Midway across, Mary thought she heard the man again. She stopped, listening, and then called, “Where are you?”

“Over here.” The voice was so faint she could scarcely hear it.

“Keep talking.”

“Over …” He went off into a spasm of coughing.

Which she could hear. “Fairchild, he’s this way!” she called, and set off toward the sound, picking her way over the tangle of bricks and broken wood.

The coughing stopped. “Where are you?” she called again.

“Here he is!” Fairchild called from several yards off, and then, as Mary clambered over to her, “I found him.”

She was bending over a dark form, but she straightened as Mary reached her. “He’s dead.”

“Are you certain?” Mary said. It was so dark, Fairchild might have made a mistake. She squatted down next to the body.

Not body. Half a body. The man had been sliced in two. Which meant he couldn’t have been the one coughing. “There’s another one here somewhere,” she told Fairchild. “You take that area over there, and I’ll look over here.” She walked back the way she’d come, calling, “Where are you? If you can hear us, make a sound,” and then waiting, listening for the slightest sound before moving on again.

She stepped carefully over a broken window. A large black object lay on its side next to it. What is that? Mary wondered. A piano? No, it was far too large, and there was paper tangled in it and lying in drifts all round it. It’s a printing press, she thought. This must have been a newspaper office, and saw an arm.

Let’s hope it isn’t only an arm, she thought, scrambling over to it. Or that the rest of him isn’t under that printing press.

It wasn’t. The man lay next to it, and the reason she hadn’t been able to see him was that he was covered in newspapers, and his face was so white and so spattered with blood—which looked black in the orange light from the fires—that it was barely recognizable as a face.

He’s dead as well, she thought, squatting down next to him, but his chest was rising and falling. And as she bent closer, she saw that the white was from plaster dust, which he was caked with. “Are you all right?” she asked, but he didn’t respond. “You mustn’t worry. We’ll get you out of here straightaway. Fairchild!” she called into the darkness. “Over here!”

She tried to see what the blood was from, wishing she had her pocket torch. She could scarcely see him in the reddish firelight. But she could see the blood. It was all over his coat and the newspapers covering him. “I need a light!” she shouted, and began brushing the newspapers aside, looking for the wound that had to be there. She opened his coat. There was no blood on his shirt.

It’s someone else’s blood, she thought, and then remembered the printing press. She touched the black on his coat and then brought her fingers up to her nose. Ink. It must have splattered on him when the V-1 hit.