'It's available in ten minutes, just a phone call. No point in trying to find somewhere to park it. Let's go and have a drink, we have time before you go to the airport. What I'd like you to do is examine the map of the city and plot our route out to the autopista. We need to get on that, go down as far as the turn-off for Vilagarcía de Arousa.'
        When they are sitting in a café in the Praza da Quintana, Mary studies the maps. Slowly, she thinks, she is getting back to an operational mode. She looks up as eight cyclists freewheel across the square, talking excitedly, almost reverentially. They have the look of relief after a long arduous task has been completed. Now she is doing something, she faintly mocks her earlier longing to be back in their cottage in Greencastle, sitting in the garden on a balmy evening, looking over Lough Foyle to Magilligan when the lights come on giving the prison the illusion of a village across the water. She picks out their route. 'The Isle of Arousal,' Mary laughs. And to her relief, Eamon does too. 'Later, wife, later.'
        'Why are we going there?' Mary asks.
        'We have to try and find out where he goes, follow the trail, see who he meets.'
        'By ourselves?'
        'No. We have a few helpers. The young woman and her boyfriend will be near at hand.'
        She wonders why he does not mention the other couple he knelt beside in the cathedral, whose bag he picked up after they left and which he now has on his lap. Mary wonders about asking him if he also senses they are being watched, that a secret force surrounds them. Maybe he knows all that and has chosen not to tell her. Even after twelve years of marriage, he is still secretive, does not share everything with her.
        'Have we anybody else looking after us? 'Mary asks him.
        Eamon looks at her sharply. 'What have you seen?'
        'Nothing, apart from you picking up a bag you don't own from those people sitting beside you in the pew. But I have a feeling we are being observed, almost like a guardian angel.' She laughs to cover her sense of the absurdity of her remark.
        'Nice to see you haven't lost it,' Eamon murmurs returning for a moment to the sardonic tone he used to use with her. He pats the bag. 'I'll explain about this later. Just some things we'll need. See if anything seems odd on the way to and from the airport.'
        Walking back across the Praza, Mary is conscious again of the unreality of the situation, the fog surrounding their trip. Will she recognise Fernando Griffin? What happens if he slips in and she misses him? At the hotel, she selects a taxi, sits in the back, and closes her eyes as they speed along the autopista towards the airport.

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