He finds his way round the mansion to the narrow lane that runs between it and its row of red-brick garages (or stables, as his grandparents would be likely to peg them). He finds it a very pleasant place for a cigarette. The lane is lined with trees, a densely planted hedge of them. The sun is just setting now. It is still high enough to snipe through any small defects that it finds in the defensive perimeter of the horizon, so narrow red beams strike him surprisingly in the eye as he ambles back and forth. He knows one is shining invisibly through the clear air several feet above him, because it is betraying an aerial: a strand of copper wire stretched from the wall of the mansion to a nearby cypress. It catches the light in precisely the same way as the strand of the spiderweb that Waterhouse was playing with earlier.