He moved forward. He had to push through the ash layers, climb over the cold lava bombs which lay beneath it, like pushing through a shallow stream.

There were people in the pews, he saw.

Some were sitting, some had been kneeling, some seemed to have fallen. Their bodies were barely visible, all but drowned by the ash. Here was a woman — he couldn’t tell her age — her face tipped up to the ceiling, he supposed towards God, her mouth open and clogged with ash.

“The roof probably gave way immediately,” Blue said gently. “The ceiling rubble came down on them, and then pumice, hot ash, steam, gases. They must have died very quickly. Probably of suffocation.”

“I suppose they came here for shelter.”

“I suppose so. Perhaps we will find the priest at his altar. If they are undisturbed, perhaps this will form another Pompeii, for future archaeologists.”

Ted stopped beside another woman. “They are not undisturbed.”

Blue bent to see.

It didn’t take long to find him. There weren’t many places left in the Cathedral intact enough to hide in.

He was in the Thistle Chapel, an ornate, heavily ornamented twentieth-century annexe of the Cathedral. The windows had blown in, but its roof had survived, and so had most of the Chapel’s ornamentation: carved animals, angels playing musical instruments, including bagpipes.

He was hiding under a pew. He was thin, in rags, filthy, wide eyes staring out of a sketch of a face, patchy stubble over the spittle-splashed chin. Really no more than a boy, Ted realized. He had a little food — cans and packets and bottles of water, detritus around him — and a pathetic stack of valuables, jewellery and wallets and cash.

Ted pulled off his hood. There was a stench.

“You have fouled yourself,” he said softly. “Even an animal does not foul itself. Are you, then, less than an animal?”

Blue was frowning at him, but Ted kept his gaze on the boy.

“I don’t know you.” The lad’s voice was thin, breaking, from fear and disuse.

“I know you,” Ted said. “You are Hamish Macrae. The one they called Bran.”

Bran said nothing. He shrank back beneath his pew, folding his legs against his chest.

Ted reached forward and collared him, as simple as that. From a renewed, sharp stink, it seemed as if Bran had fouled himself once more.

“Who are you?”

“Don’t you remember me, Hamish?”

“No…”

“A father, of one you led to the Seat. One of many. To his death.”

Bran was trembling, but he spoke up bravely enough. “So you found me. So what?”

Blue asked, “How did you know he would be here?”

“He stayed as close to the heart of it as he could. He was scared to run too far. There are others looking for him.”