The explosion was now officially designated an «Act of God».

But, thought Dirk, what god? And why?

What god would be hanging around Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport trying to catch the 15.37 flight to Oslo?

After the miserable lassitude of the last few weeks, he suddenly had a great deal that required his immediate attention. He frowned in deep thought for a few moments, and hardly noticed when the beast-boy snuck back in and snuggled back into his sleeping-bag just in time for the advertisements to start. The first one showed how a perfectly ordinary stock cube could form the natural focus of a normal, happy family life.

Dirk leapt to his feet, but even as he was about to start questioning the boy again his heart sank as he looked at him. The beast was far away, sunk back in his dark, flickering lair, and Dirk did not feel inclined to disturb him again at the moment.

He contented himself with barking at the unresponding child that he would be back, and bustled heavily down the stairs, his big leather coat flapping madly behind him.

In the hallway he encountered the loathed Gilks once more.

«What happened to you?» said the policeman sharply, catching sight of Dirk's bruised and bulging nose.

«Ondly whad you dold me,» said Dirk, innocently. «I bead bythelf ub.»

Gilks demanded to know what he had been doing, and Dirk generously explained that there was a witness upstairs with some interesting information to impart. He suggested that Gilks go and have a word with him, but that it would be best if he turned off the television first.

Gilks nodded curtly. He started to go up the stairs, but Dirk stopped him.

«Doedth eddydthig dthrike you adth dthraydge aboud dthidth houdth?» he said.

«What did you say?» said Gilks in irritation.

«Subbthig dthraydge,» said Dirk.

«Something what?»

«Dthraydge!» insisted Dirk.

«Strange?»

«Dthadth right, dthraydge.»

Gilks shrugged. «Like what?» he said.

«Id dtheemdth to be cobbleedly dthouledth.»

«Completely what?»

«Dthouledth!» he tried again. «Thoul-leth! I dthigg dthadth dverry idderedthigg!»

With that he doffed his hat politely, and swept on out of the house and up the street, where an eagle swooped out of the sky at him and came within a whisker of causing him to fall under a 73 bus on its way south. For the next twenty minutes, hideous yells and screams emanated from t he top floor of the house in Lupton Road, and caused much tension among the neighbours. The ambulance took away the upper and lower remains of Mr Anstey and also a policeman with a bleeding face. For a short while after this, there was quietness.

Then another police car drew up outside the house. A lot o «Bob's here» type of remarks floated from the house, as an extremely large and burly policeman heaved himself out of the car and bustled up the steps. A few minutes and a great deal of screaming and yelling later he re-emerged also clutching his face, and drove off in deep dudgeon, squealing his tyres in a violent and unnecessary manner.

Twenty minutes later a van arrived from which emerged another policeman carrying a tiny pocket television set. He entered the house, and re-emerged a short while later leading a docile thirteen-year-old boy, who was content with his new toy.

Once all policemen had departed, save for the single squad car which remained parked outside to keep watch on the house, a large, hairy, green-eyed figure emerged from its hiding place behind one of the molecules in the large basement room.

It propped its scythe against one of the hi-fi speakers, dipped a long, gnarled finger in the almost congealed pool of blood that had collected on the deck of the turntable, smeared the finger across the bottom of a sheet of thick, yellowing paper, and then disappeared off into a dark and hidden otherworld whistling a strange and vicious tune and returning only briefly to collect its scythe.

A little earlier in the morning, at a comfortable distance from all these events, set at a comfortable distance from a well-proportioned window through which cool mid-morning light was streaming, lay an elderly one-eyed man in a white bed. A newspaper sat like a half-collapsed tent on the floor, where it had been hurled two minutes before, at shortly after ten o'clock by the clock on the bedside table.

The room was not large, but was furnished in excessively bland good taste, as if it were a room in an expensive private hospital or clinic, which is exactly what it was — the Woodshead Hospital, set in its own small but well-kempt grounds on the outskirts of a small but well-kempt village in the Cotswolds.

The man was awake but not glad to be.

His skin was very delicately old, like finely stretched, translucent parchment, delicately freckled. His exquisitely frail hands lay slightly curled on the pure white linen sheets and quivered very faintly.

His name was variously given as Mr Odwin, or Wodin, or Odin. He was — is — a god, and furthermore he was that least good of all gods to be alongside, a cross god. His one eye glinted.

He was cross because of what he had been reading in the newspapers, which was that another god had been cutting loose and making a nuisance of himself. It didn't say that in the papers, of course. It didn't say, «God cuts loose, makes nuisance of himself in airport,» it merely described the resulting devastation and was at a loss to draw any meaningful conclusions from it.

The story had been deeply unsatisfactory in all sorts of ways, on account of its perplexing inconclusiveness, its goingnowhereness and the irritating (from the newspapers' point of view) lack of any good solid carriage. There was of course a mystery attached to the lack of carnage, but a newspaper preferred a good whack of carnage to a mere mystery any day of the week.

Odin, however, had no such difficulty in knowing what was going on. The accounts had «Thor» written all over them in letters much too big for anyone other than another god to see. He had thrown this morning's paper aside in irritation, and was now trying to concentrate on his relaxation exercises in order to avoid getting too disturbed about all this. These involved breathing in in a certain way and breathing out in a certain other way and were good for his blood pressure and so on. It was not as if he was about to die or anything — ha! — but there was no doubt that at his time of life — ha! — he preferred to take things easy and look after himself.