I hadn’t been in a police car before. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t know how to stop my dad finding out. I could feel my sweat turn cold even though it was warm in the car. I was going to open the door and run for it, but when I looked out the back window to see where they were, the policemen were opening the boot and putting bags and blankets into the back.

The side door opened and the groaning man got pushed in beside me, his face red and covered in dirt. He had tears streaked down it, and looked at me with swollen eyes, dark and glassy like marbles. I looked back but he didn’t say anything and put his head down.

The doors slammed shut as the two policemen got in, and the one I didn’t know turned round in the driver’s seat.

‘Right, where we going?’

I looked at the man beside me who gave off a smell that made me feel sick, like mouldy dustbins. He shifted in his seat and I saw he only had one leg. His nose was broken and squashed up against his face with dried blood across it, making it look even more red. He was quiet and shuddering, like his sobs were stifled and couldn’t open in the warm.

‘I’m talking to you!’

The policeman was looking at me, but he wasn’t as rough as the other one and looked older and in charge, like he might be going to let me go. ‘We’re not gonna arrest you this time,’ he said. ‘Where do you live?’

I told him because it was just around the corner and he could let me walk. He laughed and started the car up, ‘What number?’

The man beside me let out a moan and the blotchy policeman who hit me reached back and punched him on the shoulder, ‘Fucking crab!’ – and punched again – ‘Back in your shell!’

‘Language,’ the older one said, moving off out the tunnel. The man bent even more into himself, shaking and dribbling on to his lap. The flap of his trouser leg dangled off the seat beside him, twisted and muddy.

‘What a fucking morning, what a fucking shit-hole!’ The flushed red blotchy policeman leaned back heavily in his seat, ‘They stink!’

The driver was going the long way round the tunnels, back by the crossroads. He shrugged, ‘You gotta have the stomach for it.’