There was a cruiser parked outside the Cooke house on Brookfield Road. A few neighbours milled around on the lawn, looking concerned and chatting quietly. A reporter from the Chronicle newspaper was in there now, having walked very quickly past the van parked on the other side of the street. Kelly had flicked through the latest issue of the Chronicle and had not been impressed with either the stories or the spelling.

The side door opened and Ronnie climbed in, then shut the door behind him.

“The cops are saying he ran away,” he said, rubbing his hands together to get some warmth. Two went over immediately, and Ronnie warmed his hands on the dog’s fur instead.

“What are his parents saying?” Kelly asked.

“Nothing much, from what I’ve heard. They said goodnight to him and this morning he was gone. Mrs Cooke is distraught. Mr Cooke is shaken. That’s the full extent of what I’ve been able to pick up.”

The door opened again and Warrick climbed in. “It is chilly out there, man,” he said, tossing a sealed bag containing one of Austin’s T-shirts to Linda before stealing Ronnie’s source of heat.

“Hey,” Ronnie said to Two. Two looked back at him with those big brown eyes as if to apologise, and then Warrick picked him up and rolled back on the cushions with the dog in his arms.

“Was it difficult?” Linda asked, putting the T-shirt in the strongbox.

“Naw,” said Warrick. “Lot of folks around, leaving a lot of doors open. Got to the laundry basket and back again without anyone even seeing me. Weird bunch of people, though.”

“In what way?”

“Dunno.” Warrick endured a few seconds of face-licking before sitting up. “I’m not sure I’m buying their concern. It all seems like an act.” He looked at Ronnie. “You get that impression?”

“I did, actually. To be honest, I’m not even buying his parents’ act. They’re upset, sure, but … I don’t know. I think it was more for show than anything else.”

“Austin could have run away,” said Linda. “He was scared enough. If he didn’t think his folks were going to take him out of town, maybe he went by himself.”

“Maybe,” said Ronnie.

“But not after he met us,” Kelly said. “Right? Now he has a group of people on his side.”

“A group of strangers on his side.”

“Better strangers who care than family who don’t. If he was going to run away, he would have told you last night when you were dropping him off. He would have asked us to drive him away from here.”

“We should have done that, anyway,” said Warrick. “We should have driven him out of here the moment we thought he was in danger.”

“We didn’t know,” said Ronnie.

“We suspected,” said Warrick. “And when was the last time we were wrong about something like this?”

They went quiet.