'I'm sorry,' I said. 'Perhaps I'd better go.'

'Hell, no!' she said. 'Stick around and have some more brandy and I'll match you for dirty stories.'

'All right,' I said obligingly, and told her the limerick about the Bishop of Chichester who made all the saints in then- niches stir.

I didn't see Hesther again at that time, but she certainly had some pull because I was ready to leave in a day and a half complete with permit and a seat booked on the plane at her expense delivered to my hotel by her Arab chauffeur. In a covering note she wrote:

I hope you don't mind about the plane ticket; it's just that I'd like to do my bit toward the memory of P.B. If you do find that idiot, Paul, club him on the head, put him in a sack and ship him back to Algiers.

I wired Luke Byrne and he'll be expecting you. You'll find him at the Hotel Tin Hinan. Give him my regards.

I don't know if it means anything but someone else is looking for Paul – a man called Kissack. I don't know anything about him because he blew town before I could check on him.

Best of luck, and come back for another visit.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I didn't know what to expect of Tammanrasset but it was certainly different from Algiers. From the air it was a scattering of houses set in a mist of green at the foot of barren hills. Transport from the airstrip was by truck along an asphalted road which led between tall, square pillars which were the entrance to the town. They looked like the decor for a fifth-rate B-movie about the Foreign Legion.

I called it a town, but it would be more appropriate to call it a village. Be that as it may, it was the metropolis of the Ahaggar. The main street was wide, shaded by acacia trees, and bordered by single-storey houses apparently made of dried mud which looked as though they'd wash away in a half-way decent shower of rain. The truck driver blared his horn to clear a path through the pedestrians, tall men dressed in blue and white who thronged the centre of the street as though the internal combustion engine hadn't been invented. The truck drew up outside the Hotel Tin Hinan where there was a tree-shaded courtyard filled with spindly metal tables and chairs at which people sat drinking. From a loudspeaker above the hotel entrance came the nasal wail of an Eastern singer. I went inside into a dusty hall and waited until someone noticed me. There was no reception desk.

Presently I was noticed. A dapper man in none too clean whites asked in massacred French what he could do for me. I said, 'There should be a reservation. My name is Stafford.' His eyebrows lifted. 'Ah, M'sieur Stafford! M'sieur Byrne awaits you.' He steered me to the door and pointed. 'Voila!' I stared at the man sitting at the table. He was dressed in a long blue robe and a white turban and he looked like nobody who could be called Byrne. I turned back to the receptionist only to find that he had gone back into the hotel, so I walked over to the table and said hesitantly, 'Mr Byrne?' The man hesitated with a glass of beer half-way to his lips and then set it down. 'Yes,' he said, and turned to face me. Under shaggy white eyebrows blue eyes stared out of a deeply tanned face which was thin to the point of emaciation so that the nose jutted out like a beak. Beneath the nose was a wide mouth with thin lips firmly compressed. I could not see his chin because a fold of his turban had somehow become wrapped about his neck, but his cheeks were bearded with white hair. He looked like Moses and twice as old. I said, 'My name is Stafford.'

'Sit down, Mr Stafford. Have a beer?' He spoke in English with an American accent which, under the circumstances, was incongruous.

As I sat down he beckoned to a waiter. 'Deux bidres.' He turned back to me. 'Hesther told me about you. She said you might need help.'

'I might. I'm looking for a man.'

'So? Most men look for women.'

'His name is Billson. He's around here somewhere.'

'Billson,' Byrne repeated thoughtfully. 'Why do you want him?'

'I don't know that I do,' I said. 'But his sister does. He's looking for a crashed aeroplane. Are there any of those about here?'

'A couple.'

'This one crashed over forty years ago.'

Byrne's expression didn't change. 'None as old as that.' The waiter came back and put down two bottles of lager and two glasses; Byrne nodded at him briefly and he went away. It seemed that Byrne had a line of credit at the Hotel Tin Hinan.

I poured the beer. 'I'm told the Ahaggar is a big place -very mountainous. A wrecked plane may not have been found.' 'It would be,' said Byrne.

'But, surely, with the thin population…'

'It would be found.' Byrne was positive. 'How did Billson get here? By air?'

'He has a Land-Rover.'

'How long has he been here?'

I shrugged. 'I don't know. A week – maybe two.'