‘You stay with me,’ Shearson reminded him, hoarsely. ‘I still pay your salary, remember, or at least I will do when I can get my hands on those bank accounts on Grand Cayman.’

‘The world’s collapsed around his ears, and he still thinks about his swindled money,’ marvelled Della.

‘My dear,’ Shearson reminded her, ‘everything that ever happens in this whole world has something to do with money. Even in the middle of a famine, you can’t lose sight of that.’

*

Two of the convoy decided to drop out and make their way to Mexico straight away – Jim Rutgers and his family, and everybody who was travelling with Sam Gasiewicz. There was a short but emotional goodbye on the Pacific Coast Highway at Topanga Beach, while the shadowy ocean seethed and foamed, and distant fires burned far away to the south. Moira Gasiewicz wept on Ed’s shoulder, and then her husband tugged her gently back to their car, nodded to Ed, and climed into the car himself.

Ed stood watching the red tail-lights curving away towards Santa Monica, and then he said to Della, ‘All right. Let’s go see what’s happening at the supermarket.’

*

It was the third attack that night. Soon after dark, the first hails of bricks, bottles and chunks of broken curbstones had racketed and splintered against the supermarket doors, and blazing gasoline had been splashed on the sidewalk outside. Then, like demons from purgatory, the crowd had come rushing through the flames with home-made cudgels and axes and fenceposts wrapped in barbed-wire, and they had hammered on the doors, so furiously and so hard that many of them had smashed their fingers and knuckles. Inside, the congregation of the Church of the Practical Miracle had stood silent and frozen, waxworks, unable to do anything but watch.

A second attack had come at nine o’clock, when one of the crowd had climbed on to the supermarket roof and tried to throw a Molotov cocktail in through the skylight. Tony, crouched behind the liquor counter, had shot at the intruder five times with his .22 target pistol as the man tried to light his home-made bomb, and had hit him twice in the arms, flesh wounds. The bomb had flared up, and splashed fiery gasoline all over the intruder’s clothes. Screaming, his hair on fire, his arms flapping in great circles of flame, he had run across the roof and toppled head-first off the edge. His body had blazed on the sidewalk for almost twenty minutes.

Now, they were attacking again, and this time the thunder of rocks and bottles against the doors was relentless and deafening.