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from room to room looking for her, calling out her name in the dislocation of grief.
    Let it go, Frank. You can’t change it now. He closed his eyes; he had a sense of gears grinding without purpose in his brain.
    His telephone rang. The sound, so unexpected, shocked him. He picked up the receiver.
    â€˜Frank?’ It was Robbie Foxworth calling from London.
    â€˜Foxie,’ Pagan said, astonished. ‘How did you hunt me down, for Christ’s sake?’
    â€˜It wasn’t easy,’ Foxie said. His next words were partly lost amidst whistling sounds, interference. ‘You leave a pretty tangled trail. I’ve probably talked to every hotel between Cork and Connemara tonight.’
    â€˜Now that you’ve found me, what do you want?’
    â€˜There’s a problem. Something in your line of work.’
    â€˜I thought I was supposed to be on quote unquote an extended leave of absence.’
    â€˜Hearts have obviously been changed, Frank. Your expertise is needed. They want you back here on the next plane.’
    â€˜Do they now?’
    â€˜That comes straight from the top. From Mr Nimmo.’
    â€˜The bastard could have called me himself,’ Pagan said.
    â€˜Mr Nimmo doesn’t make conciliatory calls, Frank. Don’t shoot me. I’m only the messenger.’
    â€˜So they want me back.’
    â€˜Call me when you know your ETA. I’ll meet you.’
    â€˜What if I told you to tell Nimmo to fuck off?’
    â€˜Somehow I think not. I know you better than that.’
    Pagan smiled. It was strange how exuberance could come out of nowhere, how quickly your blood could be made to surge. It only took a disembodied voice at the end of a telephone.
    â€˜Have you been listening to the news?’ Foxie asked.
    â€˜I’ve made a point of avoiding it.’
    â€˜I’ll bring you up to date when I see you. But you’ll read about it in the papers before then. It’s a biggie, Frank.’
    â€˜How big?’
    â€˜Disastrously so.’
    â€˜I’ll be in touch.’ Pagan put the phone down.
    They want me back , he thought. They find my presence necessary. Well well. Hearts had indeed been changed. He was going home after all.

FOUR
    DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA
    T OBIAS B ARRON WAS DRIVEN NORTH OUT OF DURBAN IN AN AIRCONDITIONED limousine with tinted windows. The heavy sunlit humidity, which bore the gaseous stink of the streets, seemed to penetrate the car in an unpleasant way. Barron sat in the back alongside a small man called Mpande, who represented the Department of Education and who kept wiping streaks of perspiration from the lenses of his glasses. At one point on the outskirts of Durban, Barron pressed a button to roll down the electric window of the car and found himself gazing across a vacant lot where a crowd of black kids in American-style jeans watched the limo with an almost hostile curiosity. Mpande reached out, touched the button, the window rolled shut.
    â€˜A car of this kind makes certain people both envious and suspicious,’ Mpande said, and smiled.
    He smiled, Barron thought, a great deal. Perhaps he was proud of his two gold front teeth. Barron settled back, and after some miles felt the rhythm of the car change as it moved from a paved surface to dirt. Mpande was fond of talking, usually in statistics, which bored Barron more than a little, but he listened anyway, and sometimes nodded his head. The percentage of blacks enrolled in universities – this was one of Mpande’s favourite themes, and he rattled off a sequence of stats concerning the number studying the humanities, or engineering, or medicine. Mpande talked in the sepulchral tones of a born-again actuary.
    Two hours out of Durban the car finally came to a stop. Mpande said, ‘Be warned. There will be a welcoming committee. You will find its members perhaps a little overenthusiastic, but that is understandable. After all, you are a celebrity. A