‘And there’s the cat,’ said Johnny.

‘Yeah, we ought to kill the cat,’ said Bigmac. ‘It took all the skin off my hand last week.’

Johnny cautiously pulled the trolley upright. Guilty clung to it, hissing.

‘He likes you,’ said Bigmac.

‘How can you tell?’

‘You’ve still got both eyes.’

‘You could take it along to the RSPCA in the morning,’ said Yo-less.

‘I suppose so,’ said Johnny, ‘but what about the trolley? We can’t just leave it here.’

‘Yeah, let’s push it off the top of the multistorey,’ said Bigmac.

Johnny prodded a bag. It moved a bit, and then flowed back, with an unpleasant oozing noise.

‘Y’know, my brother said Mrs Tachyon killed her husband years ago and then went mental and they never found his body,’ said Bigmac.

They looked at the bags.

‘None of them is big enough for a dead body,’ said Yo-less, who wasn’t allowed to watch horror movies.

‘Not a whole one, no,’ said Bigmac.

Yo-less took a step back.

‘I heard she stuck his head in the oven,’ said Wobbler. ‘Very messy.’

‘Messy?’ said Yo-less.

‘It was a microwave oven. Get it? If you put a—’

‘Shut up,’ said Yo-less.

‘I heard she’s really, really rich,’ said Bigmac.

‘Stinking rich,’ said Wobbler.

‘Look, I’ll just … I’ll just put in it in my grandad’s garage,’ said Johnny.

‘I don’t see why we have to do it,’ said Yo-less. ‘There’s supposed to be Care in the Community or something.’

‘He doesn’t keep much in there now. And then in the morning …’

Oh, well. The morning was another day.

‘And while you’ve got it you could have a rummage to see if there’s any money,’ said Bigmac.

Johnny glanced at Guilty, who snarled.

‘No, I like a hand with all its fingers on,’ he said. ‘You lot come with me. I’d feel a right clod pushing this by myself.’

The fourth wheel squeaked and bounced as he pushed the trolley down the street.

‘Looks heavy,’ said Yo-less.

There was a snigger from beside him.

‘Well, they say Mr Tachyon was a very big man—’

‘Just shut up, Bigmac.’

It’s me, he thought, as the procession went down the street. It’s like on the Lottery, only it’s the opposite. There’s this big finger in the sky and it comes through your window and flicks you on the ear and says ‘It’s YOU – har har har’. And you get up and think you’re going to have a normal day and suddenly you‘re in charge of a trolley with one squeaky wheel and an insane cat.

‘Here,’ said Wobbler. ‘These fish and chips are still warm.’

‘What?’ said Johnny. ‘You picked up her actual fish and chips?’

Wobbler backed away. ‘Well, yeah, why not, shame to let them go to waste—’

‘They might have got her spit on ’em,’ said Bigmac. ‘Yuk.’

‘They haven’t even been unwrapped, actually,’ said Wobbler, but he did stop unwrapping them.

‘Put them in the trolley, Wobbler,’ said Johnny.

‘Dunno who wraps fish and chips in newspaper round here,’ said Wobbler, tossing the package onto the pile in the trolley. ‘Hong Kong Henry doesn’t. Where’d she get them?’