By the time I reached Brill’s my fingers were under control. Even so, the sales assistant in the store looked at me oddly when I went in. No doubt the limp and the facial scars didn’t help — that, and the fact that I suspected my left eye was roaming independently of my right one. I braced myself against the counter and did my best to look relaxed and casual.

“I’d like a book of nursery rhymes.”

“Yes, sir.” He looked surprised. “Er, what age group is this for?”

What age group indeed, sir? Only Leo could answer that one.

“Do you have a complete collection? I’d like a book that gives the alternative versions, if there is such a thing.”

“I’ll see what I can find.”

When he brought it over and I had paid for it, I ignored the inquisitive look and leafed through on the spot to the right place. Tom, Tom, the piper’s son, Stole a pig and away he run. The pig was eat and Tom was beat, And Tom went howling down the street.

I muttered the words aloud. Nothing. No surge of emotion, no sign that Leo was tuned in and getting the message. Second verse: Tom, Tom, the piper’s son, Learned to play when he was young, But the only tune that he could play, Was “Over the hills and far away.”

Now there was something. Something faint and vague, a prickling in the nape of my neck, as though a hairy-legged insect was crawling there. And that was all.

So what now?

I went back outside the shop and leaned on the wall. Even though I hadn’t been able to pick up anything definite, the long scar across the back of my skull was still tingling with feeling, as though the stubbly regrowing hair there was trying to stand on end. I tilted my head back and looked up at the clouds, drifting along at the lazy pace of early autumn. The tune was right, I had no doubt about that — but could it be that I was tying in to the wrong set of words? Who else had taken that tune and used it?