“Soapy Sam looked as though he had just sat down on a favourite armchair which had gone missing.”

“Sam found a chair under Robin’s butt and evicted him from it, bringing it over to his pregnant wife.“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” Robin apologized. “Thanks,” Alyssa said to Robin as she sat down, even as she gave Sam a darkly amused look.“What?” he said. “I was just helping him think.”

“With his sunglasses gone and his scarf hanging down, there was no denying that he had no flesh, he had no skin, he had no eyes and he had no face. All he had was a skull for a head.”

“I've just had a really evil idea.""My favourite kind”

“But perhaps there are in us forces other than mind and heart, other even than the senses - mysterious forces which take hold of us in the moments when the others are asleep; and perhaps it was such forces that Melchior had found in the depths of those pale eyes which had looked at him so timidly one evening when he had accosted the girl on the bank of the river, and had sat down beside her in the reeds - without knowing why - and had given her his hand.”

“It was as if the demise of the owner had lent the flat a physical void it hadn't had before. At the same time he had the feeling that he wasn't alone. Harry believed in the existence of the soul. Not that he was particularly religious as such, but it was one thing which always struck him when he saw a dead body: the body was bereft of something...the creature had gone, the light had gone,there was not the illusory afterglow that long-since burned-out stars have. The body was missing its soul and it was the absence of the soul that made Harry believe.”