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luminous on the still black sky. It reminded him of Kashmir, and the frozen peaks of the Himalayas.
    As he negotiated the metals of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, his thoughts unavoidably drifted. Sure-footed, his mount picked its way along steep embankments of slag and clinker. To his left, the sprawling mass of mill chimneys, wreathed in shimmering mist as the pale eye of day winked open, gradually fell away into unreality.
    He remembered a more merciless sun; a seething, beating sun. He remembered the plains before Goojerat, the battle lines drawing steadily together. He recalled the dense masses of the Sikh army – thirty thousand strong at least, shields and scimitars and jewel-bedecked turbans gleaming in the dust. Then there were the British, perhaps twelve thousand, advancing in stages, step-firing, blowing out huge gaps in the native ranks. The din was amazing. Above the crash and scream of cannonade, was that frightful wailing so typical of sub-continental warfare, the brazen pipes and trumpets, the wild clashing of drums and symbols.
    Craddock closed his eyes. It was so romantic when you remembered it in that textbook fashion. But there was no hiding the reality of the aftermath. The stench of blood and bowels and cordite. The fields of twisted, broken bodies, slowly baking in raging heat, swarming with bloated flies. The major hung his head. In comparison, Wigan, for all its squalor and turmoil, was a joyous place to be.
    Then he heard the chuckle. The rasping, papery chuckle.
    Curiously, he turned.
    Behind him, running parallel to the L&Y, was a secondary cutting, once used to accommodate a mineral line, the rails and sleepers of which had long been removed. Instead, the gully was now filled with brick rubble, broken planks and dead, frozen vegetation. Thirty yards along it, close to an old footbridge, at a point where a wheeled coal tub lay rusting on its side, a figure was seated on a mound of earth, its back turned.
    The ex-soldier’s spine prickled when he saw it. It was warming itself by a meagre fire built on a heap of white sticks, but it sat completely still, like something dead. Its clothing, he saw, was of old sacking, but heavy, voluminous even, and greenish in colour. On top, it had been pulled up high into a monk’s pointed cowl. More frightening than this, though, the figure was diminutive in stature. The major could tell that even from this distance.
    He felt his heart begin to thump. He cleared his throat to speak, which seemed to take seconds. From the fogged urban spread behind there was suddenly silence. Wintry gusts blew hard on the snowy slag-heaps.
    “ I say, fellow!” he finally called. “You – what are you doing here?”
    It made no reply, didn’t even move.
    Craddock eased his horse forward and steered it down the slope, broken ground crumbling beneath its hooves. When he reached the bottom, the air was even colder. Rigid wheel-ruts were slick with grey-green ice. He turned to face the hooded shape again. It was still there. The fire flickered beside it.
    “ I know you can hear me!” the major said, urging his animal forward. “I’m James Craddock, chief inspector of the borough police. You’d best have an answer.”
    Apparently the figure didn’t. It held its posture. Craddock reined up when he was ten feet away. Whatever this thing was, it was indeed small; probably under three feet. Yet Craddock knew it cared nothing for his presence. He was insignificant to it, an insect. Maybe less. The major’s fingers tightened on his riding crop; he sensed his mount growing uneasy, snorting, pawing hard. He thought of black and mangled necks, heads lolling.
    “ I’ll arrest you,” he said quietly. “So help me God, I’ll arrest you for nothing if I have to. I’ll make the charges stick. They’ll drop you through that trap like a mealy-bag.”
    And only then did it turn toward him.
    But with infinitesimal slowness.
    Scarcely seeming to move, its hooded form twisted