‘Probably it is,’ said Johnny.

‘She says witches are abroad on Halloween,’ said Wobbler.

‘What?’ Johnny’s forehead wrinkled. ‘Like . . . Marjorca and places?’

‘Suppose so,’ said Wobbler.

‘Makes . . . sense, I suppose. They probably get special out-of-season bargains, being old ladies,’ said Johnny. ‘My aunt can go anywhere on the buses for almost nothing and she’s not even a witch.’

‘Don’t see why Mrs Nugent is worried, then,’ said Wobbler. ‘It ort to be a lot safer round here, with all the witches on holiday.’

They passed a very ornate mausoleum, which even had little stained-glass windows. It was hard to imagine who’d want to see in, but then, it was even harder to imagine who’d want to look out.

‘Shouldn’t like to be on the same plane as ‘em,’ said Wobbler, who’d been thinking hard. ‘Just think, p’raps you can only afford to go on holiday in the autumn, and you get on the plane, and there’s all these old witches going abroad.’

‘Singing “Here we go, here we go, here we go”?’ said Johnny.

‘And “Viva a spanner”?’

‘But I bet you’d get really good service in the hotel,’ said Johnny.

‘Yeah.’

‘Funny, really,’ said Johnny.

‘What?’

‘I saw a thing in a book once,’ said Johnny, ‘about these people in Mexico or somewhere, where they all go down to the cemetery for a big fiesta at Halloween every year. Like, they don’t see why people should be left out of things just because they’re dead.’

‘Yuk. A picnic? In the actual cemetery?’

‘Yes.’

‘Reckon you’d get green glowing hands pushing up through the earth and nicking the sarnies?’

‘Don’t think so. Anyway . . . they don’t eat sarnies in Mexico. They eat tort . . . something.’

‘Tortoises.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I bet,’ said Wobbler, looking around, ‘I bet . . . I bet you wouldn’t dare knock on one of those doors. I bet you’d hear dead people lurchin’ about inside.’

‘Why do they lurch?’

Wobbler thought about this.

‘They always lurch,’ he said. ‘Dunno why. I’ve seen them in videos. And they can push their way through walls.’

‘Why?’ said Johnny.

‘Why what?’

‘Why push their way through walls? I mean . . . living people can’t do that. Why should dead people do it?’

Wobbler’s mother was very easy-going in the matter of videos. According to him, he was allowed to watch ones which even people aged a hundred had to watch with their parents.

‘Don’t know,’ he said. ‘They’re usually very angry about something.’

‘Being dead, you mean?’

‘Probably,’ said Wobbler. ‘It can’t be much of a life.’

Johnny thought about this that evening, after meeting the Alderman. The only dead people he had known had been Mr Page, who’d died in hospital of something, and his great-grandmother, who’d been ninety-six and had just generally died. Neither of them had been particularly angry people. His great-grandmother had been a bit confused about things, but never angry. He’d visited her in Sunshine Acres, where she watched a lot of television and waited for the next meal to turn up. And Mr Page had walked around quietly, the only man in the street still at home in the middle of the day.