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pine needles above. I went on past, awkwardly and painfully back to the road, crawling.
    The Porsche was side-on in the middle of the road. headlights still blaring. Nobody had come along. I got in and drove on. There was a phone box just over the bridge. I dialled 999. The lot: police, ambulance, fire. Then I went back and watched Paul Hutchinson’s funeral pyre, gradually dying to a ball of concentrated heat. I dug out the roll of nylon raincoat from my glove compartment, but the suit was already ruined. My cigarette case had fallen out, somewhere down there.
    The police car arrived first. They parked the white Zodiac on the bank, and got out to have a look, pounding their black leather fists into their palms.
    ‘ What happened?’
    ‘ I was behind,’ I said. ‘There was a big car seemed to be trying to get past. I didn’t see how it happened. The bend.’
    I pointed back. ‘When I got here he was down the bank.’ This one was very big and probably amiable, but he looked grim just at that time. ‘You got to him?’
    ‘ I got to the car. No good.’
    ‘ Mmm!’ They looked at each other. ‘Was he dead?’
    ‘ Certainly unconscious.’
    ‘ Lucky.’
    I agreed. Lucky. He gave me a cigarette.
    The ambulance and fire engine arrived together, racing each other for it. They got foam going and rigged up some lights for when the flames would be out. Then they cooled it down with water. They forced the door open with a crowbar. What they dragged out was not recognisable. It was not a job I’d like.
    I was down there while the lights were still on, looking for my cigarette case. I found it in the mud at the edge of the river, but I didn’t pick it up until they doused the lights and I could reach inside the car on my way back and dig the keys from the ignition. They were still hot.
    They took some details from me. Then the car went off with a howl of siren that hardly seemed necessary. The firecrew were neatly putting away their gear. I got in the Porsche and went on to Bridgnorth.
    Paul had given me a few clues and the actual address. Hobs Terrace. Perched between High Town and Low Town, he’d said, up a steep run of steps cut out of the rock. He had mentioned a view of the river. I drove into town, carefully skirting the lower road, not making much fuss with the exhaust. I parked the car on the silent forecourt of a petrol station, and got out. Paul had said he had nowhere to park, so the steps obviously climbed directly from the road.
    The rain had ceased. A few stars came out. I found a wicket gate opening on to a climb of steps leading off at an angle. Twenty steps up, there was a painted sign that said this was Hobs Terrace. I climbed on. The vertical sandstone surface nudged my left elbow; a tubular steel rail protected my right. At the top the steps opened out on to a bit of flat. There were two old houses, dug into the rock. I could see the river, with beyond it the orange street-lamps of the Kidderminster Road. This was the right place.
    There was a little light. The two houses were numbered 37 and 38. I went round the side of number 38. There was a wooden outside staircase with a rickety rail. The places were old black and white buildings, pressed hard against the rock face behind. I got out Paul’s keys.
    I needn’t have troubled. The door was a weak planked job with an old sneck latch. They’d fitted a new Yale, but they must have had difficulty setting it in the rotten woodwork. Somebody had leaned on the door, and it had opened.
    I went in, but I knew it was too late.
    Paul Hutchinson had two rooms, this sitting-room and a bedroom beyond. The window in here was tiny, with flowered curtains and a white earthenware sink beneath it. One tap—obviously no hot water. There was a table with a cover on it and two chairs, and an old easy chair in front of a fireplace that had an inset gas fire. The high mantel had a little skirt of the curtain material. There were genuine hand-hewn beams across the ceiling,