"In fact your running late is causing us considerable inconvenience."

Jack said, "And unless you get out of this gentleman's way and let him get on with the job that he's damn good at then you'll be running even later."

The young man's moustache trembled on his lip. Jack thought it was shaved so thin that it might be touched up with eyeshadow.

"What I meant was… "

"Just make yourself scarce, and quickly."

The young man backed away. He'd seen the bloody-minded crack on Jack's face. He decided this wasn't a man to fight with.

The pillbox was part of a line that had been built along the Surrey uplands during the summer of 1940. If the Germans had landed on any of the beaches around the resort towns of Eastbourne or Brighton and if they had broken out of the beachhead then the high ground thirty miles to the north would have been the last defensive barrier before the southern outskirts of London. They might have been chaotic times, but they had known how to build pillboxes. It was squat, hexagonal, walls two feet thick with three machine-gun slits giving a wide view down towards the Surrey and Sussex county border. No one wanted the pillbox as a memento of the war. The farmer was selling his field, the developers were buying it for twelve houses to the acre, and anyway it was a hangout for the local teenagers and their plastic bags and solvent sniffing.

The last sandbag was filled, the top knotted.

"Do I have to carry 'em all myself?"

There was a titter of laughter. He had them all lifting his sandbags, right down to the developers in their shined footwear and styled raincoats.