'Does it pay well, being a librarian?'

'Certainly does!' exclaimed Spike. 'Sometimes she is called away to do freelance contract work – emergency card-file indexing or something – and they pay her in used notes, too – in suitcases. Don't know how they manage it, but they do.'

I sighed and gave up.

We drove around twice more. Parks and the rest of the SO-6 spooks had long since got bored and driven off, and I was beginning to get a little tired of this myself.

'How long do we have to do this for?' I asked as we drove on to the Junction 16 roundabout for the seventh time, the sky darkening and small spots of rain appearing on the windscreen. Spike turned on the wipers, which squeaked in protest.

'Why? Am I keeping you from something?'

'I promised Mum she wouldn't have to look after Friday past five.'

'What are grannies for? Anyway, you're working.'

'Well, that's not the point, is it?' I answered. 'If I annoy her she may decide not to look after him again.'

'She should be grateful. My parents love looking after Betty, although Cindy doesn't have any – they were both shot by police marksmen while being librarians.'

'Doesn't that strike you as unusual?'

He shrugged.

'In my line of work, it's difficult to know what unusual is.'

'I know the feeling. Are you sure you don't want to play in the Superhoop?'

'I'd sooner attempt root canal work on a werewolf He pressed his foot hard on the accelerator and weaved around the traffic that was waiting to return to the westbound M4. 'I'm bored with all this. Death, drape your sable coat upon us!'

Spike's car shot forward and rapidly gathered speed down the slip road as a deluge of summer rain suddenly dumped on to the motorway, so heavy that even with the wipers on full speed it was difficult to see. Spike turned on the headlights and we joined the motorway at breakneck speed, passing through the spray of a juggernaut before pulling into the fast lane. I glanced at the speedometer. The needle was just touching ninety-five.

'Don't you think you'd better slow down?' I yelled, but Spike just grinned maniacally and overtook a car on the inside. We were going at almost a hundred when Spike pointed out of the window and yelled:

'Look!'

I gazed out of my window at the empty fields; there was nothing but a curtain of heavy rain falling from a leaden sky. As I stared I suddenly glimpsed a sliver of light as faint as a will-o'-the-wisp. It might have been anything, but to Spike's well-practised eye it was just what we'd been looking for – a chink in the dark curtain that separates the living from the dead.