64.

‘We need to get the bike back to the taxi guy,’ Amelia said.

‘Three o’clock, as the vote’s happening, is what we told him.’

‘You can buy me a Coke or something,’ she said. ‘While we wait.’

We rode the motorbike to a nearby drinks stand beneath the shade cast by a clutch of dusty trees, and hoovered up a couple of cold drinks each.

We called Xander, filled him in. He was as pleased as we were that his carefully put-together email of evidence had reached its target. After that we just sat and waited until eventually three o’clock wound round and we wheeled the bike to the front of the parliament building again. I wasn’t necessarily expecting its owner to show up: he might prefer to keep the deposit I’d given him. But at three on the dot there he was, with his brilliant-white teeth and this time wearing a pristine New York Mets cap. Once he’d looked the bike over and found it satisfactory, he took the hat off, pulled the cash from within and handed it over. I gave him our helmets too: he could always sell them.

‘Merci,’ we said in unison.

Once he’d gone there was nothing to wait for except Mukwege’s return. Now that three o’clock had passed he would be out soon, surely? And yet he didn’t appear. By four I began to have doubts. He’d seemed so genuine, surely he’d come? Four turned to four fifteen, four thirty, four forty-five …

‘You can’t wait, can you?’ Amelia sighed.

‘No.’

She picked up the phone to Xander and asked him to send Mukwege a message telling him we’d set off for the warehouse ourselves and asking him to follow on.

We hailed a cab, rode it to the spot where Amelia had waited all night and walked from there. My pulse was jumping as we approached the building. It looked so different in the early evening light, more boring, less sinister. I’d planned to stroll past it once and count the guards. They’d not seen either of us the night before so there could be nothing wrong with simply walking by. I doubted they’d do more than glance our way. The van from behind which I’d thrown the rock was still parked across the street. This time we walked in plain view on the other side of it. My feet stopped moving as the full expanse of the warehouse forecourt, smashed floodlight and all, spread out before us. I couldn’t see any guards out front at all.

‘Weird,’ I said.

‘Where have they gone?’

‘No idea,’ I replied. Were they round the back, or inside? That wouldn’t make much sense. A nasty thought flashed past: had we spooked them last night, prompting them to up sticks with their prisoners and move on?

Before I knew it I was running across that forecourt, Amelia trailing behind me, making straight for the warehouse’s front door. What was the worst those guards could do to me if they were inside? Lock me up with my parents, if my suspicions were right. The big roller-shutter covering the door was down, secured with a padlock through two metal hoops, one in the bottom of the door, the other embedded in the concrete floor. I hammered on that metal shutter, yelling, ‘Hello! Hello! Is there anyone inside?’

Bang, bang, bang. Again and again. Until my hand hurt.

‘You should probably pause to listen for an answer,’ Amelia suggested.

I gave another bang, bang, bang and waited.

Nothing. Then, from far away, a distant thump, thump, thump.

We looked at one another.

Bang, bang, bang.

Thump, thump, thump.

‘Mum? Dad!’

Silence.

Then, from so far away, ‘Jack!’

In a frenzy I tore around the building looking for a way in. There were definitely no guards: the place was deserted. There were no windows either, and the only other door, at the rear, was also made of metal and locked shut. While I was circling the warehouse, searching high and low, Amelia considered the situation her way, and when I next jogged past she pointed at the security light that I’d smashed, at the top of its long metal pole, and said, ‘That?’

‘What about it?’

‘Let’s rip it down and use it smash the lock.’

It took us a good half an hour. The pole snapped off its stand easily enough, but the only way through the lock at the foot of the roller door was to chip and stab and gouge the concrete from around the fixing. Eventually we loosened it enough to prise up the bottom of the door, and when the lock gave, the door, counterbalanced from inside, shot up in a clattering rush.

‘Mum, Dad!’ I yelled again.

And this time Mum’s response was louder. It was coming from behind a partition wall, in the middle of which sat another locked door. I was yelling at her in delight, shouting, ‘Stand back,’ and about to attack that door with the metal pole too, when Amelia pointed to a key hanging on a nail in the adjacent wall. I couldn’t get it into that lock fast enough: my fingers were a jittery mess. But eventually I did, and the door swung open to reveal my parents. Mum was right in front of me, crying with excitement. Dad was standing with a hand to his forehead, his face as grey as the breeze-block wall.