II

Knox jogged down the bank’s front steps, exasperated by the absurd paperwork required just to change some euros. But it was done at last. Now for some supplies. He walked across town to a small but lively market, a riot of colourful clothing and sparkling costume jewellery, with produce spread out on rickety wooden tables: yellow-brown bananas, orange-green mandarins, plum tomatoes not quite ripe, clumps of garlic and onions, stubby carrots, creamy white manioc, coconuts both hairy and husked, clutched fists of lettuce, pumpkins, papaya, glistening steel bowls of rice and beans.

The brilliant sun in the unpolluted sky gave the slightly eerie impression of being underwater. Greasy tables of zebu steaks buzzed with fat sapphire-and-emerald flies. Salted sardines glittered like spilled chests of silver coins. A crone sat astride two wicker baskets of orange-red crabs, thrusting her bamboo cane into the writhing intestinal mass, irritating pincers until they snapped and clenched the cane so tightly she could lift them out and shake them off into a bucket. He bought fish, rice and other supplies to eat that night in case they didn’t reach Eden by sunset, added some biscuits and bottled water.

Time to get back to the pirogue. He took a moment to get his bearings. He could see a line of palm trees above some shacks to his right, their fronds swept back like hippies walking into the wind. That had to mark the shore. He set off towards them before catching a glimpse of the beach down the far end of a narrow alley between two lines of huts. He turned and ambled along it, utterly oblivious of the man following a dozen paces behind.