‘You’ve made your point,’ he said. ‘So how about you change the subject? I mean, it’s not as if any of them tossers are gonna be able to keep up with us. I’d like to see that – a hundred-mile-an-hour sicko.’

They cruised on to the M40, but it was a good few miles before they found a way off it, a turning to Beaconsfield, Amersham and Slough.

‘This’ll do us fine.’ Ed was consulting his map again. ‘We’ll try Slough first. It was on my list, one of the places to check out.’

They left the motorway and were very quickly into countryside, narrow roads, fields and hedges and trees and woodland off to the sides. Long grass, huge weeds and bright wild flowers growing everywhere, even up through cracks in the road, so that they brushed the underside of the car with a swishing noise as they drove over them. Lewis hadn’t been anywhere like this for months, years even, had almost forgotten that the rest of the world even existed, he’d been so used to buildings all around him. The city. Now nature was taking over. He relaxed another couple of notches. He liked it here. Was glad he’d come.

‘Look at that,’ came Macca’s voice from the back.

‘What is it?’

‘Stop a minute.’

Lewis slowed the car and brought it to a halt in the middle of the road. Didn’t have to pull over to the side. No danger of any other vehicles coming along here. Ed switched the power off on the music system. Silence.

‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘What did you see?’

‘Over there,’ said Macca. Lewis could see in the mirror that he was pointing to something.

‘What am I looking for?’ Ed asked.

‘Smoke.’

‘Yeah.’ Lewis could see it now, a thin grey column rising up above the trees in the distance and fading out as it blurred into the sky.

‘What you reckon?’ said Macca. ‘No smoke without a fire, they say, don’t they?’

‘Yeah,’ said Brooke, pretending to be impressed. ‘They do say that, don’t they?’

‘And a fire means people,’ said Kyle, ignoring her sarcasm.

‘Not necessarily,’ Ed butted in, peering at the smoke. ‘Could just be … like, I don’t know. A tree on fire. Fires start.’

‘Usually, though,’ said Macca, ‘a fire means someone’s lit it. And these days that means kids. Sickos ain’t got the brains for it.’

‘Brains …’ said Brooke, impersonating a cartoon zombie.

‘Is it worth checking out, do you think?’ Trio asked.

‘I don’t know.’ Ed didn’t sound convinced. ‘My plan was to check the towns out first.’

‘We’ve come to find people, ain’t we?’ said Kyle. ‘I vote we check on the smoke. Otherwise we’re just driving around blind.’

Ed turned to look at Trinity.

‘What do you reckon?’ he asked. ‘Can you sense any big crowds of sickos around here?’