Thin shrilling sound, dipping and rising like an alarm. Before I copped what it was, Conway was up and running for the door. The savage bright burst on her face as she passed me said Yes, said Action, said At fucking last.

Girls clotted halfway down the corridor, a dozen of them, more. Half of them out of their uniforms now, bright in hoodies and T-shirts, cheap bangles shaking; a few half-changed, clutching buttons together, shoving into sleeves. All of them crowding and yammering, high and fast, Whatwhatwhat? In the middle of the clot someone was screaming.

We were taller than them. Over shining heads: Joanne and her lot, surrounded. Alison was the one screaming, back pressed against the wall, hands splayed in front of her face. Joanne was trying to do something, cradle her, ministering angel, who knows. Alison was too far gone even for that.

Holly, between heads, the only one not gawping at Alison. Holly was scanning faces, with eyes like her da’s. Holly was watching for someone to give something away.

Conway grabbed the nearest kid by the arm, little dark girl who leaped and screamed. ‘What’s the story?’

‘Alison saw a ghost! She saw, she said, she said she saw Chris Harper, his ghost, she saw—’

The shrieks kept coming; the kid was jumping and rattling under them. Conway said, loud, so anyone who could hear anything could hear her: ‘You know why he’s back, right?’

The kid stared, open-mouthed. Other girls were starting to look at us, baffled, tennis-heading, trying to work out through the brain-battering noise why these adults weren’t stepping in and getting control and turning everything back to sane.

‘Because someone here knows who killed him. He’s come back to make her talk. We see it all the time, on murder cases, all the time, amn’t I right?’

Conway shot me a look like a dig. I nodded. Said, ‘This is just the start. It’s gonna get worse.’

‘They know, murder victims do, they don’t like it when someone keeps them from getting justice. Chris isn’t happy. He won’t be able to rest till everyone’s told us everything they know.’

The kid made a muffled whine. Gasps around us, a girl catching her friend’s arm, ‘OhmyGod—’ High, trembling right on the edge of a scream to join Alison’s. ‘OhmyGod—’

‘Murder victims, they’re raging. Probably Chris was a lovely guy, when he was alive, but he’s not like you remember him. He’s angry now.’

A shiver swayed them. Teeth and sharp shards of bone, they saw, coming to rip the warm flesh off them. ‘OhmyGod—’

McKenna, surging through the boiling girls, massive. Conway dropped the kid’s arm like a hot snot, stepped back smooth and fast.

McKenna boomed ‘Quiet!’ and the jabber fizzled to nothing. Only Alison’s shrieks were left, exploding like fireworks into the shocked air.