Seb was happy enough in that there was no homework. There was no need to worry about grades either. Or exams. Well, how could there be? There was no school any more! And Tess, his older sister, said there never would be again.

‘Bloody hell!’ said Detective Constable Bright. ‘It’s a minefield!’

‘There’s more …’ replied Detective Sergeant Dawes with a grimace.

If there was one thing Alex knew about JP by now, it was that the elaboration of a keenly held opinion wouldn’t be far away. And so it proved.

Looking round he saw an old woman dragging a bucket across the floor and holding a mop. When she realised that his eyes were upon her, she said in a throaty voice, ‘Oh, don’t mind me, dear. You carry on.’

Perhaps I even saw it as a foretaste of things to come: the hopefully not-too-distant days when my destiny would be fulfilled, and I’d be a key inhabitant, one of the new history makers.

It’s not every day you get an offer like that. In fact, most days, you don’t get an offer at all.

While I was indulging in the ritual hand blowing that characterised my Christmas travels around the graveyard, I noticed a man who was by a grave which was two rows forward and three plots along from where I was.

As a rule, the Bishop was more in than out. Consequently the size, the airiness, and the aggressive modernity of the room made quite an impression on him. Deacon Sue realised this from the way he quietly looked around and nodded.

They were in a shop together. It was Ryman in the Strand, opposite Superdrug. She had spent the day shopping in the West End. He had been at work. They hadn’t seen each other for more than twenty years.

Dessie O'Connell was 6 feet 3, thick of bone, and naturally muscular. Unlike almost all of the actors with whom he'd first competed for parts, he hardly needed to work out in order to resemble a Hellenic god.

Olly Rice had given his life to literature, but what had literature given him? A wound in the head that oozed something worse than blood or brain matter.