Albert looked up and realized that it had happened again. Without realizing it, he had covered the distance between them and attached himself to the front of Colby’s shirt.

‘Sorry.’

‘Well, I’m not sure who it is exactly … Walk with me. It’ll save us time.’

24

They set off back down the alleyway they had come down what seemed so long ago, towards the main valley bed.

‘So see, it’s like this. I was thinking about what you said, about the guy who hit you having a red band on his arm, and I remembered, there’s a gang who call themselves the Band, who wear a red band like that as their symbol.’

‘Gang? Did you say gang?’

‘Yeah, as in street gang. We’ve got a few actually. Mostly kids you know, teenagers and so on, although most gangs have at least some adult members too. Some of them are pretty nasty, actually. Chock-full of addicts, and they’re into dealing, muggings, armed robbery—all kinds of things. They give us no end of trouble. The Band’s one of the better ones, to tell the truth. Never really heard of any of them pulling anything major. Some small-time robberies, or maybe the odd kid is a courier for some dealer occasionally, but that’s about it. Maybe that’s why the commander didn’t think of them, or maybe it just slipped his mind. They’re not the most obvious suspect.’

Albert looked at him. ‘Then it could be one of them I saw!’

‘That’s what I thought, although the thing is, I’ve never heard of any of the gangs being Seekers or anything of the sort.’

‘Maybe, they’re working for someone else.’

‘That’s what I thought. So I asked around, and the word on the street is that there is something up with The Band of late, but I haven’t been able to find out what it is.’

‘So what do we do now, if you can’t find out?’ asked Albert.

‘We ask someone who can. That’s where we’re going. I want to bring a couple of friends in on this. People who have their ear a little closer to the ground than I do.’

They reached the main valley bed, and walked across towards the stairs that led towards the ledge above. But, once they got up there, Colby kept going, all the way up to the second level, and then to the third. Once there, he turned towards the nearest cluster of tents. Even as they approached, Albert could see they were in a relatively less well-off part of the valley. The whole place seemed, well, seedy. The tents were of poorer quality and patched in several places. Rows of washing hung outside each dwelling, making the narrow alleyway even narrower. A child, nose streaming, ran past them. He stopped, stared at them and then ran on.