The cop gave a cursory look around. ‘Not that I can see,’ he said. ‘It looks like they just lit out. They didn’t even lock the doors.’

There was a pause, and then the voice said, ‘Can you do me a favour?’

‘Sure, you name it.’

‘Can you write on the wall someplace that Ed Hardesty called, from South Burlington Farm in Kansas, and that I’m going to try to make my way to LA?’

The cop took out his pencil and jotted the message down. ‘South Burlington?’ he asked.

‘That’s right.’

‘Okay, then, I got you. I’ll do that.’

‘Thanks a whole lot. If this situation ever mends itself, come around to the house you’re at and claim yourself a case of whisky.’

The cop grinned. ‘To tell you the truth. I’m a vodka man.’

Ten

Ed carefully set the telephone back in its cradle, and looked across the living-room at Karen. Then, while she watched him, he stood up and walked to the window, staring out at the front yard of South Burlington Farm the same way he used to when he was a boy.

‘Well?’ asked Karen. ‘Weren’t they there?’

‘That was a cop,’ Ed told her, taking out a cigarette and lighting it slowly. He breathed out smoke. ‘He said the house was empty. Even the doors had been left unlocked.’

‘They’ve probably gone to stay somewhere safer,’ Karen suggested. ‘The way I heard it on the news, a whole lot of people are banding together to protect themselves from looters, and Hell’s Angels, and people like that. Maybe they’ve found some kind of sanctuary.’

Ed leaned against the window-pane. Outside, the sun was gradually eating its way into the roof of the stables opposite, and the sky had flushed the colour of ripe strawberries. To a city dweller, an evening like this on a Kansas wheat farm would have looked idyllic. To a farmer, the overwhelming silence, right in the peak of the early harvesting season, was ominous. The tractors were all parked and covered with tarps; the stables were empty and quiet. A single door banged and banged in the warm breeze that had risen on the prairie.

‘I used to believe that this was God’s own country,’ said Ed. ‘Now I’m not so sure.’

Karen said nothing, but came across to stand beside him. She was wearing a pale blue blouse that belonged to Season, and a pair of Season’s baggy denim jeans. Her hair was drawn back, the way Season often drew hers back, and tied with a ribbon.

‘You’ll find them,’ she said, gently. ‘You know you will.’ Ed looked at her. ‘Yes,’ he said, unconvinced.