And Oscar was fifteen. Doggett’s words when they had gone over all this while waiting for Call-Me-Hels to show up. Old enough to knock your dad over the head and drag him behind a wall. Especially if you had a friend to help you.

Could there have been some connection between them? They hadn’t gone to the same school. Barry had been at the local comprehensive, a far cry and several miles distant from Oscar’s three-grand-a-term prep school. Could they have met somewhere else? Where else did boys of different ages meet other than school? Football practice? Something Doggett said earlier jumps into his head.

Barry snivels into his tissue. Call-Me-Hels stares into space, no longer smiling after her telling-off. Doggett is shaking his head, losing his patience. Tyler catches his eye and Doggett nods his permission.

“Barry,” Tyler says, “were you ever in the Cub Scouts?”

The question takes him by surprise, and Barry nods before he can remember not to.

“Did you like it?” Tyler asks. “I did.” He’s lying. He hated the Cub Scouts. Richard had made him go, following in Jude’s footsteps. He’d left as soon as he was allowed to. Why can’t you just learn how to play nicely with others? “Camping out under the stars, learning all those survival skills. I bet that’s where you learned how to light fires, isn’t it?”

Barry shakes his head but hesitantly, unsure perhaps if this wasn’t where he had first learned how to light a fire. Of course, matches and lighter fluid made it a lot easier.

“Was that you as well, then? The scout hut the other day? Why would you want to burn that place?”

Barry shakes his head more forcefully this time. “I di’n’t! I mean, that weren’t me. I swear, I’ve only done a couple of bonfires.”

At least he’s talking.

“Okay, mate, listen. I believe you. I don’t think you set the fire at the scout hut or the church. You certainly didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt. That’s why you helped me save PC Rabbani. I bet you would have helped me save the vicar, too, wouldn’t you? If we’d known he was in there. You knew him, didn’t you? You knew him by another name, though. Akela.”

He had found the word in Rabbani’s notebook, circled three times in black ink. But only now, in light of Doggett’s comment about Boy Scouts, has the significance clicked.

“He was your old Cub Scout leader, right?”

Barry’s eyes are filling up with new tears. He wipes his nose on his sleeve.

“I don’t think you wanted to hurt him, or anybody else. But here’s the thing, Barry. Somebody did. And it’s too much of a coincidence you just happened to be there at the same time. You know something about this, don’t you? Do you know who killed your old Akela? If you do, and you don’t say anything, that makes you an accessory to murder. Regardless of the punishment for that, I don’t think you could live with yourself. So come on, mate, why don’t you just tell us who killed him?”