Johnny opened the garage door and stepped back hurriedly, in case a ball of maddened fur came spinning out.

Nothing happened.

The dreadful trolley stood in the middle of the floor. There was no sign of Guilty.

It was, Johnny thought, just like those scenes in films where you know the monster is in the room somewhere ...

He jumped sideways, just in case Guilty was about to drop out of the ceiling.

It was bad enough seeing the wretched cat. Not seeing it was worse.

He scurried out and shut the door quickly, then went back into the house.

He probably ought to tell someone official. The trolley belonged to Mrs Tachyon (actually, it probably belonged to Mr Tesco or Mr Safeway) so it might be stealing if he kept it.

As he went back inside, the phone rang. There were two ways he could tell. Firstly, the phone rang. Then his grandfather shouted "Phone!", because he never answered the phone if he thought there was a chance it could be answered by someone else.

Johnny picked it up.

"Can I speak to-" said Yoless, in his Speaking to Parents voice.

"It's me, Yoless," said Johnny.

"Hey, you know Mrs Tachyon?"

"Of course I-"

"Well, my mum was on duty at the hospital last night. She's got horrible bruises and everything. Mrs Tachyon, I mean, not my mum. Someone really had a go at her, she said. My mum, not Mrs Tachyon. She said we ought to tell the police."

"What for?"

"We might have seen something. Anyway ... er ... someone might think it was ... us ... "

"Us? But we called the ambulance!"

"I know that. Er ... and you've got her stuff ... "

"Well, we couldn't just leave it there!"

"I know that. But ... well, we did have Bigmac with us ... "

And that was it, really. It wasn't that Bigmac was actually evil. He'd happily fire imaginary nuclear missiles at people but he wouldn't hurt a fly, unless perhaps it was a real hard biker fly which's given him serious grief. However, he did have a problem with cars, especially big fast ones with the keys still in the ignition. And he was a skinhead. His boots were so big that it was quite hard for him to fall over.