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the police came they’d know and my wife and my kids would know and my parents and Kate’s old man would know and it would be the end of everything. And all because of an accident. That’s all it had been. She’d tripped and she’d fallen. Misadventure, didn’t they call it? Death by misadventure. And her misadventure had been coming out with me. I was responsible for her accident. Above all, I couldn’t stand anybody to know that. That I was responsible for stopping someone living out the rest of their life.
    I had to put Eileen somewhere else. Nobody would connect her with me. They couldn’t. Nobody knew I’d even spoken to her.
    Except Peggy.
    Sickness welled up inside me. If her picture was ever in the paper, would he remember her? She hadn’t even stood at the bar. I’d taken her straight to the booth. And Peggy, being the way he was, had perhaps refused to look into her face. Or maybe he’d looked too closely. God, oh my God. Perhaps I ought to go to the police right now and tell them exactly what had happened. It had been an accident. They’d probably believe me. There was no reason they shouldn’t. No, it wasn’t the police I was afraid of—it was the people I knew that terrified me. They’d hold me far more responsible than any unbelieving judge could. My life would be changed just as effectively as if I were charged for manslaughter. So I had to alter what had happened. Take a chance on Peggy. But dare I do it. Supposing . . . I pressed my hands against my face.
    What was I going to do? A dead girl, alive two minutes ago. Dead because of a phone call from me. Seventeen years old. Lying there still warm and full of drink. What would she look like, dead? How had she landed? Would I be able to look at her? Would I be able to touch her?
    I forced myself to stand up and made for the banister rail. I gripped the rail as tightly as she had done and leant forward and looked over into the blackness. The pale neon washed over the warehouse floor casting long shadows from the body of Eileen. Seeing her lying there made me close my eyes and jerk back from the edge. Seeing her lying there finalised the reality in my brain. Eileen was now a dead girl, dead because of me.
    PLENDER
    I waited out of sight in the shadows.
    There wasn’t a sound from above for at least five minutes. Then I heard the footsteps, distant and slow at first, but as they got closer to the bottom of the stairs they became quicker.
    Peter Knott stepped on to the warehouse floor and looked at the girl’s body. He only looked at it briefly. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and hurried over to the door that opened on to the street and climbed through and disappeared.
    The silly sod, I thought. He’s panicked. What a bastard. But I stayed where I was for a few minutes more, just in case. Which was just as well because a little later I heard the Mercedes draw up outside the warehouse. Knott stepped back into the light and walked over to the body and then straight past it, towards me.
    I stopped breathing.
    He came to a halt about three feet away from where I was. He seemed to be looking straight at me. I waited for him to speak. Instead he bent down and began to rummage about in the darkness, sorting through something which in the gloom I couldn’t make out. Then I noticed the smell of dust in the air, rising into my nostrils from where Knott was rummaging. Sacking. The smell was unmistakable. Dusty sacking. I smiled to myself. Peter Knott had made a decision.
    KNOTT
    I let one of the sacks drop to the floor and stood by the body holding the other one in both hands, as though I was waiting to do the gentlemanly thing and slip a coat over a lady’s shoulders. I looked down at Eileen’s body and tried to forget that it had any connection whatsoever with my-self or with death.
    But her eyes were open and shiny and the lipstick she’d put on before we’d left fought with the redness that crept from her tongue. (Perhaps if she