He went back over the details of his police statement in his memory. “At approximately 17:45 on December 15, I was waiting outside the Institute of Contemporary Arts on the Mall,” Moustache Milligan had read from the report sheet. “I was waiting for my father Dr. Tejendra Singh to meet me at six o'clock for a public lecture on trends in nanotechnology. I saw my father proceeding up the Mall from Horseguards on his bicycle. He was coming from his office at Imperial College and was clearly, distinctively, and appropriately dressed. I noticed that he was being followed by a black car with darkened windows, of German make, possibly an Audi. I noticed that the car was driving abnormally slowly and that my father seemed oblivious of it. About a hundred metres from me the car abruptly pulled out, overtook my father, and pulled in front of him, causing him to swerve and stop. Three men exited the vehicle—”

“They got out of the car,” Everett had said.

“Three men exited the vehicle,” Moustache Milligan had continued. “Two of the men seized my father and forced him into the backseat. The third man put the bicycle into the boot. The car then drove off up the Mall in the direction of Constitution Hill. I took a series of photographs on my mobile phone, but I did not call out or attempt to alert any other passersby.”

“Is that correct?” Leah-Leanne-Leona had said.

“Suppose.” It sounded thin and full of holes. There were no witnesses, no corroboration, only Everett's own word and a shaky mobile phone photograph that, if you looked at it cold and hard, could be anything.

“Is that correct, Everett?”

“Yes.”

“Sign here. Press hard—you're making a couple of copies.”

In his room, in his space, away from the noise. Everett opened up Dr. Quantum. Tejendra had given him the tablet computer for his last birthday. It was a good present, the best present. Too much computer for his age—he'd still been a kid then. Laura had immediately forbidden him ever to take it to school, even to show it off. Everett concurred, for once. He had good senses and was fast—faster than anyone would think a Known Geek to be; it was what made him the goalkeeper for Team Red.

Into the mail. Open subject: mall kidnap. A swipe with the finger here, a tap there, and it was into his pictures folder. Everett spread his fingers like a bird opening its wings. The photograph opened up to fill the screen. Everett zoomed in on the tiny scrap of fluorescent yellow in the backseat. Tejendra: that was Tejendra; he could almost read the black Assos logo on the weatherproof jacket.

Rules for twenty-first century living: Never give the police your only photograph.