The things one found, though, were less and less valuable with time and exposure to the elements. Blankets, with a Harrods label, but damp and musty, growing some kind of fungus in the folds. If they were washed and dried out they would still be all right; here and now they were useless. A stack of tins, but most of them blown and all of them rusted and with labels that the wetness had made indecipherable. The smell of death had largely given way to the dank smell of rot. Death was still in evidence, but showing the cleaner gleam of bone. A skeleton in stained and tattered red pyjamas, crushed in the ruins of a bed. Matthew was turning away when he saw the shine of metal; a lighter, clasped between fingers from which the flesh had gone.

At first he was disposed to leave it: the fuel would have evaporated, and the chances of finding a new supply were pretty small. But the arm moved, jolted slightly by the shift of his weight, and the lighter slipped from the bony fingers and fell. Matthew picked it up and saw that it was not an ordinary lighter but a butane one. He spun the wheel, and the flame jetted out. Quickly he cut if off; it was too valuable to waste.