‘Would you look for me, Zoë? Find it?’ His hand squeezes hers, painfully. Zoë looks around hurriedly for Apostoli, but he is limping away up the road, waving his arms above his head. Another plane? No, he wouldn’t be waving at the Germans. Zoë can’t think properly. She sees Vangeli’s shoes, the front end of the car burning quite merrily now, and stands up, begins to walk towards the smoke. Her body doesn’t feel as if it belongs to her. Everything is too bright. She hears every dry leaf as they crunch under her feet. When she reaches the car she shuts her left eye so she can’t see Vangeli’s legs. There is a terrible smell of burning oil and spilt petrol.

The roof of the Citroën has become a small lake of Vangeli’s blood in which things rise up like islands: her lost shoe, the hash pipe, a beer bottle. The dead man’s arm is thrown out, the hand loosely holding Apostoli’s baglamas. Something makes her take hold of the neck and pull it free. Vangeli’s fingers drag against the strings and sound a hollow, ugly chord. She backs out of the car, puts the instrument down carefully. But she has to go back inside. Whimpering to herself, she ducks back into the shadows, into the noise of crackling flames and the tick of hot metal. The dark red leather seats loom over her like toothless gums. She retches, covers her mouth, hears herself whimper. Aman, aman … There is a flash of colour at the far side of the car, in front of the smashed window: the cheap, garish wool of a peasant blanket. She forces herself to put her knee on the lip of the roof and leans in, grabbing the underside of the front seat above her. Reaching, she just catches the edge of the rough weave and tugs frantically. A bundle shoots towards her, bumps over Vangeli’s arm. The head of the bouzouki nearly hits her in the face and she jerks back, opens both eyes. For a moment, she sees the windscreen, a cobweb of cracks spinning away from a fist-sized hole, and in front of it, the dead man, lying on his back, dark suit jacket open, his shirt blackened, and where his head ought to be …

Zoë is crawling backwards as fast as she can, coughing bile. She discovers she still has hold of the bouzouki when she hears the hollow knock of its bowl striking the edge of the car’s roof. It takes all her strength to pick herself up. Then she forces herself back to the car, where, eyes tight shut, she retrieves her shoe, staggers back to Pavlo and dumps the bloody bundle into his lap. He says nothing, but attacks the tangled blanket with trembling fingers.