There was a fence along the side of the track, with some street lighting the other side of it, and I soon found an easy gap to climb through. I jumped down, and landed straight in a four-foot snow drift. I fell forward and cursed, then picked myself and my bag up. There were creaking and rattling sounds from the train. I heard a couple of voices, then the slamming of a door and the train began to move off.

I looked around. I was in the middle of freezing bloody nowhere, with no map, no particularly warm coat, and the knowledge that Adamsville, Ohio, where I wanted to be by morning, was a good four-hundred-mile drive from here, through some of the worst possible conditions imaginable. I walked down the road and came to a row of houses, with snow-bound cars parked outside them. No good, someone might hear me, and I couldn’t risk that. I walked on, and then found what I had been hoping for: a house at the top of a long gradient, with a car in the driveway facing out. It was a massive Oldsmobile 98 station-wagon.

I tried to get my flat skeleton key into the door lock, but the lock was frozen solid. I lit my cigarette lighter and put the key over the flame for several seconds; it then slid easily into the lock, and turned. There was a clunk that sounded, in the quiet of the falling snow, like a twenty-one-gun salute, as the electro-magnetic central locking device shot all four door-pins into the up position. I opened the door; it hadn’t been oiled in years and creaked badly. I put the key in the ignition and fiddled it about for several seconds, until it turned, and the steering wheel lock disengaged. I did not attempt to start the car, but climbed out and cleared the snow off the wind-shield. Then I sat back in the car, removed the parking brake, put the gear shift into neutral, and we started to coast down the hill.