They had called it a field, but in reality it was a mud-flat. The glue-like muck was ankle-deep. With each step it sucked at his heavy black shoes, and caught the hem of his blue uniform trousers.
Not long before, on television, he had seen a report on the aftermath of a hurricane. It had struck a Caribbean town on market day, cutting a swathe through the stalls and tents of the traders, smashing them to matchwood, tearing them to shreds, overturning vehicles, unwinding bolts of colourful fabric and tangling them together like a great patchwork quilt.
The picture came back to him as he looked around the muddy acres in which he stood. It was strewn with suitcases and rucksacks, all burst open, their contents spread around.
Here and there his attention was caught by a sombrero, or a big black fan, bought for wall-mounting, but now broken on the ground, or a stuffed toy donkey with big, sad eyes, looking frighteningly realistic as if it were wondering what had happened to its owner.
When he saw the first victim, he thought at first that it was some more odd detritus from the baggage hold. He stared at it, and another picture came into his mind. The day before, driving to work, he had approached a road-kill lying in the kerbside. In spite of himself, he had looked at the bloody bundle of fur, trying in vain to determine what form of animal life it had been. Looking at the shapeless tangle on the ground, he felt the same sensation, hoping irrationally that the thing, with white bones protruding at odd angles from its blackened flesh, might be some large creature caught on the ground by the flaming aircraft, or another, outsize, stuffed memento, but knowing too that it was neither.
And then he saw the doll, lying in the mud, disjointed and unclothed. He saw it, he bent down towards the mud, and he picked it up…
Skinner sat bolt upright in bed. Cold sweat lashed his face. He thought, although he could not be certain, that he might have screamed. If he had, then the sound had not awakened Sarah; she lay beside him, tossing restlessly in her sleep. He wondered what dark dreams she was having.
He was breathing slightly heavily, and his chest was damp with sweat. He swung his legs out of bed and stood up in an effort to compose himself. Suddenly a snuffling cry sounded from the loudspeaker of the baby-minder. It was only Jazz, staging one of his occasional nocturnal interventions, but suddenly Bob was back in the depths of his nightmare. He sat back down on the bed, hard, and wondered if he had indeed screamed, and roused his son.
As he sat there, Sarah stirred and woke. Jazz cried again, approaching full volume this time.
`This is a first,' she murmured, seeing him. 'You normally sleep through that, or pretend to, till I've got up to see to him'
He turned to look at her. Her earlier emotional exhaustion seemed to have been slept away; she appeared calm and settled.
He forced a smile. 'Build up for thyself treasures in Heaven",' he said. 'He probably wants changing. I'll see to it.'
`Good boy. Don't be long.'
`You go back to sleep. I'm awake for keeps, I think. It's five-thirty, and I've got an early start this morning.'
When the alarm woke Sarah at 7.20, Bob and Jazz were lying by her side, forehead to forehead, the father lost in thought, holding the sleeping child in his arms as if to shield him from anything the world could throw at him. She looked at them, and wondered.