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times more difficult.’
    ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘Of course not, Bill,’ Maxwell sighed. ‘She’ll be livid, but that’s my problem. It’s not as if we haven’t been here before. We’ve rowed about it, I’ve promised never to do it again, we’ve rowed some more. It’s who we are. Don’t worry. Call it a compulsion. Some men gamble. Others drink. Yet others womanise. I investigate murder. Heigh ho. Waddya going to do?’ It was a perfect Homer Simpson.
    ‘But I do worry, Max. If poking around crime scenes is what you do, worrying is what I do. Emma’s always telling me about it.’
    ‘Well, don’t worry, Bill. I dare say you’ve already been told it may never happen.’
    ‘About fifty times a day.’
    ‘There you are, then. Everyone can’t be wrong.’
    ‘But there’s so much out there, isn’t there? There’s accidental death, there’s tripping hazards, there’s electricity ! There’s bodies of water, there’s ice falling from aeroplanes, there’s killer bees !’ Bill’s grip on the steering wheel was getting harder; his knuckles stood out like quail’s eggs under his skin in the scudding street lights. Maxwell hadn’t realised that the nice, easy-going photographer of Leighford High was such a neurotic. ‘There’s thunder. There’s lightning.
    There’s trains, both derailed and carrying nuclear waste.’
    ‘There’s a huge Tesco lorry.’
    ‘Yes, true, there’s all sorts of lorries.’
    ‘No, Bill, I mean, there’s a huge Tesco lorry, over there, coming at us round the roundabout.’
    Bill swallowed a scream and screeched to a halt. ‘Oh Max, I’m sorry. That was a close one.’ He sat with both hands frozen to the wheel, staring straight ahead.
    ‘Yes, Bill.’ Maxwell felt his heart descend slowly from his mouth again. ‘But that’s what it was. A close one. We have close ones all day long, but we negotiate the stairs, we float, we swat the bee. We even,’ and he patted the man’s white knuckles with a smile, ‘miss the lorry. Think of all the things that happen every day to feel lucky about. Not the things that could ruin your life.’
    ‘It’s OK for you, Mr Maxwell,’ he said peevishly. ‘You’re all right. Lovely wife…er…policewoman. Lovely baby; I’ve seen him on the back of your bike.’
    Maxwell snorted softly down his nose and smiled. It’s what he did when his natural reaction would be to let a tear roll softly down his cheek. He waited while the man found his gears again and drove on.
    ‘Oh, Bill,’ he said, patting the man’s arm and making the car buck wildly across the carriageway for a moment. ‘Bill, I am lucky. I am all right.’ He let a moment pass, while he got his throat ready to speak through again. He looked out of the window, saw in the dark glass the faces of his first wife and baby daughter, torn from him when his life was so very, very all right. Before that day when the wet road had killed them, and the sharp bend and the flying police car, all sirens and flashing lights and macho bravado. He touched a forefinger tip to his ghostly baby’s nose and looked away.
    ‘Right then, Bill,’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘Are we there yet?’ All in all, it was a pretty good Bart and Lisa Simpson.

    The big car growled down the road that skirted the Shingle and rolled into the car park at the landward side of the dunes. The two men got out and went round to the boot. There was a brief hiatus whileBill thought he had left the torch at home. He then found it under the first-aid box, foil lined blanket and emergency fluorescent triangle without which he refused to go on even the shortest journey. He’d seen a documentary on the telly once about the Donner Party, the wagon train that had left Missouri too late and only survived by cannibalism. Yes, that was the Rockies and 1846, but try telling Bill Lunt that.
    Maxwell was a patient man; Bill Lunt’s luck truly was in. Anyone else would have given him a clip round the ear and