A secular celebrant laid out some shadowless facts of Tony’s biography. She was the only person in the room who did not know him. Sam delivered a tribute, calling Tony ‘a father who loved me the best he could’ but stopping short of extolling the man in any light that might have risked a disbelieving guffaw from the pews. The mood was neither mournful nor glad. You could say the audience were still in shock over the fire at The Lodge, and the death of Tony Eastaugh the same night, but this was Bluebird; they were getting on with it. The past was worn out, not as solid as it was made out to be. Past its best. Red Cap and Tonsure Man came, some of Sam’s old colleagues from the Bluebird Building Society and the voluntary firefighters’ unit, all, like Gordon, out of duty to Sam. They were checking their watches during the montage of photographs.

There was no wake.

‘How’s your old man?’ Red Cap asked Gordon as they filed out of the chapel.

‘Disqualified for unlicensed driving. At least that settles the argument about whether his doctor’s certificate was valid. There’s a suggestion it was a forgery.’

‘Ouch,’ Red Cap said, ‘that’s gunna hurt him.’

More than killing a man, Gordon thought.

‘The old man’s out of hospital?’

‘Back in the nursing home.’

Gordon’s Car With No Name and Tony Eastaugh were totalled, but somehow Ron had emerged without a scratch. The first responders found him wandering away from the accident site with his sleeping bag and primus stove, trying to flag down vehicles travelling north. The first driver to stop had got out and run towards the smashed-up car and semitrailer. Ron cursed him for not taking him up the highway.

‘He always said you can’t kill him,’ Tonsure Man said with an appreciative stroke of his unshaven chin.

‘Lands like a cat,’ Gordon said.

The accident had been reported in the metropolitan newspapers and television bulletins, which named the victim but not the perpetrator. The licence charge against Ron was a first step, Gordon had been told by the police liaison officer who had come to the hospital the night of the accident. Negligent driving would follow, perhaps other charges, but not manslaughter. The police questioned Gordon at length, suspicious over his vagueness in describing the make and model of his car, but eventually left satisfied.

There was no hanging around after the funeral. Gordon waited for a quiet word with Sam, who was shaking hands with the last guests. In a business suit and tie, Sam looked oddly comfortable. Gordon had almost forgotten that he had spent his career in a suit, a side of Sam that had been both essential to Gordon and a foreign country.

‘You all right?’ Gordon asked as they fell into step through the crematorium gardens.

‘You got a lift home?’