‘Us? But we called the ambulance!’

‘I know that. Er … and you’ve got her stuff …’

‘Well, we couldn’t just leave it there!’

‘I know that. But … well, we did have Bigmac with us …’

And that was it, really. It wasn’t that Bigmac was actually evil. He’d happily fire imaginary nuclear missiles at people but he wouldn’t hurt a fly, unless perhaps it was a real hard biker fly which’d given him serious grief. However, he did have a problem with cars, especially big fast ones with the keys still in the ignition. And he was a skinhead. His boots were so big that it was quite hard for him to fall over.

According to Sergeant Comely of Blackbury police station, Bigmac was guilty of every unsolved crime in the town, whereas in real life he was probably only guilty of ten per cent, maximum. He looked like trouble. No one looking at Bigmac would think he was innocent of anything.

‘And Wobbler, too,’ Yo-less added.

And Wobbler would admit to anything if you got him frightened enough. All the great unsolved mysteries of the world – the Bermuda Triangle, the Marie Celeste, the Loch Ness Monster – could be sorted out in about half an hour if you leaned a bit on Wobbler.

‘I’ll go by myself, then,’ said Johnny. ‘Simpler that way.’

Yo-less sighed with relief. ‘Thanks.’

The phone rang just as Johnny put it down again.

It started saying ‘Hello? Hello?’ before he got it to his ear.

‘Er … hello?’ he said.

‘Is that you?’ said a female voice. It wasn’t exactly an unpleasant one, but it had a sharp, penetrating quality. It seemed to be saying that if you weren’t you, then it was your fault. Johnny recognized it instantly. It was the voice of someone who dialled wrong numbers and then complained that the phone was answered by people she didn’t want to speak to.

‘Yes. Er … yes. Hello, Kirsty.’

‘It’s Kasandra, actually.’

‘Oh. Right,’ said Johnny. He’d have to make a note. Kirsty changed her name about as often as she changed her clothes, although at least these days she was sticking to ones beginning with K.

‘Have you heard about old Mrs Tachyon?’

‘I think so,’ said Johnny, guardedly.

‘Apparently a gang of yobs beat her up last night. She looked as though a bomb’d hit her. Hello? Hello? Hello?’

‘I’m still here,’ said Johnny. Someone had filled his stomach with ice.

‘Don’t you think that’s shameful?’

‘Er. Yes.’

‘One of them was black.’

Johnny nodded dismally at the phone. Yo-less had explained about this sort of thing. He’d said that if one of his ancestors had joined Attila the Hun’s huge horde of millions of barbarians and helped them raid Ancient Rome, people would’ve definitely remembered that one of them was black. And this was Yo-less, who collected brass bands, had a matchbox collection and was a known spod.

‘Er,’ he said, ‘it was us. I mean, we didn’t beat her up, but we found her. I got the ambulance and Yo-less tried— Yo-less was definitely thinking about first aid …’