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quickly and crossed Victoria Street with an air of great purpose. His pace slackened off, though, as he walked up Darlinghurst Road. It was still early, not yet nine o’clock. The morning was fresh and promising, but there was a weird cast over the day caused by the bad dream and the trip to the doctor’s. Finn’s routine had been disrupted, his concentration on his own small territory broken. The memories of his night and morning led back to other memories, that he usually admitted to his mind only in small doses.
    It was Jed’s fault, really, for being so kind, and that doctor, smiling at him and Jed as if they were brothers just on their way home from a night on the town. Suddenly Finn felt that he was visible again, not just a pair of eyes looking out on the world, with a brain behind them accumulating clues. Maybe he shouldn’t meet Jed tonight—it made things too complicated.
    A blue light hung above him, with POLICE written on it. Finn looked dubiously at the glass doors of the building. Jed had said he ought to report the tankermen. They weren’t justbreaking the law; they were attacking people, and Finn wouldn’t wish the pain he’d had on anyone else. He went up the steps.
    A tired-looking policewoman glanced up from the counter as he came in.
    ‘Hi,’ said Finn. ‘I just wanted to report a, um, some dumping of some waste which I think could be poisonous—’ He stopped, unnerved by the woman’s silence and her unfriendly stare.
    ‘Oh yeah?’ She looked as if she wouldn’t care if you dumped toxic waste on her front porch.
    ‘Yeah.’ There was a big map of the city on the wall, and Finn waved at it in a general sort of way. ‘There’s this little lane that runs between Hughes Street and Manning Street. Yesterday morning around five o’clock I saw a tanker parked in there dumping its load down a stormwater drain—’
    ‘What’s a kid like you doin’ roaming the streets at five o’clock on a Monday morning?’ the woman asked. A young policeman passing behind her glanced sharply at Finn and went into another office.
    ‘I was going for a run.’
    The woman looked him up and down. Finn had never felt paler or more scraggly. ‘Yeah, you really look like a fitness freak, I must say.’
    ‘Well, anyway, there were these guys in protective suits—’
    Through the doorway he saw the policeman opening a looseleaf folder and flipping through pages of photographs. He took one out and handed it to another man sitting at a desk typing, leaning over him to speak. The other man took off his glasses, held the page at arm’s length, then shot a look at Finn. ‘Reckon you’re right,’ he said, handing the picture back.
    Finn backed away. ‘Forget it,’ he said to the policewoman. ‘You don’t believe me anyway.’
    ‘Stop him, Cheryl,’ the seated policeman called, but Finn was gone before Cheryl had begun to shift from her seat.
    Talk about bad luck, he thought as he ran. Of course they’d know about him, of course they’d be on the lookout. But Finn had thought they’d have hundreds of missing persons to watch for. Now he’d gone and drawn the heat—they’d know he was in the area, maybe even tell Dad and Janet. Perhaps he should shift locations for a while.
    But at least here he knew his way around. He knew how to disappear. When he figured he was out of range, he slowed down to a saunter, trying to look relaxed. He headed off on a roundabout route back to his bin, where he could lie low for most of the day.
    He was back on Victoria Street, moving against the morning peak-hour crowds. He saw the roof of a police car, bedecked with spotlights, aerials and a loud hailer, slowly approaching. Best to keep out of sight—the people at the station might have radioed out a description of him. Feeling pleasantly dramatic, Finn fell into step beside a large businessman and kept the man between himself and the car as it passed. Then he turned and continued on his way.
    The siren started to whoop