‘I’m going back,’ she called to Padmore, a Post 8 warden who was working his way down the houses. ‘It’s just Walnut Avenue after this. You OK to do it?’

‘What about Falcon Road?’

‘It’s been empty since the last rocket. Declared unsafe.’

Back at the incident, a crane had arrived at the far end of the flooded crater, and was attempting to lift whatever it was that had fractured the water main, while in the house next to the Incident Post, the WVS had set up an inquiry point. A stream of shift workers, returning from their jobs to find their homes empty or flattened, were queuing down the path. A frail-looking chap clutched Winnie’s arm as she passed. ‘I’m looking for my wife,’ he said. ‘Number 2 Archer Street. There’s no one digging there. Why isn’t there anyone digging there?’

‘Are you Mr Curry?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your wife was out shopping. She’s safe and she’s gone to your daughter’s.’ He started crying immediately, and apologized, groping for his handkerchief, thanking her with an attempted doff of the hat, managing half a smile as he wiped his eyes.

‘I’m glad to do it,’ said Winnie.

Constable Orr was standing beside the mobile canteen, eating a Lyons pie. ‘It said “plum” on the carton,’ he said, his mouth full, ‘and “blackcurrant” on the wrapper, and now it turns out it’s apple. Here, have you been into the pub just now?’

‘Not for an hour.’

‘They’ve heard tapping.’

Winnie arrived there breathless, and could sense immediately the change in atmosphere. The pace was no longer measured but rapid; the squad had formed a chain, passing baskets of rubble out through to the street from a wide-mouthed tunnel in which two men were working; she caught only occasional glimpses of their hands as they passed the baskets upward, their skin covered in a thick paste of grit. She edged around the perimeter until she could see into the hole. It sloped down at a shallow angle, and at the bottom was what looked like part of a solid surface; not floorboards, but something seamless.

‘Warden? Could you come over here a moment?’

It was the leader of the brigade, Hubbard, a heavy-set man, his face striped with sweat. Winnie followed him to a smaller excavation on the other side of the pub. ‘We thought we heard something earlier,’ said Hubbard, ‘so we sank a shaft, but the noise stopped. We’ve just found him – don’t know if he’s one of yours.’

Winnie crouched beside the hole, and Hubbard shone his torch down and the first thing she saw was a grey hand, and her eyes followed the arm down to the shoulder. The person was lying at an angle, so that the top of his head was still buried, but she could see the lower half of the face, as grey as the hand, the mouth slightly open, a set of false teeth protruding clownishly in the awful indignity of death.

‘Oh,’ she said, and the back of her neck felt sluiced with ice. ‘Oh. It’s Basset. Arthur Basset.’ Who’d said little, who’d loved his wife, who’d never failed his colleagues. ‘Oh, damn it all.’ She straightened up. ‘Damn it all.’ And there was nothing more she could do for him, except determine to tell Min Basset herself; she nodded at Hubbard, and went back across the rubble to the wider dig. Nothing appeared to have changed there, and after a minute or two she left the pub again and returned to the Incident Post, where she added Basset’s name to the list of the dead, and the night jerked onward, one decision after another, a running report to write, her hand cramping around the pencil, the mortuary van arriving, a second crane getting stuck at the corner of Longford Row, a missing child, subsequently found asleep under a chair in the rest centre, the sudden realization at 4 a.m. that if she didn’t have something to eat, she might keel over, and then there was a streak of grey in the sky and she was summoned again to the Fox and Grapes.