In perceptual slow-motion, he looked down towards his legs, and saw that his pants were in bloody ribbons, that his thighs were as black and raw as hamburger meat, and that the remains of his penis were dangling from a thin shred of skin. He collapsed, both physically and mentally. His mind folded in on itself like a Chinese conjuring trick, and he pitched to the floor. He was aware of somebody shouting, and bright lights, and the feel of the plastic floor-tiles against his cheek, but that was all.

Dolores came down the stairs and into the store as the three looters were climbing out through the shattered window. She saw Nicolas lying doubled up against the shelves that ran the length of the middle of the store, and the blood that was sprayed all around him. She could hardly make out the looters at all, because she was half-blinded by the car lights, but the looters saw her.

She screamed, ‘Stop! Stop!’ although she didn’t want them to stop at all. One of them hesitated, holding a shotgun one-handed, its stock tucked under his arm. Dolores stared at him for a moment, at his almost invisible silhouette, and then marched formidably across the store towards him, clambering through the shattered window in her baby-doll nightie, her feet slashed by broken glass, until she was out on the sidewalk. The car meanwhile was backing off the sidewalk, bouncing on to the road, and getting ready to take off.

Dolores said to the Greek-looking man with the bloody arm and the army fatigues, ‘You’ve killed my husband.’

The man said tensely, ‘Back off. You hear me? Just back off.’

‘You’ve killed my husband,’ said Dolores, simply. It seemed important to tell the man what he had done. ‘He came from Serifos. There are blue skies there, and blue sea. Now look.’

She turned back towards the darkened store. She couldn’t see Nicolas in the shadows, but she knew he was there. ‘His name was Nicolas Andreas Prokopiou.’

A hoarse voice from the car shouted, ‘Gerry! For Christ’s sake!’ And somewhere in the air, far away, Dolores could hear the whoop of a police siren. She took two or three steps forward, and the man with the shotgun took two or three steps back.

‘Gerry!’ screeched the blonde woman’s voice from the back of the car.

There was one more second of uncertainty, and then the Greek-looking man raised his shotgun, and shot Dolores at almost point-blank range in the face. He had meant to blind her, so that she could never recognise him again, but before tonight he had only used his shotgun for hunting rabbit. He had never seen what it could do to a human being from only two feet away. It almost blew her head off, in a fountain of blood that jumped five feet in the air. She teetered around, spun and then fell.