"Oh," said her adversary. "Why not?"

"Because it's under the seat."

"I see," he replied grimly. "Thank you for being so frank with me. Do you have a lawyer?"

"Yes I do, as a matter of fact," said Kate. She said it with vim and hauteur.

"Is he any good?" said the man in the hat. "I'm going to need one. Mine's popped into prison for a while."

"Well, you certainly can't have mine."

"Why not?"

"Don't be absurd. It would be a clear conflict of interest."

Her adversary folded his arms and leant back against the bonnet of his car. He took his time to survey the surroundings. The lane was growing dim as the early winter evening began to settle on the land. He then leant into his car to turn on his hazard warning indicators. The rear amber lights winked prettily on the scrubby grass of the roadside. The front lights were buried in the rear of Kate's Citron and were in no fit state to wink.

He resumed his leaning posture and looked Kate up and down appraisingly.

"You are a driver," he said, "and I use the word in the loosest possible sense, i.e. meaning merely somebody who occupies the driving seat of what I will for the moment call - but I use the term strictly without prejudice - a car while it is proceeding along the road, of stupendous, I would even say verging on the superhuman, lack of skill. Do you catch my drift?"

"No."

"I mean you do not drive well. Do you know you've been all over the road for the last seventeen miles?"

"Seventeen miles!" exclaimed Kate. "Have you been following me?"

"Only up to a point," said Dirk. "I've tried to stay on this side of the road."

"I see. Well, thank you in turn for being so frank with me. This, I need hardly tell you, is an outrage. You'd better get yourself a damn good lawyer, because mine's going to stick red-hot skewers in him."

"Perhaps I should get myself a kebab instead."

"You look as if you've had quite enough kebabs. May I ask you why you were following me?"

"You looked as if you knew where you were going. To begin with at least. For the first hundred yards or so.".

"What the hell's it got to do with you where I was going?"

"Navigational technique of mine."

Kate narrowed her eyes.

She was about to demand a full and instant explanation of this preposterous remark when a passing white Ford Sierra slowed down beside them.

The driver wound down the window and leant out. "Had a crash then?" he shouted at them.

"Yes."

"Ha!" he said and drove on.

A second or two later a Peugeot stopped by them.

"Who was that just now?" the driver asked them, in reference to the previous driver who had just stopped.

"I don't know," said Dirk.

"Oh," said the driver. "You look as if you've bad a crash of some sort."

"Yes," said Dirk.

"Thought so," said the driver and drove on.

"You don't get the same quality of passers-by these days, do you?" said Dirk to Kate.

"You get hit by some real dogs, too," said Kate. "I still want to know why you were following me. You realise that it's hard for me not to see you in the role of an extremely sinister sort of a person."

"That's easily explained," said Dirk. "Usually I am. On this occasion, however, I simply got lost. I was forced to take evasive action by a large grey oncoming van which took a proprietorial view of the road. I only avoided it by nipping down a side lane in which I was then unable to reverse. A few turnings later nnd I was thoroughly lost. There is a school of thought which says that you should consult a map on these occasions, but to such people I merely say, `Ha! What if you have no map to consult? What if you have a map but it's of the Dordogne?' My own strategy is to find a car, or the nearest equivalent, which looks as if it knows where it's going and follow it. I rarely end up where I was intending to go,