The brothers Upwright probably didn’t believe in angels. But they believed in bullshit, and were the type to admire it when it was delivered with panache. There’s a kind of big, outdoor sort of man who’s got no patience at all with prevaricators and fibbers, but will applaud any man who can tell an outrageous whopper with a gleam in his eye.

‘Funny you should turn up tonight,’ said Harry.

‘Oh? Why?’

‘ ‘cos a man from the Grand Trunk came round this afternoon and offered us big money for the business. Too much money, you could say.’

Oh, thought Moist, something’s starting…

‘But you, Mr Lipwig, is giving us nothing but attitude and threats,’ said Jim. ‘Care to raise your offer?’

‘Okay. Bigger threats,’ said Moist. ‘But I’ll throw in a new paint job on every coach, gratis. Be sensible , gentlemen. You’ve had an easy ride, but now we’re back in business. All you have to do is what you’ve always done, but you’ll carry my mail. Come on , there’s a lady waiting for me and you know you shouldn’t keep a lady waiting. What do you say?’

‘Is she an angel?’ said Harry.

‘He probably hopes not, hur, hur.’ Jim had a laugh like a bull clearing its throat.

‘Hur, hur,’ said Moist solemnly. ‘Just carry the bags, gents. The Post Office is going places and you could be in the driving seat.’

The brothers exchanged a glance. Then they grinned. It was as if one grin spread across two glistening red faces.

‘Our dad would’ve liked you,’ said Jim.

‘He sure as hell wouldn’t like the Grand Trunk devils,’ said Harry. ‘They need cutting down to size, Mr Lipwig, and people are saying you’re the man to do it.’

‘People die on them towers,’ said Jim. ‘We see, you know. Damn right! The towers follows the coach roads. We used to have the contract to haul lads out to the towers and we heard ‘em talking. They used to have an hour a day when they shut the whole Trunk down for maint’nance.’

‘The Hour of the Dead, they called it,’ said Harry. ‘Just before dawn. That’s when people die.’

Across a continent, the line of light, beads on the pre-dawn darkness. And, then, the Hour of the Dead begins, at either end of the Grand Trunk, as the upline and downline shutters clear their messages and stop moving, one after the other.

The men of the towers had prided themselves on the speed with which they could switch their towers from black and white daylight transmission to the light and dark mode of the night. On a good day they could do it with barely a break in transmission, clinging to swaying ladders high above the ground while around them the shutters rattled and chattered. There were heroes who’d lit all sixteen lamps on a big tower in less than a minute, sliding down ladders, swinging on ropes, keeping their tower alive. ‘Alive’ was the word they used. No one wanted a dark tower, not even for a minute.

The Hour of the Dead was different. That was one hour for repairs, replacements, maybe even some paperwork. It was mostly replacements. It was fiddly to repair a shutter high up on the tower with the wind making it tremble and freezing the blood in your fingers, and always better to swing it out and down to the ground and slot another one in place. But when you were running out of time, it was tempting to brave the wind and try to free the bloody shutters by hand.

Sometimes the wind won. The Hour of the Dead was when men died.

And when a man died, they sent him home by clacks.

Moist’s mouth dropped open. ‘Huh?’

‘That’s what they call it,’ said Harry. ‘Not lit’rally, o’ course. But they send his name from one end of the Trunk to the other, ending up at the tower nearest his home.’

‘Yeah, but they say sometimes the person stays on in the towers, somehow,’ said Jim.’ “Living in the Overhead”, they call it.’

‘But they’re mostly pissed when they say that,’ said Harry.

‘Oh, yes, mostly pissed, I’ll grant you,’ said his brother. ‘They get worked too hard. There’s no Hour of the Dead now; they only get twenty minutes. They cut the staff, too. They used to run a slow service on Octedays; now it’s high speed all the time, except towers keep breaking down. We seen lads come down from them towers with their eyes spinning and their hands shaking and no idea if it’s bum or breakfast time. It drives ‘em mad. Eh? Damn right!’

‘Except that they’re already mad,’ said Harry. ‘You’d have to be mad to work up in them things.’

‘They get so mad even ordinary mad people think they’re mad.’

‘That’s right. But they still go back up there. The clacks drives them back. The clacks owns them, gets into their souls,’ said Harry. ‘They get paid practically nothing but I’ll swear they’d go up those towers for free.’

‘The Grand Trunk runs on blood now, since the new gang took over. It’s killin’ men for money,’ said Jim.

Harry drained his mug. ‘We won’t have none of it,’ he said. ‘We’ll run your mail for you, Mr Lipwig, for all that you wear a damn silly hat.’

‘Tell me,’ said Moist, ‘have you ever heard of something called the Smoking Gnu?’

‘Dunno much,’ said Jim. ‘A couple of the boys mentioned them once. Some kind of outlaw signallers, or something. Something to do with the Overhead.’

‘What is the Overhead? Er… dead people live in it?’

‘Look, Mr Lipwig, we just listen, okay,’ said Jim. ‘We chat to ‘em nice and easy, ‘cos when they come down from the towers they’re so dozy they’ll walk under your coach wheels—’

‘It’s the rocking in the wind,’ said Harry. ‘They walk like sailors.’

‘Right. The Overhead? Well, they say a lot of the messages the clacks carries is about the clacks, okay? Orders from the company, housekeeping messages, messages about messages—’

‘—dead men’s names—’ said Moist.

‘Yeah, them too. Well, the Smoking Gnu is in there somewhere,’ Jim went on. ‘That’s all I know. I drive coaches, Mr Lipwig. I ain’t a clever man like them up on the towers. Hah, I’m stupid enough to keep my feet on the ground!’

‘Tell Mr Lipwig about Tower 93, Jim,’ said Harry. ‘Make ‘is flesh creep!’

‘Yeah, heard about that one?’ said Jim, looking slyly at Moist.

‘No. What happened?’

‘Only two lads were up there, where there should’ve been three. One of them went out in a gale to budge a stuck shutter, which he shouldn’t’ve done, and fell off and got his safety rope tangled round his neck. So the other bloke rushed out to get him, without his safety rope - which he shouldn’t’ve done - and they reckon he got blown right off the tower.’

‘That’s horrible,’ said Moist. ‘Not creepy, though. As such.’

‘Oh, you want the creepy bit? Ten minutes after they was both dead the tower sent a message for help. Sent by a dead man’s hand.’ Jim stood up and put his tricorn hat on. ‘Got to take a coach out in twenty minutes. Nice to meet you, Mr Lipwig.’ He pulled open a drawer in the battered desk and pulled out a length of lead pipe. ‘That’s for highwaymen,’ he said, and then took out a big silver brandy flask. ‘And this is for me,’ he added with rather more satisfaction. ‘Eh? Damn right!’

And I thought the Post Office was full of crazy people, Moist thought.

‘Thank you,’ he said, standing. Then he remembered the strange letter in his pocket, for whatever use it was, and added: ‘Have you got a coach stopping at Pseudopolis tomorrow?’

‘Yeah, at ten o’clock,’ said Harry.

‘We’ll have a bag for it,’ said Moist.

‘Is is worth it?’ said Jim. ‘It’s more’n fifty miles, and I heard they’ve got the Trunk repaired. It’s a stoppin’ coach, won’t get there ‘til nearly dark.’

‘Got to make the effort, Jim,’ said Moist.

The coachman gave him a look with a little glint that indicated he thought Moist was up to something, but said: ‘Well, you’re game, I’ll say that for you. We’ll wait for your bag, Mr Lipwig, and the best of luck to you. Must rush, sir.’