62.

I’ll admit it: I wished I’d been driving. I wasn’t though – Amelia was. She had her left arm threaded through my helmet strap and the bike slowed down as she wriggled to give it to me. ‘Just go!’ I wanted to scream, taking the helmet from her and pulling it on. But I knew better than to yell pointless directions at Amelia. She’d be more likely to call me out for being an idiot than speed up.

I needn’t have worried. Without the awkwardness of the helmet on her arm she let rip. I’ll admit this too: I was amazed how good she was on the bike. It turned out she’d spent the night poring over satellite maps of the area on her phone and immediately she was jinking between buildings, doubling back, bumping us over a railway crossing, and speeding up again onto a dual carriageway. The guards in the car didn’t have a hope in hell of catching us. I was still squeezing her tight, I realised, as much in awe as to keep myself from flying off the back.

‘Where to?’ she hollered.

‘Xander! At a speed that won’t get us pulled over!’

She hadn’t memorised that route, but I worked it out, signalling the way to her as she drove with textbook care through the waking city. We reached the apartment block without incident, parked up outside it and climbed the stairs to the rental. The light was on. Xander, fully dressed, ushered us in. I started to tell him what had happened, but he cut me off: ‘Amelia’s been giving me updates. I know where you’ve been.’

‘Yes, but neither of you know that I heard …’

‘Heard what?’

It seemed so improbable beneath the buzzing strip light in that kitchen-diner, but I forced myself to tell them what I’d heard. Xander’s mouth fell open as I spoke, prompting me to add, ‘I could have been imagining it, I suppose.’

‘Unlikely,’ said Amelia. ‘You’re not delusional in other respects.’ A smile lit up her face. ‘It’s brilliant news, potentially at least.’

‘Look, we still need to get the evidence to the summit,’ I said.

‘Already on it,’ said Xander.

‘How?’

‘I copied the photos from your camera to my laptop yesterday while you were in the shower. Amelia’s idea. She also texted me a thirty-page report full of coordinates, kids’ names, descriptions of them, et cetera, et cetera.’

Amelia shrugged at me. ‘I had time on my hands. It was a long night.’

‘And while you were sneaking about in the dark, we worked out who your parents would have been trying to influence at the summit: the Mining and Conservation Committee. I emailed the entire portfolio of photographs, plus Amelia’s report, to its chairman at four o’clock this morning.’

Like a puppet whose strings had been cut, I collapsed onto one of the spindly kitchen chairs in relief.

‘Only trouble is, he’s not yet replied.’

I checked my phone. It was only a quarter to seven. ‘He’s probably not up yet.’

Xander shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

I turned to Amelia for reassurance and saw that she’d fallen asleep with her head on her arms, right where she was sitting at the kitchen table. I’d been up all night crouching in the shadow of that warehouse; she’d spent the night working on her phone and waiting to pick me up. Xander too had been at the computer through the small hours. I had that burning sensation in the pit of my stomach I get when I’m properly exhausted; they had something similar, I bet. Everything in me wanted to go back to the warehouse with reinforcements – from where, I didn’t know – but I convinced myself that Mum and Dad had been unharmed there until now, and I’d go straight there once I was sure the evidence was in the right hands. What’s more, I knew that if we tried to keep going that morning without rest we’d get nowhere sensible, so reluctantly suggested we all turn in, just for a couple of hours. Amelia and Xander took a bedroom each. I flopped down in my clothes on the couch and fell into a black hole so deep I didn’t hear my alarm when it went off, partly because my phone had wedged itself down the back of the sofa. When I eventually retrieved it and checked the screen my ‘No!’ was loud enough to pull Xander from his bed.

‘Eh?’ he said, poking his head round the door.

‘It’s eleven fifteen! Quick, see if you’ve had a reply from the committee chair?’

‘His name’s Mukwege,’ said Xander, clicking away at his laptop. After a pause he said, ‘No, nothing. But look, it’s not too late. You can intercept him on the way to the chamber.’

‘How? I don’t even know what he looks like.’

‘You do now,’ said Xander, turning the screen my way. He’d pulled up a photo of the politician. Martin Mukwege looked to be an enormous barrel of a man. In this picture he was dressed in a boring suit, but his hair was wild, a great white afro haloing his enormous head. ‘He’ll be wrapping up the committee meeting at twelve and going to the vote after that. I’ll do some digging and see if I can work out any more detail,’ Xander said.

Amelia had surfaced with the commotion. She also took in Mukwege’s photograph over Xander’s shoulder before washing her face at the kitchen sink. I packed my camera into my backpack and downed two pint glasses of water. I was parched. Hungry as well. Xander had liberated about thirty mini-boxes of cereal from the hotel breakfast bar before he left. Despite having no milk I ate two bowlfuls of cornflakes on the spot. Amelia chose Coco Pops. She didn’t have to say anything for me to know she’d be coming too. I was relieved. Tracking the guy down and convincing him to take me seriously seemed a mountainous task. If – and it was a huge if – we got the chance, I knew Amelia could be more persuasive than me.