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soaked one of the strips in his after-shave. The tart Cologne stung his injured hand, biting at the dozens of minute cuts and abrasions. Maitland cleaned away the dirt and oil that clotted the kidney-shaped wound running from the knuckle of his wrist to the ball of his thumb. He bandaged the hand with the towelling strips, locked the trunk and hobbled through the grass around the abandoned cars.
    Five vehicles, wrecks left behind in the breaker’s yard, lay in a semi-circle around the Jaguar. The grass grew through the gaps in the rusting body panels, sprouting through the empty engine compartment of the overturned taxi. Dented fenders, a pile of bald tyres, a single bonnet hood, lay among the nettles. Maitland moved among them, now and then looking up at the embankment as he estimated what he would need to build a ramp.
    Rain fell across Maitland’s neck. He swung himself back to the Jaguar. The sun was hidden by the darkening cloud. Already it was raining heavily over central London. As he stepped into the car the cloudburst broke across the island. The gusts of rain-filled air levelled the swirling grass. The cars moving along the motorway were lashed by the rain, their headlamps flaring in the liquid darkness.
    Maitland sat back in the rear seat, watching the rain hit the window glass three inches from his face. He stared passively at the storm, grateful that he had even the minimal shelter of this crashed car. The rain striking the bonnet danced back through the open windshield, the motes of spray hitting his face.
    â€˜Come on!’ Deliberately striking his injured leg, Maitland opened the rear door. The dark rain lashed at his head, soaking his torn clothes as he pulled out his leg and struggled with the crutch, twice dropping it to the ground. As he swung himself across the breaker’s yard the whirling raindrops cut like shot through the thin fabric of his jacket and trousers. Maitland turned his head, catching the rain in his open mouth as he lurched along.
    He stumbled over the bald tyres and fell to his knees. Seizing the loose bonnet hood he had noticed earlier, he struggled back to his feet. Ignoring the rain stinging his cold skin, and the sodden bandage on his right hand, he dragged the hood towards the Jaguar, lifted it on to the bonnet and jammed it upside down through the open windshield.
    He stood back as the first water rilled down the greasy metal on to the instrument panel of the Jaguar. Leaning on the crutch, Maitland shouted soundlessly to himself, an exultant madman in the driving rain. His wet clothes clung to him like a dead animal. He climbed into the car and crouched over the front seat with the reservoir canister, steering the wavering stream of water that moved down the upturned hood. The rain slackened when there was little more than half a pint of bubble-filled water in the canister, but after five minutes began again in a steady torrent.
    By the time the storm ended, thirty minutes later, Maitland had collected a full canister of water. All this while, as he crouched forward in his soaked clothes, bruised hands fumbling across the front seat, Maitland talked aloud to himself, half aware that he was bringing both Catherine and Helen Fairfax into these monologues, sometimes mimicking their voices, allowing them to taunt him with his incompetence. To keep himself awake, he deliberately strained his injured leg, in some way identifying the pain with the image in his mind of these two women.
    â€˜Good … nearly full, don’t cut your mouth on this damned plastic. Not bad – two pints of water, enough for a couple of days. Catherine wouldn’t be impressed, though … She’d see the whole thing as some kind of over-extended joke. “Darling, you always have driven rather too fast, you know…” I’d like to see her here, as a matter of fact, how long would she last…? Interesting experiment. Wait a minute, Maitland, they’d stop for