She didn't reach All Saints until well after eleven-thirty, but there were still signs of activity at the site.Lights, mounted on stands and on the wall of thechurch itself, poured illumination on the scene. A trioof technicians, Kavanagh's so-called removal men, stoodoutside the tarpaulin shelter, their faces drawn withfatigue, their breath clouding the frosty air. She stayedout of sight and watched the scene. She was growingsteadily colder, and her scars had begun to ache, butit was apparent that the night's work on the crypt wasmore or less over. After some brief exchange with thepolice, the technicians departed. They had extinguishedall but one of the floodlights, leaving the site - church,tarpaulin and rimy mud - in grim chiaroscuro.

The two officers who had been left on guard werenot over-conscientious in their duties. What idiot, theyapparently reasoned, would come grave-robbing at thishour, and in such temperatures? After a few minuteskeeping a foot-stamping vigil they withdrew to therelative comfort of the workmen's hut. When they didnot re-emerge, Elaine crept out of hiding and movedas cautiously as possible to the ribbon that divided onezone from the other. A radio had been turned on inthe hut; its noise (music for lovers from dusk to dawn,the distant voice purred) covered her crackling advanceacross the frozen earth.

Once beyond the cordon, and into the forbiddenterritory beyond, she was not so hesitant. She swiftlycrossed the hard ground, its wheel-ploughed furrowslike concrete, into the lee of the church. The floodlightwas dazzling; by it her breath appeared as solid asyesterday's smoke had seemed. Behind her, the musicfor lovers murmured on. No one emerged from the hutto summon her from her trespassing. No alarm-bellsrang. She reached the edge of the tarpaulin curtainwithout incident, and peered at the scene concealedbehind it.

The demolition men, under very specific instructionsto judge by the care they had taken in their labours, haddug fully eight feet down the side of All Saints, exposingthe foundations. In so doing they had uncovered anentrance to the burial-chamber which previous handshad been at pains to conceal. Not only had earth beenpiled up against the flank of the church to hide theentrance, but the crypt door had also been removed,and stone masons sealed the entire aperture up. This hadclearly been done at some speed; their handiwork wasfar from ordered. They had simply filled the entranceup with any stone or brick that had come to hand,and plastered coarse mortar over their endeavours. Intothis mortar - though the design had been spoiled bythe excavations - some artisan had scrawled a six-foot

cross.

All their efforts in securing the crypt, and markingthe mortar to keep the godless out, had gone for nothinghowever. The seal had been broken - the mortar hackedat, the stones torn away. There was now a small hole inthe middle of the doorway, large enough for one personto gain access to the interior. Elaine had no hesitation inclimbing down the slope to the breached wall, and thensquirming through.

She had predicted the darkness she met on the otherside, and had brought with her a cigarette lighter Mitchhad given her three years ago. She flicked it on. Theflame was small; she turned up the wick, and by theswelling light investigated the space ahead of her. Itwas not the crypt itself she had stepped into but anarrow vestibule of some kind: a yard or so in frontof her was another wall, and another door. This onehad not been replaced with bricks, though into itssolid timbers a second cross had been gouged. Sheapproached the door. The lock had been removed -by the investigators presumably - and the door thenheld shut again with a rope binding. This had beendone quickly, by tired fingers. She did not find therope difficult to untie, though it required both hands,and so had to be effected in the dark.

As she worked the knot free, she heard voices. Thepolicemen - damn them - had left the seclusion oftheir hut and come out into the bitter night to dotheir rounds. She let the rope be, and pressed herselfagainst the inside wall of the vestibule. The officers'voices were becoming louder: talking of their children,and the escalating cost of Christmas joy. Now they werewithin yards of the crypt entrance, standing, or so sheguessed, in the shelter of the tarpaulin. They made noattempt to descend the slope however, but finished theircursory inspection on the lip of the earthworks, thenturned back. Their voices faded.

Satisfied that they were out of sight and hearing ofher, she reignited the flame and returned to the door. Itwas large and brutally heavy; her first attempt at haulingit open met with little success. She tried again, and thistime it moved, grating across the grit on the vestibulefloor. Once it was open the vital inches required for herto squeeze through she eased her straining. The lighterguttered as though a breath had blown from within; theflame briefly burned not yellow but electric blue. Shedidn't pause to admire it, but slid into the promisedwonderland.

Now the flame fed - became livid - and for an instantits sudden brightness took her sight away. She pressedthe corners of her eyes to clear them, and looked again.

So this was Death. There was none of the art or theglamour Kavanagh had talked of; no calm laying out ofshrouded beauties on cool marble sheets; no elaboratereliquaries, nor aphorisms on the nature of humanfrailty: not even names and dates. In most cases, thecorpses lacked even coffins.

The crypt was a charnel-house. Bodies had beenthrown in heaps on every side; entire families pressedinto niches that were designed to hold a single casket,dozens more left where hasty and careless hands hadtossed them. The scene - though absolutely still - wasrife with panic. It was there in the faces that staredfrom the piles of dead: mouths wide in silent protest,sockets in which eyes had withered gaping in shock atsuch treatment. It was there too in the way the systemof burial had degenerated from the ordered arrangementof caskets at the far end of the crypt to the haphazardpiling of crudely made coffins, their wood unplaned,their lids unmarked but for a scrawled cross, and thence- finally - to this hurried heaping of unhoused carcasses,all concern for dignity, perhaps even for the rites ofpassage, forgotten in the rising hysteria.

There had been a disaster, of that she could haveno doubt; a sudden influx of bodies - men, women,children (there was a baby at her feet who could not havelived a day) - who had died in such escalating numbersthat there was not even time to close their eyelidsbefore they were shunted away into this pit. Perhapsthe coffin-makers had also died, and were thrown hereamongst their clients; the shroud-sewers too, and thepriests. All gone in one apocalyptic month (or week),their surviving relatives too shocked or too frightenedto consider the niceties, but only eager to have the deadthrust out of sight where they would never have to lookon their flesh again.

There was much of that flesh still in evidence. Thesealing of the crypt, closing it off from the decayingair, had kept the occupants intact. Now, with theviolation of this secret chamber, the heat of decayhad been rekindled, and the tissues were deterioratingafresh. Everywhere she saw rot at work, making soresand suppurations, blisters and pustules. She raised theflame to see better, though the stench of spoilage wasbeginning to crowd upon her and make her dizzy.Everywhere her eyes travelled she seemed to alightupon some pitiful sight. Two children laid together asif sleeping in each other's arms; a woman whose last act,it appeared, had been to paint her sickened face so as todie more fit for the marriage-bed than the grave.