He looked down the length of Paradise Street, and felt Time streaming past him. Yo-less and Kirsty faded away. He could feel them there, though, as insubstantial as dreams, as the light faded from the sky and the footballers went indoors and the wind got up and the clouds rolled in from the south-west and the town went to sleep and the bombers came out of the east and fire rained down on the houses and the allotments and the people and the goalposts chalked on the wall and all the nice, clean, white doorsteps …

Captain Harris turned Bigmac’s watch over.

‘Amazing,’ he said. ‘And it says “Made In Japan”.’

‘Fiendishly cunning,’ said the police sergeant.

The captain picked up the radio.

‘Japanese again,’ he said. ‘Why? Why put it on the back? See here. Made in Japan.’

‘I thought it was all rice,’ said the sergeant. ‘That’s what my dad said. He was out there.’

Captain Harris fiddled one of the tiny headphones into his ear and moved a switch. He listened to the hiss that was due to be replaced by Radio Blackbury in forty-eight years’ time, and nodded.

‘It’s doing something,’ he said. His thumb touched the wavechange switch, and he blinked.

‘It’s the Home Service,’ he said. ‘Clear as a bell!’

‘We could have the back off it in no time,’ said the sergeant.

‘No,’ said Sergeant Harris. ‘This has got to go to the Ministry. The men in white coats can have a look at it. How can you get valves to fit in this? Where’s the aerial?’

‘Very small feet,’ said the sergeant.

‘Sorry, sergeant?’

‘That’s what my dad said. Japanese. The women. Very small feet, he said. So maybe they’ve got small hands, too. Just a thought.’ The sergeant tried to extend his line of technological speculation. ‘Good for making small things? You know. Like ships in bottles?’

The captain put the tiny radio back in the box.

‘I’ve seen people do them,’ said the sergeant, still anxious to be of assistance. ‘You get a bottle, then you get a lot of very thin thread—’

‘He’s the best actor I’ve ever seen, I know that,’ said Captain Harris. ‘You could really think he was just a stupid boy. But this stuff … I just can’t believe it. It’s all very … odd.’

‘We’ve got every man out after him,’ said the sergeant. ‘And the inspector has called out the army from West Underton. We’ll have him in no time.’

The captain sealed the box with sticky tape.

‘I want this guarded,’ he said.

‘We’ll keep an eye on it in the main office.’

‘No. I want it secure.’

‘Well, there’s an empty cell. Actually there’s someone in it but I’ll soon have ’em out.’

‘More secure than that.’

The sergeant scratched an ear.

‘There’s the Lost Property cupboard,’ he said. ‘But there’s important stuff in it—’

‘Lost Property cupboard! Haven’t you got a safe?’

‘No.’

‘What’d happen if the Crown Jewels were found in the gutter, then?’