Now they were walking along West Avenue. The cemetery was laid out like a town, with streets. They weren’t named very originally – North Drive and South Walk joined West Avenue, for example, at a little gravelled area with seats in. A kind of city centre. But the silence of the big Victorian mausoleums made the place look as though it was having the longest early-closing day in the world.

‘My dad says this is all going to be built on,’ said Wobbler. ‘He said the Council sold it to some big company for fivepence because it was costing so much to keep it going.’

‘What, all of it?’ said Johnny.

‘That’s what he said,’ said Wobbler. Even he looked a bit uncertain. ‘He said it was a scandal.’

‘Even the bit with the poplar trees?’

‘All of it,’ said Wobbler. ‘It’s going to be offices or something.’

Johnny looked at the cemetery. It was the only open space for miles.

‘I’d have given them at least a pound,’ he said.

‘Yes, but you wouldn’t have been able to build things on it,’ said Wobbler. ‘That’s the important thing.’

‘I wouldn’t want to build anything on it. I’d have given them a pound just to leave it as it is.’

‘Yes,’ said Wobbler, the voice of reason, ‘but people have got to work somewhere. We Need Jobs.’

‘I bet the people here won’t be very happy about it,’ said Johnny. ‘If they knew.’

‘I think they get moved somewhere else,’ said Wobbler. ‘It’s got to be something like that. Otherwise you’d never dare dig your garden.’

Johnny looked up at the nearest tomb. It was one of the ones that looked like a shed built of marble. Bronze lettering over the door said:

ALDERMAN THOMAS BOWLER

1822-1906

Pro Bono Publico

There was a stone carving of – presumably – the Alderman himself, looking seriously into the distance as if he, too, was wondering what Pro Bono Publico meant.

‘I bet he’d be pretty angry,’ said Johnny.

He hesitated for a moment, and then walked up the couple of broken steps to the metal door, and knocked on it. He never did know why he’d done that.

‘Here, you mustn’t!’ hissed Wobbler. ‘Supposing he comes lurchin’ out! Anyway,’ he said, lowering his voice a bit, ‘it’s wrong to try to talk to the dead. It can lead to satanic practices, it said on television.’

‘Don’t see why,’ said Johnny.

He knocked again.

And the door opened.

Alderman Thomas Bowler blinked in the sunlight, and then glared at Johnny.

‘Yes?’ he said.

Johnny turned and ran for it.

Wobbler caught him up halfway along North Drive. Wobbler wasn’t normally the athletic type, and his speed would have surprised quite a lot of people who knew him.

‘What happened? What happened?’ he panted.

‘Didn’t you see?’ said Johnny.

‘I didn’t see anything!’

‘The door opened!’

‘It never!’

‘It did!’

Wobbler slowed down.

‘No, it didn’t,’ he muttered. ‘No one of ‘em can open. I’ve looked at ’em. They’ve all got padlocks on.’