A purple sphere rocketed from the field and burst through an upper window of the museum with a tremendous flammable thump. ‘Go!’ Benny called. ‘Quietly!’

Alexander and Constance ran with her to the hedge, and, crouching, they raced up the muddy track.

Benny had that familiar sick feeling in her stomach again, imagining bullets snickering through the hedge and slicing them up. She really hated combat, hated the people who did this for a living and got close to enjoying it.

Well, there were exceptions, of course. She’d been too cold with Alexander.

Despite, no because, he was in the same boat as her. Except he’d only lost a friend.

They ran flat out for a hundred yards, hedge to the left, backyard walls to the right, and broke out, thankfully, into a small copse at the edge of the woodlands. A chalky path wound upwards into the hills, and they followed it for a while, finally collapsing behind an uprooted tree trunk. Through the trees down-slope, a tiny length of fence was visible. In the field beyond it, strange figures were attending a silver cylinder. ‘Another two of them,’ Benny muttered. ‘I wonder who they are?’

‘You mean you don’t know?’ Alexander glanced behind them and forced a smile. ‘I say, look, we’re not alone on the barricades. It’s Mrs Redfern’s cat. Wolsey, isn’t it?’

Wolsey was staring at the three humans from behind a tree. He had something in his mouth. Constance looked at him nervously. ‘Do shoo it away,’ she said. ‘I can’t stand cats. Now, Bernice, shall we find this object of yours, now we are free? Who is it that has it? Some friend who is keeping it safely?’

Benny sighed. ‘I haven’t been clear about what I’ve got you into, have I? I thought that the two who attacked me had got hold of it. I was planning to nick it back off them. Unless the ones with the cannon are a different bunch, then they still must think that I’ve got it.’

‘What is that in your mouth?’ Alexander asked, holding out a hand to the cat.

Wolsey stepped forward, watching Constance as he came. He dropped the thing in his jaws as he rubbed his head along Alexander’s hand.

Alexander picked the muddied scrap up. ‘Bit of lace collar.’ He glanced up at Constance. ‘Just like yours.’

‘Goodness, so it is!’ Constance turned to look, slipped the pistol from her pocket, pointed it at Wolsey and fired.

The shot just missed, and the cat leapt away, bounding off into the forest.

Benny jumped to her feet, but Constance jumped with her, shoving the revolver into her neck. ‘Damned cats,’ she muttered. Then she whistled.

From higher up the slope, two armed figures appeared, running quickly downhill and covering Benny and Alexander with their weapons.

‘Allow me to introduce August and Hoff,’ the being that had been Constance told the others.

‘You’re⁠ —’ Benny shook her head in frustration. ‘I should have realized.’