The walk to Highgate would only have taken me ten minutes or so in normal circumstances; that night it seemed endless. The snow was heaped in irregular drifts across the road; powdery, treacherous stuff which had turned to ice beneath the surface and sent our feet out from beneath us. Effie’s toes dragged against the snow’s thin crust, slowing our progress still further. In spite of her lightness we found we had to stop to rest every few hundred yards, our breath ribboning out around us, our hands icy and our backs drenched with sweat. We saw hardly anyone; a couple of men outside a public-house watched us with incurious eyes, a child stared out from behind a plush curtain at the window of a dark house. At one point Henry thought he saw a policeman and froze in panic until I pointed out to him that policemen were not usually issued with boot-button eyes and a carrot in place of their nose.

Half an hour later we came to the cemetery which was unnaturally bright, almost luminous against the dull orange sky. As we approached it, I felt Henry begin to hang back, dragging against my shoulder so that I was almost supporting him along with Effie. Casting a last glance around us I saw that no-one was nearby. In fact, the visibility was so poor that I could hardly see the light of the nearest gaslamp, and the flurrying snow had already begun to fill our footprints with new snow. I shifted Effie’s weight from my shoulder and took the unlit lantern from my belt.

‘Here,’ I said shortly to Henry, ‘hold her for a minute.’ I saw him almost collapse as Effie’s head rolled on to his shoulder: the bonnet-strings had become loosened and her hair streamed out into his face, ghostly as the snow. Henry almost dropped her in his sudden panic. With a strangled cry of loathing he thrust the body from him so that it toppled backwards into the snow and he sprang back, his hands raised in an almost childish warding-off gesture.

‘She’s alive!’ he whispered. ‘She’s alive and she moved.’

‘Perhaps,’ I agreed, ‘but she isn’t conscious. Help me to get her up.’ In spite of my growing irritation I kept my voice gentle. ‘Not far now.’

Henry shook his head. ‘I felt her move. She’s waking up. I know she is. You take her. Give me the lantern,’ he articulated painfully, and I realized that he was close to collapse.

I thrust the lantern at him and picked Effie up out of the snow, pulling the bonnet once more over her loosened hair. Behind me Henry fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his bottle of chloral, upending it into his mouth. Then, with trembling fingers, he managed to light the lantern, and with a final glance behind him he followed me through the gates and into the cemetery.

Behind the wall of the cemetery and the endless, exquisite tension of the wind, the silence was immense, deafening. The sky above me was filled with flying things like jigsaw pieces; no moon, no stars, only the dark flakes flying like moths into the lantern. And the ground beneath was livid as the moon, as if somehow the earth and sky had changed places for this one monstrous night.

I watched Harper’s back as I followed him. In spite of the deep snow his stride was long and even; he was carrying Effie in his arms, her hair falling like a shroud over his hands and wrists. For the first time in my life I was possessed of a sudden envy of this man who seemed to have no fear, no remorse, no guilt. For he was guilty, just as much as I was, but somehow he had accepted his guilt, made his peace with it…How I longed to be Moses Harper! But as the chloral began to take effect I found that I was once more able to accept the enormity of what we were doing. Absorbed into the silence of myself, I realized that I was facing a Mystery, a return through tides and currents I had travelled once before, through the waters of my childhood and my sin, back to the room with the blue-and-white doorknob and the source of all my hate and misery…my mother.

I had long since ceased to feel the cold. There was a tingling in the tips of my fingers and in my feet, but apart from that I had no body-I drifted a few inches above the snow, dragging my feet a little against the thin crust. I realized that St Paul was right: original sin was passed on through to the soul from the body. There I was, out of my body, and I felt quite pure; the word murder danced before me in a volley of bright lights: stare at the word for long enough and you’ll find that it becomes quite meaningless.

I remember passing through the Circle of Lebanon; sepulchres on either side of the path, thatched with snow, were outlined in the fire of the lantern. Then Harper stopped, dropped the bag of tools from his shoulder into the snow and turned towards me.

‘Cover the lantern,’ he said tersely, ‘and keep watch here, by the path.’ Nodding towards the door of the sepulchre in front of him, he gently lowered Effie on to the ground and began to search in his bag. ‘No-one comes to this grave,’ he explained. ‘All the relatives are dead. It’s the ideal place.’

I did not answer. All my attention was focused on the little sepulchre. It was a chapel of sorts, the name isherwood emblazoned across the rotting stone in Gothic script. Briefly I saw a stained-glass window in the back wall, illuminated into sudden brilliance by the lantern in my hand. By the window stood the remains of a footstool, its once-fine brocade rotted into finest filigree by age and damp. Mose had opened the door without difficulty and, with mittened hands, was sweeping the floor clear of the accumulated snow and leaves which littered the marble.

‘See?’ he said, without looking round. ‘This is the opening.’ Over his shoulder I could just see a slab of marble, slightly paler than the rest, in which was set an iron ring. ‘There must be dozens of people down here,’ continued Mose, beginning to pry at the sides of the slab with the help of a small chisel. ‘Damn!’ he exclaimed irritably as the chisel slipped in his hand. ‘It’s an old seal and it’s tight. I’ll have to chip the stone.’

Suddenly the night was at my throat like a hungry wolf. Sensation flooded my frozen limbs once more and I began to sweat. I knew what we should find in the vault when Mose finally opened it. As the bitter air seared my lungs I thought I caught the elusive scent of jasmine and honeysuckle…

Then Effie moved.

I know she did: I saw her. She shifted her posture slightly and she fixed me with her terrible, verdigris eyes. I tell you, I saw her.

Harper had his back to her. He had managed to dislodge the marble slab and was working it away from the hole, his breath a dragon’s-plume of pale steam around his face. He heard my cry and turned, scanning the path for any sign of a witness.

‘She’s awake! She moved!’

I saw Harper make a gesture of impatience. But she was moving; almost imperceptibly at first, though I could guess at the coiled hatred unwinding through her thin white body; and her face was my mother’s, was Prissy Mahoney’s, was the Columbine doll and the dead whorechild, their mouths moving almost in unison to form words of black invocation, as if, at their command, the earth might open and loose a fountain of blood on to the immaculate snow…But Harper had noticed her at last; the somnolent turn of her cheek against the dark cape, the fitful clenching of her fists. In a moment he was beside her with the laudanum bottle, his arm around her shoulders. I heard her murmur something, her voice blurred like a sleeping child’s.

‘Mo…ose, I…’

‘Shh, be quiet. Go back to sleep.’ His voice was a caress.

‘No…I don’t…I don’t want…’ She was closer to wakefulness now, struggling through shades of consciousness. Harper’s voice in the shadows was gentle, seductive.

‘No, Effie…go back to sleep…shh, go back to…’

Her eyes snapped open and, in that moment, I saw the Eye of God behind her dilated pupils. I felt His Eye focusing upon me like a magnifying glass in the sun. I faced His immense, monstrous indifference.