Decider/The Sugar Pavilion/Point of Impact/Blitzcat [antikvár]

OK, so here I am, Lee Morris, opening doors and windows to gusts of life and early death. They looked pretty harmless on my doorstep: two middle-aged civil Englishmen in country-gent tweeds and flat caps, their eyebrows in unison raised enquiringly, their shared expression one of embarrassed anxiety. 'Lee Morris?' one of them said, his diction clipped, secure, expensive. 'Could we speak to him?' 'Selling insurance?' I asked drily. Their embarrassment deepened. 'No, actually ' Late March evening, sun low and strong, gold light falling sideways onto their benign faces, their eyes achingly narrowed against the glare. They stood a pace or two from me, careful not to crowd. Good manners all round. I realised that 1 knew one of them by sight, and I spent a few extended seconds wondering why on earth he'd sought me out on a Sunday a long way from his normal habitat. During this pause three small boys padded up the flagstoned passage from the depths of the house behind me, concentratedly threaded a way round me and silently climbed like^-cats up into the fuzzy bursting-leaf-bud embrace of an ancient spreading oak nearby on the lawn. There the three figures rested, becoming immobile, lying