How come they were armed? They’d changed up. That wasn’t fair. Grown-ups didn’t use weapons. Too stupid. Stayed in the dark. Used teeth and fingernails, like animals. No better than cats.

Find Jake.

Still a press of grown-ups by the doors keeping Brandon and Kamahl inside. Good, they were safe. Stay that way. Mick’s job was to keep everyone safe.

So where was Jake?

Chapter 47

47

‘I did see Paul, yeah, in the afternoon. I was with Wiki.’

‘Who’s Wiki?’

‘Thomas Rutherford, that’s his real name, not Thomas Hopgood, he’s another Thomas who we’re friends with, we were at school together, me and Wiki, that’s Thomas Rutherford, not Thomas Hopgood, I met Thomas Hopgood here, in the library, I met Wiki at Rowhurst School in Kent, we call him Wiki because he knows everything, like Wikipedia, he’s from northern England, that’s why he has a different accent, we’ve been friends since …’

‘Yeah, yeah, all right. I don’t need his life story.’ Maxie put up her hands to stop the little boy rattling on. She understood now why the other kids called him Jibber-jabber.

‘So you and this Wiki saw Paul in the afternoon?’

‘Yeah, we did, yeah, we were going round trying to get kids to sign up for our event.’

‘What event?’ Maxie interrupted him before he went off on another one.

‘World Book Day,’ said Jibber-jabber with a very serious expression. ‘We were having this all-night book-reading session where we dressed up as our favourite characters from books, I was Bilbo Baggins, from The Hobbit …’

‘Yeah, all right, I know who Bilbo Baggins is.’

‘My costume wasn’t that good really.’

‘So that was you lot in the library the other night?’

‘Yes.’

‘The boy that died, the one they got on the stairs, was he with you?’

‘Sort of,’ said Jibber-jabber. ‘That was James, he only really came along to the event to muck it up, I’m sorry he died, though, he was with Paul when we saw him earlier, the two of them worked with the sickos on the lorry.’

Again Maxie put her hands in the air.

‘Hold up, not so fast. I need to get this straight. Is Wiki around?’

‘He’s waiting outside, he’s next up, we didn’t know who was going to be next, we flipped a coin, I won, so I came in first, that’s all coins are really good for now, isn’t it, I suppose, flipping … and doing magic tricks, of course, I can do a good trick.’

‘Shut up for a second and get him in, will you?’

In a minute Wiki was sitting alongside his friend, two small, serious-looking boys, thin, like most kids were these days, and a little pale.

‘OK,’ said Maxie, fixing on Wiki. ‘Tell us exactly when and where you last saw Paul.’