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it; that it was, in fact, a nervous smile of guilt. He now wished he’d looked at Steve to gauge his reaction to the comments.
    ‘Jesus Christ.’
    He wondered if Michelle had confessed her sins to her father, The Sheriff. His finger moved away from the 9 button and he put the phone on the mantelpiece. He slumped down into the armchair. He put his head in his hands as conspiracy theories emerged from hidden corners of his mind, like people whispering in the shadows of a dark alleyway.
    His mind flashed back to reality as if he had slammed the door shut to escape the whispering conspiracies. He had almost forgotten about the immediate threat to Colin. He picked up the phone to look at the time, the display read 14.18pm. He only had 42 minutes to find Colin. He wondered what would happen if he didn’t get there on time . Would Colin really be killed? He wasn’t certain, but thinking about the severed arm, it was a possibility.
    He tried to recall the clue from Celo.
    ‘A place where you used to go with the boys and the girls. Okay, that means it must be somewhere where we used to play as kids. Stacked hous es so high they touch the sky?’
    There was only one place that could be .

 
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 10
     
    14:19pm
     
     
     
    The Excellent Eight used to play games at Bilton flats, which lay on the outskirts of the town near the primary school he’d gone to. The flats had been built in the late '70s and even when he was a kid they already looked old. There were ten floors to the flats and twelve apartments on each floor. The top two floors were no longer occupied; back in ‘88 a storm damaged the roof and the rain had got in and completely ruined the top floor flats and sufficiently dampened the floors to affect the ceilings of the 9 th floor as well. The roof had been repaired but the rooms had never been renovated because there wasn’t enough demand for the eight remaining floors anyway. Therefore, this is where the kids usually played.
    T he rest of the clue then made perfect sense to him.
    Don’t play on the stairs or you will cry. Colin Clark has bad memories of this place.
    The Excellent Eight had been playing on the 10 th floor. They’d been catapulting gobstoppers from an empty apartment window to see who could get it the furthest. The lifts weren’t working and so they were coming down one of the stairways. They took it in turn to run and jump down entire flights. Sometimes over-jumping and smashing into the walls. By the time they reached the last three flights of stairs they were tired. Steve decided to start sliding down the banister railings and went flying down fast but perfectly dismounted at the end like a gymnast coming off a pommel horse. Colin decided to copy Steve and slid down on his front, balls first. He caught his leg on the corner of the railings, span off the banister and threw his hands out to protect himself. He fell onto the next flight of stairs and bounced down them to the floor below. It all happened so fast, everybody was stunned into silence.
    Steve eventually shouted out ‘Colin!’
    Then they h eard the shocked sobbing begin.
    The group ran down the stairs. They found Colin sat upright against the wall holding his right hand with his left. He looked up as they came down the stairs, his eyes red and wet , tears streaming down his face. His cheeks were covered in little cuts but those were minor, the major concern was the angle at which his hand was pointing. It was obvious straight away that he had broken it and the group quickly helped him home. Colin’s mother was ironing clothes when they arrived and as soon as she reacted he started to cry again. The group had to endure both interrogation and scolding from Colin’s mother but it was mercifully brief as she realised that she needed to get him to the hospital. The group stood and watched as Colin, feeling very sorry for himself, was driven away.
     
    Peter considered his options for getting to the flats. He had no car