiting for him to start talking when he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned to look, and then he saw it.

Among the rocks of the cliff subsidence was the figure of a man. He was making his way towards them.

Chapter 56

Ben’s deeply instilled instinctive reaction was to snatch out his pistol to point at the unknown potential threat. But even as his hand began to reach for the weapon he could see that the man clambering up – trying to clamber up – the rocky giant’s steps from the western end of the beach wasn’t in a condition to be much of a threat to anyone.

Roth’s explanations would have to wait a little longer. Ben sprang to his feet and began scrambling down the rocks.

Immediately Ben could see the guy was a local, and not one of Nazim al-Kassar’s jihadists. He was maybe twenty-two or twenty-three, in jeans and a hoodie top. Spiked hair, ruddy outdoorsman’s features, broad shoulders, a lot of muscle. And a wound in his left deltoid that was bleeding profusely all over the rocks, leaving a slick trail behind him as he struggled to inch his way upwards with his one good arm. He’d managed to drag himself halfway up the face of a big craggy boulder that blocked his path, but now he was in trouble, clinging on single-handed and in danger of slipping all the way back down. From the look on his pain-contorted face he wasn’t going to be able to hang on much longer. If he fell, it was likely that the cops on the beach would notice him. That was obviously an outcome he was desperate to avoid.