‘Lock him up and throw away the key!’

‘Fucking paedo!’

‘Here. This is his.’ A couple of women handed me a battered brown wallet. ‘It fell. His name is John Thompson.’

‘Thank God you’re here.’ John himself said this.

We got to him and Jake grabbed him under his right arm while I took his left.

I tried to address the crowd over the yells of abuse. ‘Thank you, everyone. We’ve got him now.’

We headed back towards the car, with people parting to let us through.

We pushed John into the car.

‘Hey, why am I in the back? Shouldn’t you be arresting them all for assault? What have I done wrong?’

‘How about breaking and entering a covert underground government agency?’

‘I . . . I . . . I want a lawyer.’

Jake laughed and started the engine.

‘Do you really think this is how it’s going to work? Where we’re taking you, you’re going to wish to be back with that baying mob.

‘Save us some time, and yourself a lot of pain, and tell us what you took with you.’

The man shook his head vigorously.

‘I took nothing. Everyone around me started dying and I figured we weren’t paid enough for that so I should get out while I still could. It was meant to be fucking empty. No one said that there’d be a fleet of assassins down there.’

Jake smirked. ‘There wasn’t a whole fleet. Just one. That one.’ He nodded at me.

I grinned and gave John a little wave.

‘Fuck me. A girl? You’re shitting me?’

‘How about we drop John back off with that other bunch of girls he was having such trouble with?’

‘OK, OK, I’m sorry. I just . . . Look, I took nothing, OK? I know nothing.’

*

Jake took John on to the Warehouse to join the rest of his colleagues in a continued interrogation with Cameron. If he had taken anything they would find out. I doubted he had. Having met him I was inclined to believe he was more of the cowardly running-for-his-life ilk and not efficient-operative-making-fast-getaway-with-the-goods.

I returned to the Platform to help with the Snake hunt.

‘Robin is in position,’ said Hattie, ‘waiting for George to exit Six.’

‘Frederick seemed to think Peppa might be leaving London after the WAF pottery café morning tomorrow.’

‘We should get a tracker on her,’ suggested Geraint.

‘I don’t like it.’ Hattie shook his head. ‘She finds a tracker and it’s game over. Both Peppa and Tenebris know we’re onto them.’

‘How else we goin’ to keep eyes on them?’ asked Pixie. ‘She’s trained. We can’t risk losing sight of her location.’