The man was as physically different from Gumboots as could be imagined.  He was tall, thin and gangly, and gave the impression of having a lot of energy compressed within his lean body.  He was dressed completely in black from his tight-fitting jeans to his T-shirt, biker's jacket and cap.  His hair, too—or what we could see of it—was dark;  an untidy spray of it was escaping from under all sides of his hat, and the thick stubble on his cheeks and chin seemed to merge with his straggling mustache.  He appeared to be wearing dark cowboy boots, now so coated with sand from his descent into the dump that I could not make out their color with any certainty.  And in contrast to what we had seen of Gumboots' behavior, he seemed to move with self-assurance and cold deliberation.  Certainly he had not hesitated to take the other man's life, and nothing in his subsequent actions suggested panic or remorse.

He raised his eyes from the dead body to the car, and had moved a couple of steps toward it when he suddenly jerked around.  I saw Tony give an involuntary spasm of movement, and felt my own hands tightening on my handlebars, but it was not toward us that the man had snapped his head.  He was looking intently at the ground in the middle of the track, and at something that had caught his eye there.  Slowly he retraced his steps, then bent down and picked up the object.

It was Robert's pump.

The man inspected his find closely and unhurriedly, holding the shiny metal cylinder in his right hand, then brought the other end down into his left hand and held the pump like a cop wielding his nightstick.  Then he began to inspect the ground around him.  I could imagine what he was discovering, and what conclusions he was drawing:  the area where he was standing was covered with our sneaker marks and bicycle tracks.  He was putting two and two together, and any moment now would get the right answer. 

Slowly the black-clad man raised his head to stare down the perimeter track, but in the direction away from us.  For a long moment he was perfectly still, as were we, as was Gumboots, as were the seagulls and even the clouds in the sky, or so it seemed to me.  I had the most extraordinary feeling that I was in a video that someone had frozen on the screen with the 'pause' button.  The moment seemed to go on forever.

Without warning, then, the man snapped around and in a split second took in our presence;  throwing the pump aside, he reached into his jacket.  That was all the impetus we needed.  Four of us moved off with an acceleration we had never before achieved.  No shout came from behind, but within a couple of seconds came something far worse. 

He was shooting.