The doorbell rang.

Johnny trooped out into the hall.

The bell rang again, urgently.

Johnny opened the door.

‘Oh,’ he said gloomily. ‘Hello, Kirsty.’

Rain had plastered her hair to her head.

‘I ran back from the next stop,’ she said.

‘Oh. Why?’

She held up a pickled onion.

‘I found it in my pocket. And … I remembered. We did go back.’

‘Not back,’ said Johnny. ‘It’s more like there.’ The elation rose up inside him like a big pink cloud. ‘Come on in.’

‘Everything. Even the pickles.’

‘Good!’

‘I thought I ought to tell you.’

‘Right.’

‘Do you think Mrs Tachyon will ever find her cat?’

Johnny nodded. ‘Wherever he is,’ he said.

The sergeant and the soldier picked themselves up off the ground and staggered towards the wreckage where the house had been.

‘That poor old biddy! That poor old biddy!’ said the sergeant.

‘D’you think she might’ve got out in time?’ said the soldier.

‘That poor old biddy!’

‘She was sort of close to the wall,’ moaned the soldier hopefully.

‘The house isn’t there any more! What do you think?’

They scrambled through the damp ruins of Paradise Street.

‘Oh God, there’s going to be hell to pay for this …’

‘You’re telling me! You shouldn’t’ve left it unguarded! That poor old biddy!’

‘D’you know how much sleep we’ve had this past week? Do you? And we lost Corporal Williams over in Slate! We knocked off for five minutes in the middle of the night, that’s all!’

A crater lay in front of them. Something bubbled in the bottom.

‘She got any relatives?’ said the soldier.

‘No. No one. Been here ages. My dad says he remembers seeing her about sometimes when he was a lad,’ said the sergeant.

He removed his helmet.

‘Poor old biddy,’ he said.

‘That’s what you think! Dinner dinner dinner dinner—’

They turned. A skinny figure, wearing an old coat over a nightdress, and a woolly hat, ran along the road, expertly steering a wire cart between the mounds of rubble.

‘—dinner dinner—’

The sergeant stared at the soldier. ‘How did she do that?’

‘Search me!’

‘—dinner dinner Batman!’

Some way away, Guilty ambled in his sideways fashion through the back streets.

He’d had an interesting morning hunting through the remains of Paradise Street, and had passed some quality time during the afternoon in the ruins of the pickle factory, where there were mice, some of them fried. It had been a good day.

Around him, Blackbury went back to sleep.

There was still a terrible smell of vinegar everywhere.

By some miracle of preservation, a large jar of pickled beetroot had been blown right across the town and landed, unbroken and unnoticed, in a civic flowerbed, from whence it had bounced into the gutter.

Guilty waited by it, washing himself.

After a while he looked up as a familiar squeaking sound came around the corner, and stopped. A hand wearing a woolly glove with the fingers cut out reached down and picked up the jar. There was a series of complicated unscrewing noises, and then a sound like … well, like someone eating pickled beetroot until the juice ran down their chin.