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'Just . . . hanging out with friends. Experiments, you know. Down at the river. Checking the air quality. Someone has to.'

'And how is the air quality?'

'Epic fail,' Aidan said. 'Major no.'

'Doesn't look like the HQ's moving in, does it?'

'No.'

Jane scratched at his beard. The sound seemed enormous. 'Fielding gave me the envelope . . .'

'An envelope.'

'Sorry?'

'Fielding gave you an envelope. It wasn't the envelope.'

'You mean I was given false information?'

Aidan didn't say anything. He couldn't meet Jane's gaze.

'Why are you here, Aidan? You get the same dodgy map?'

'Something like that,' he said.

'Something like that.'

The hand on the belly. A prickle of sweat drawing attention to the frown.

'You OK, Aid?' His mind went back to the first time they'd met. Becky's concern. The thought of his blood conspiring against him.

'Yeah. Just tired. Just hungry. You promised me a roast dinner once.'

'Shit. You didn't forget that, did you?'

'Can I have it now?'

They had picked through the debris of countless restaurants and bars to no avail. Everything worth eating had been carried off. What remained were the bones of people who had decayed where they'd dropped many years before. No chocolates or fudge in the duty-free boutiques. No snack packs dangled in the vending machines.

'What about out there?' Aidan asked.

'There's nothing out there,' Jane said. 'You mean the houses beyond the perimeter?'

'No. I mean the planes.'

They found a self-propelled passenger stairway in a maintenance hangar and trundled it out to a Virgin Atlantic 747 that had pushed back from its ramp at the moment the Event hit it, peeling off much of its paint and tearing the tail section clean off the rear of the aircraft. The flap canoe fairings had been snapped away from the underside of the wings like model parts, and the main jet-core shrouds were torn, revealing the intestinal squirm of the machine beneath. A telegraph pole had become a javelin, thrown by 200 mph winds from outside the perimeter fence, puncturing the fuselage above the sagging portside wing. Both wings had given up their yield of fuel; maybe 120 tons had poured out of the cracked tanks and evaporated, leaving a dark stain that reached out almost as far as the main runway. It was a wonder there had not been an explosion. The roof of the cockpit had been crunched in, a hard-boiled egg beneath a spoon, by something that was no longer in evidence. Jane thought he could see a white shirtsleeve, an arm thrown back on the flight deck, above a face that was nothing but shadow.

'Maybe we should try a different plane,' Jane said. 'I mean, this one was just setting off. There'll be a lot of bodies on it.'

'Then there'll be a lot of food too. They wouldn't have started serving until they got into the sky, would they?'

Aidan was right. A smaller plane taxiing towards the terminal would have had an empty galley. What was the point of protecting him from bodies when they were everywhere you looked? Jane sighed. Just to give him a break, he supposed. It would be nice not to have all that grinning in your face all day, every day.

The doors were sealed; the holes pitting the skin of the jet too small to climb through. They pushed the stairs around to the back of the plane. There was a ragged hole where the empennage had been.

'Big enough for you?' Jane asked. Aidan nodded.

Jane raised the stairs to the hole; they rattled in the spanks of wind gusting in from across the wide, open airfield.

'See if you can open that rear exit for me once you're in,' Jane said. 'Don't fanny about.'

Aidan skipped up the stairs and hoisted himself into the Jumbo. A few moments later his face appeared at one of the windows. He gave Jane a thumbs-up. He ducked clear of the window and a few seconds later the door folded outwards. Jane withdrew the stairs and repositioned them at the doorway. Inside he drew the door to, not closing it completely. A sudden snapshot in his head: Rae and Carver exploding through the crack in a door. He couldn't get on with doors any more. Closed, open, they would never stay still in his thoughts.

'All right?' Aidan asked.