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If you want to sit back and relax, you can have the whole of pageram read to you by the author.

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He looked at the ceiling and did his tongue-in-cheek thing. He was trying to think. I wanted to disturb him. I needed another question.

“Did your lot ever find my bike?”

He faced me.

“Of course we did. We just didn’t tell you.”

He looked at the ceiling again. He thought he’d won.

“Can I come and get it?”

He said nothing. He just expanded as he took a large breath. Oh dear.

“Mr Mumford,” he said, “you being awkward doesn’t really help us. In fact, it does the opposite.”

He opened his eyes as wide as they would go and gave me the look that liberal DT teachers give to misbehaving adolescents. It nearly worked, but he’d stolen my drama from me and I resented that. When I’d found the footprint, I had something out of the ordinary to occupy me. I didn’t enjoy my night-time experience, but I might have enjoyed deciding what to do next. They hadn’t even allowed me the excitement of ringing them. That wasn’t fair. I looked at him. He still looked like a DT teacher. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps my approach was wrong, and perhaps I could get rid of them more quickly by cooperating. It was worth a try.

“You are right,” I said, “but this sort of thing doesn’t happen to me everyday.”

“I appreciate that.”

We enjoyed this fleeting moment of mutual respect – two men together. Then, Passmore appeared, and diluted the concentration of men being reasonable.

“Are we going to see this bloody picture?”