‘All right, I’m English,’ said Wobbler.

‘Oh, yeah? Who’s the Prime Minster, then?’

Wobbler hesitated.

‘I don’t think we’ve done that at school,’ he said.

‘You don’t get no lessons in knowing about Winston Churchill,’ said the boy dismissively.

‘Hah, you’re just trying to mess me around,’ said Wobbler. ‘’Cos I know for a fact we’ve never had a black Prime Minister.’

‘You don’t know nuffink,’ said the boy, grabbing his battered suitcase. ‘And you’re fat.’

‘I don’t have to stand here listening to you,’ said Wobbler, heading off down the road.

‘Spy spy spy,’ said the boy.

‘Oh, shut up.’

‘An’ you wobble. I saw that Goering on the newsreels. You look jus’ like him. An’ you’re dressed up all funny. Spy spy spy!’

Wobbler sighed. He was fairly used to this, only not so much these days because once he’d just been fat and now he was big and fat.

‘And you’re stupid,’ he said. ‘But at least I could get slimmer.’

Biting sarcasm didn’t work.

‘Spy spy spy! Nasty nasty Nazi!’

Wobbler tried walking faster.

‘I’m goin’ to tell Mrs Density an’ she can telephone our Ron and he can come an’ arrest you!’ shouted the boy, jumping along behind him.

Wobbler tried walking faster still.

‘He’s got a gun, our Ron.’

A man went by slowly on his bike.

‘He’s a spy,’ said the boy, pointing at Wobbler. ‘I’m arresting him for our Ron.’

The man just grinned at Wobbler and pedalled onwards.

‘Our Ron says you spies send Morse code messages to Nazi submarines by flashing torches,’ said the boy.

‘We’re twenty miles from the sea,’ said Wobbler, who’d almost broken into a run.

‘You could stand on something high. Nyer nyer nyer. Spy spy spy.’

It was just plain stupid, thought Bigmac, as he watched the two plumes of steam in front of him.

What kind of idiots built a car without power steering or synchromesh gears and put in brakes apparently operated by string? He was practically doing the world a favour by taking the car off the road.

Not just off the road, in fact, but over the pavement and across a flowerbed and into the Alderman Bowler Memorial Horsetrough.

The plumes of steam were quite pretty, really. There were little rainbows in them.

‘Well, now,’ said a voice, as someone opened a car door, ‘what do we have here?’

‘I think I banged my head,’ said Bigmac.

A large hand encircled his arm and pulled him out of the car. Bigmac looked up into two round faces that had ‘policeman’ written all over them. There was room for quite a lot of things to be written all over them. They were very large faces.

‘That is Dr Roberts’ car,’ they said, ‘and you, my lad, are in for it. What’s your name?’

‘Simon Wrigley,’ mumbled Bigmac. ‘Ms Partridge knows all about me …

‘She does, does she? And who’s she?’

Bigmac blinked at the two faces which miraculously flowed together and became one.