The lane had been cordoned off and the traffic diverted. A posse of ambulances shuttled back and forth from one end of the lane to the other, negotiating the rubble and the carpet of glass and masonry splinters and rubble in the centre of the roadway. Someone came walking towards one of the cordons, holding his head. He was a man with half his shirt charred. He only wore one shoe. He looked at Feiffer and O'Yee passing through the cordon and then at Auden and Spencer behind them and then he took his hand away from his head. An ambulanceman caught up with him and took him back against the wall and sat him down. There were two bodies covered in rubber sheets by the sitting man. He looked at them without saying a word. At one end of the lane there was a woman and a child lying dead in a blanket of red curry powder from the Indian provisions shop. A pall of faintly acrid smoke hung over the lane. There was a huge hole in the pavement up from the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank branch and an entire window frame without glass lying half way into the hole by an upturned car.
