It seemed like child’s play until the night he had stumbled across the occupants in one of the houses. His first instinct had been to leg it, but on second glance he realised they were in no position to chase after him. If anyone else had entered the property they would have respected the dead and left, but for Callum this was an even more promising opportunity. After all, dead people don’t object when you take the rings from their fingers, the earrings from their ears and the watches from their wrists. He didn’t see it as being wrong: they were dead, they had no use for their belongings, not any more, and if he didn’t take them, someone else would. When he arrived home laden with possessions, neither his mother nor his daughter questioned where he had got them from. If they had, he would have told them the truth. It was a dog-eat-dog world in the lives of people like the Haggartys, and he knew they wouldn’t complain about spending the money the items would bring.

It was the third night of the blitz and Callum was taking stock of his previous night’s takings. Getting rid of the stuff was easy – no one asked questions, not any more; getting the right price however was another matter. As with the previous two nights, the siren sounded. Callum grinned, gathered his treasure, as he called it, and wrapped the items in an old coal sack, before hiding it up the unused chimney breast, behind a few loose bricks.

‘You can’t trust no bugger nowadays,’ he said to Lilith and Suzie as they watched him stow his goods. ‘Them what know I’m in business will know I’m out “bomb-combing”, so they might decide to come and help themselves.’

Bomb-combing was Callum’s macabre version of beachcombing. He said it was the same principle: no one questioned when you took items found on the beach, so why should it be different if you find stuff lying around a bombed house?

He cursed as some of the items that were too big to fit into the hiding hole fell back down.

‘You need to get rid of the stuff faster than you are,’ snapped Lilith unhelpfully. ‘There’s no sense in hangin’ on to it, you’re just being greedy!’

Callum rounded on his mother. ‘Greedy! I don’t see you riskin’ your neck every time the siren goes off, oh no, you get your backside down to the cosy shelter and snore your head off ’til the coast is clear! It’s me what goes into the danger, it’s me what risks his neck with bombs, it’s me what risks gettin’ caught, to put food on the table, so no, I don’t take the first price offered. My life’s worth more to me than that!’