The Crocus List

The east wind was still holding, thrashing the nettles against their legs at the rickety lychgate as they walked back towards the hospice.
"If it had been him running it," Maxim said, "I wonder if we'd ever have caught them. He sounded better than us."
They had to pass the glassed-in verandah where a few well-wrapped patients sat staring out through the pines to the grey sea. They didn't look at Maxim and, after one glance, he didn't look at them.