Almost immediately, Mrs Bannister came down the front steps, paused under a lamp, then got into a blue-grey sedan (which Grant now recognized as hers) and drove off down Commonwealth Avenue towards the centre of town.

Grant’s throat went dry as he watched the bright gleaming tail light fade and then vanish: for a long time he could not move, though his brain was urging him, with a ‘Now – now –’ like a hammering pulse. Again it was the war that was closely recalled: the sudden thickening in the throat that meant zero hour, and the need to set course for the beaches, with no more cover, no more excuse for delay … Swallowing his fear, Grant got out of his car. In those bad old days, he had always forced himself to think: Before another five minutes have passed, I’ll be there, and it will all be over – the beaching, the scythe of lead aiming at my guts, the promise of murder: I’ve just got to exist for the next five minutes. Now he thought: Round the block into the parallel street at the back, up three flights of iron steps, and I shall have landed on this beach.

He turned his back on the brightly-lit entrance, and walked steadily for the corner and the beginning of the narrow street that ran behind the apartment block. A few minutes later, breathing fast, he had traversed the paved garden masking the service entrance to the apartments, and his foot was on the first step of the fire escape.

There were lights within the building, all the way up: the rusty iron ladder zig-zagged across the centre of it, with a small platform at each stage: to the right of every platform was a kitchen, to the left a back bedroom. Each lighted window beckoned his eyes irresistibly. At ground level, he saw a man stooping over the refrigerator in the kitchen, and a couple, negligently dressed, kissing in the bedroom. Now there’s a situation, he thought, stepping upwards past the static, dubious tableau: in that set-up, who is married to whom? Is that the husband who is hungry, while the lovers grab a quick chance? – or is it the lover who waits his turn, and meantime settles for a cold cut?

He would never know: his steps, agreeably firm, almost brave, carried him upwards, to the next floor. Here the bedroom was in darkness: in the kitchen, a coloured girl sat at the white enamelled table, eating something from a wide plate, reading a magazine propped up by its side. Save your eyesight, Chloe, Grant thought, stepping lightly past, making for the last, the crucial flight: tomorrow’s Star-Telegram should have a real story for you … His throat went dry again as the mounting steps turned for the last half-flight: his head came level with the back of the Bannister apartment, then he stood in silence, conscious of his thudding heart, on the small platform outside the kitchen door.