The fat man brushed Innocent aside and strode straight past us, close enough for me to catch his acrid smell, and the rest of the group moved forward with him, although most of them gave us a wider berth. We kept on singing, our words a jumbled, discordant mess of ‘infant so tender and mild in a one-horse open sleigh oh come and behold him’ and the like. Not until the last man had disappeared did my relief make the words fizzle out of me, and then the others also fell silent, leaving us in the clicking, chattering hush of the jungle.

Innocent motioned for us to follow him. ‘Quickly, in case he changes his mind,’ he said.

We did as we were told, with Innocent leading the way and Marcel bringing up the rear. Nobody spoke, not until we’d been walking a good half-hour. Then Innocent called a water break. As I was pulling the flask from my backpack, Caleb, in his most offhand voice, said, ‘Well, that little stunt could have gone either way.’

‘It worked, didn’t it?’ snapped Xander.

‘Could have really wound the guy up though.’

‘I suppose,’ I admitted.

‘Yeah, well, I thought it was genius,’ said Xander. ‘Better than your non-contribution anyway,’ he added, glaring at Caleb.

‘Ah, but I was contributing,’ said Caleb. ‘Or trying to. I just had a less risky plan.’

‘Which was what exactly?’ scoffed Caleb. ‘Sit very still and try not to wet your pants?’

‘The first bit, certainly. It’s in all the manuals. Presented with a conflict situation, it’s always best to play the grey man. Don’t give an aggressor a reason to pull the trigger. Isn’t that right Innocent? Stay calm, stay reasonable.’

Innocent smiled and said, ‘We’re here. Whatever happened, happened. The singing was very funny. But also your calm, Caleb. That was great.’

Xander bristled beside me. I could sense him wanting to call Caleb a liar and a coward, but I also knew that that Caleb was already beating himself up for not having saved the day himself. His grey-man stuff might have worked in another situation, but today my response had succeeded. There was no need to rub his nose in it.

16.

‘So what are we going to do about the poachers?’ I asked Innocent.

‘I’ll report them. My ranger colleagues patrol the national parks. I’ll give them descriptions, coordinates, direction of travel. Maybe they will be caught, but probably not.’

At this Patience dropped her head.

‘Why do you say that?’ I asked her father.

Amelia reasoned for him: ‘The rangers have to patrol a slice of jungle roughly the size of Luxembourg. On foot. With pretty much nothing on the ground visible from the sky. If the poachers didn’t think they could get away, they wouldn’t have let us go.’

Under her breath Patience said, ‘They know we will not follow them ourselves.’

‘But those snares they were carrying,’ I said, ‘they’re probably setting them as we speak.’