‘This is all too much for me to take in,’ said Ollie. ‘Too much has happened. Your rule of three thing, I’m not sure I get it.’

‘Just look around you,’ said Trey, excited. ‘We’re three of us in one, me and Trio and Mister Three. Yeah? And how many of us Twisted Kids came with you? If you count us as one, as three in one, there’s us and Fish-Face and singing Skinner. Sitting on his trolley. Three. How many trolleys in all?’

‘Three,’ said Ollie.

‘Three is right. The church? That was significant. So there will be three churches.’

‘How do you mean? Where will they be?’

‘In your story. It’s like, where are we going?’

‘To the Natural History Museum.’

‘There’s going to be three museums then. And where have we been?’

‘Your warehouse.’

‘So three warehouses as well. You’ll see. There’ll be three of them – three warehouses, three museums, three churches, three roads walked, three friends lost, three friends found, three little kids rescued. They’ll all be important in your life.’

‘I’ll take your word for it.’

‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ said Trio. ‘As I said, it’s all crap.’

It may be crap, Ollie thought, but at least it was distracting crap. So that he didn’t have to think too much about the long walk back to safety. All those miles stretching out ahead of them, with the chance of being attacked anywhere along the way. Down the motorway and on into London, over the broken bridge – the Hammersmith flyover, through the dead streets of town.

To bring back three trolleys of drugs and a huge load of bad news.

And then what?

Chapter 83

83

Monkey-Boy was climbing. It was how he’d got his nickname. He was always climbing things. He was small and so skinny he hardly weighed anything and he crawled up like a lizard, fingers spread, gripping with his knees.

He was scaling one of the stone supports at the side of the main hall to get to the gallery on the floor above. Ella was sitting cross-legged on the floor, watching him, gnawing on a biscuit. The museum kids made them from flour and water; they were hard and dry and didn’t taste of anything except salt, but they helped keep the hunger away. Ella had collected a small store of them that she kept in her pocket to chew on whenever the hunger chewed at her.

She’d offered Monkey-Boy one if he could get right to the top. He was doing well. It looked like she was going to have to give one of her biscuits up. Never mind. She liked Monkey-Boy. He was probably the best friend she had left of all the kids who’d come out of Holloway. He reminded her a little bit of her brother, Sam …