The bogmonster said snippily, “I’m in charge of this scene. Step back.”

The only thing I wanted in the world was for one of them, I didn’t care which one, to try and hit me. “You couldn’t take charge of your dick with both hands,” I told the uniform, inches from his big soft pudding of a face, and when his eyes fell away from mine I shoved him out of my way and went to meet Mr. Daly.

The second I got through that gate he grabbed my collar and reefed me in hard, chin to chin. I felt a red zip of something like joy. He had more balls than the uniform or he wouldn’t back down for a Mackey, and either one worked for me. “What’s in there? What did you find?”

An old one squealed ecstatically and there were monkey hoots from the hoodies. I said, loud enough that plenty of people could hear me warn him, “You want to get your hands off me, pal.”

“Don’t you, you little bastard, don’t you tell me to—Is that my Rosie in there? Is it?”

“My Rosie, pal. My girl. Mine. I’m telling you one more time: get your hands off me.”

“This is your fault, you dirty little knacker. If she’s in there, it’s because of you.” His forehead was grinding against mine and he was strong enough that my shirt was slicing the back of my neck. The hoodies had started chanting, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

I got a good grip on his wrist and I was about to break it when I smelled him, his sweat, his breath: a hot, rank, animal smell that I knew by heart. The man was terrified, almost out of his mind. In that second I saw Holly.

All the red went out of my muscles. Something felt like it broke, deep down under my ribs. “Mr. Daly,” I said, as gently as I could manage, “as soon as they know anything, they’ll come and tell you. Until then, you need to go home.”

The uniforms were trying to pull him off me, with a lot of loud bogger noise. Neither of us cared. There were wild white rings around Mr. Daly’s eyes. “Is that my Rosie?”

I got my thumb on the nerve in his wrist and dug in. He gasped and his hands leaped off my collar, but in the second before the sidekick uniform dragged him away he jammed his jaw against mine and hissed in my ear, close as a lover, “Your fault.”

Mrs. Daly came out of somewhere, making shapeless whimpering noises, and launched herself onto him and the sidekick. Mr. Daly slumped and together they hauled him away, back into the gibbering crowd.