‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ Nick said as Len stared in disbelief. ‘You’re proposing we just ring up and tell them to drive in through the barricades?’

‘I don’t see why not.’ Shanni smiled her very nicest smile at Len-the smile Nick was beginning not to trust. It could make a man do strange things, that smile. ‘My brother’s a policeman. He’s out there somewhere. If I talked to him I reckon we could swing it.’

‘No!’

‘Pancakes and maple syrup and hot chocolate,’ she said beguilingly. ‘Steaming hot…’

Len could well have eaten nothing the day before, Nick figured then, watching the look of raw need flash across his face. He must have stolen the car on Thursday night and maybe he’d been on the run ever since. He’d had one glass of milk last night, and all that was left was fruit, cold and unappealing.

‘I can do this safely,’ Shanni assured him. Then she paused, sneezed, grabbed a tissue from her sleeve and sneezed again. She grinned as she emerged from her tissue. ‘Sorry, guys. Hay fever. It’s that time of the year. Anyway…’ She sneezed again and reassembled. Honestly, she was incorrigible. ‘Just let me phone and you can listen to every word I say.’

She gave Len a happy grin, as if he was a friend, and then she sneezed again for good measure. One more sneeze and she was back to entreaty.

‘Hey, Len, if you don’t like what I do you can shoot me in the toe-and it’s not every day I offer a toe. I’m very attached to my toes.’

Len glared.

Shanni sneezed again. She sniffed and recovered and smiled once more. Her very nicest smile…

‘Len, I’m just a kindergarten teacher with hay fever,’ she said, and the lawyer in Nick made him stare. If he heard this innocent little voice in a witness box he’d know she was lying through her teeth. But Len was no lawyer and she had him dazzled. ‘I’m not some hotshot lawyer with brains like my friend, here,’ she said, waif-like. ‘All I’m saying is that we’re hungry and I can organise us a great breakfast. But you’ll have to trust me.’