The man in the khaki uniform turned Bigmac's transistor radio over and over in his hands.

Bigmac watched nervously. There was a police sergeant in the room, and Bigmac was familiar with policemen. But there was a soldier standing by the door, and he had a gun in a holster. And the one sitting down looked tired but had a very sharp expression. Bigmac was not the fastest of thinkers, but it had dawned on him that this was unlikely to be the kind of situation where you got let off with a caution.

"Let's start again," said the seated soldier, who had introduced himself as Captain Harris. "Your name is...?"

Bigmac hesitated. He wanted to say, "You get Ms Partridge, she'll sort it all out, it's not my fault, she says I'm socially dysfunctional", but there was an expression on the captain's face that suggested that this might be a very unfortunate move.

"Simon Wrigley."

"And you say you are fourteen years old and live in-" Captain Harris glanced at his notes, "the Joshua Chen Clement "block" which is near here, you say?"

"You can see it easily," said Bigmac, trying to be helpful. "Or you could do, if it was here."

The captain and the police sergeant glanced at one another.

"It's not here?" said the captain.

"Yes. I don't know why," said Bigmac.

"Tell me again what Heavy Mental is," said the captain.

"They're a neo-punk thrash band," said Bigmac.

"A music band?"

"Er, yes."

"And we would have heard them on the wireless, perhaps?"

"I shouldn't think so," said Bigmac. "Their last single was "I'm going to rip off your head and spit down the hole"."

"Rip off your head-" said the policeman, who was taking notes.

"-and spit down the hole"," said Bigmac helpfully.

"This watch of yours with the numbers on it," said the captain. "I see it's got little buttons, too. What happens if I press them?"

The policeman tried to move away a little.

"The one on the left lights it up so you can see it in the dark," said Bigmac.

"Really? And why would you want to do that?"

"When you wake up in the night and want to know what time it is?" Bigmac suggested, after some deep thought.

"I see. And the other button?"

"Oh, that's to tell you what time it is in another country."

Everyone suddenly seemed very interested.

"What other country?" said the captain sharply.

"It's stuck on Singapore," said Bigmac.

The captain laid it down very carefully. The sergeant wrote out a label and tied it to the watch strap. Then the captain picked up Bigmac's jacket.

"What is this made of?" he said.

"I dunno. Some kind of plastic," said Bigmac. "They sell them down the market."

The captain pulled it this way and that.

"How is it made?"

"Ali, I know that," said Bigmac. "I read about it. You mix some chemicals together, and you get plastic. Easy."

"In camouflage colours," said the captain.

Bigmac licked his lips. He was sure that he was in deep trouble, so there was no sense in pretending.

"That's just to make you look hard," he said.

"Hard. I see," said the captain, and his eyes didn't give away whether he really saw or not. He held up the back of the jacket and pointed to two words done rather badly in biro.

"What exactly are BLACKBURY SKINS?" he said.

"Er. That's me and Bazza and Skazz. Er. Skinheads. A ... kind of gang... "

"Clang," said the captain.

"Er. Yes."

"Skinheads?"

"Er ... the haircut," said Bigmac.

"Looks like an ordinary military haircut to me," said the sergeant.

"And these," said the captain, pointing to the swastikas en either side of the name. "Gang badges, are they? Also to make you look ... hard?"

"Er ... it's just ... you know ... Adolf Hitler and that," said Bigmac.

All the men were staring at him.

"It's just decoration," said Bigmac.

The captain put the coat down very slowly.

"It's nothing to get excited about," said Bigmac. "Where I come from, you can buy badges and things down the market, you can get Gestapo knives-"

"That's enough!" said the captain. "Now listen to me. You'll make it easier on yourself if you tell me the truth right now. I want your name, the names of your contacts ... everything. A unit is coming from headquarters and they aren't as patient as I am, do you understand?"

He stood up and started to put Bigmac's labelled belongings into a sack.

"Hey, that's my stuff-" mumbled Bigmac.

"Lock him up."

"You can't lock me up just for some old car-"

"We can for spying," said Captain Harris. "Oh, yes, we can."

He strode out of the room.

"Spying?" said Bigmac. "Me?"

"Are you one of them Hitler Youths?" said the sergeant, conversationally. "I saw you lot on the newsreel. Waving all them torches. Nasty pieces of work, I thought. Like Boy Scouts gone bad."

"I haven't spied for anyone!" shouted Bigmac. "I don't know how to spy! I don't even like Germany! My brother got sent home from Munich for stitching up one of their football supporters with a scaffolding pole even though it wasn't his fault!"

Such rock-solid evidence of anti-Germanic feeling did not seem to impress the sergeant.

"You can get shot, you know," he said. "For the first offence."

The door was still open. Bigmac could hear noises in the corridor. Someone was talking on the phone, somewhere in the distance.

Bigmac wasn't an athlete. If there was an Olympic Sick Note event, he would have been in the British team. He would've won the 100 metres I've Got Asthma, the half-marathon Lurk in the Changing Rooms, and the freestyle got to go to the Doctor.

But his boots dug into the floor and he rose out of his chair like a missile going off. His feet barely touched the table top. He went past the policeman's shoulder with his legs already making running motions. Fear gave him superhuman acceleration. Ms Partridge might make cutting remarks but she wasn't allowed to use bullets however much she wanted to.

Bigmac landed in the doorway, turned at random, put his head down and charged. It was a hard head. It hit someone around belt level. There was a shout and a crash.

He saw another gap and headed for it. There was another crash, and the sound of a telephone smashing on the floor. Someone yelled at him to halt or they'd fire.

Bigmac didn't stop to find out what'd happened. He just hoped that a pair of 1990s Doc Martens that had been practically bought legally by his brother off a man with a lorry full of them were much better for dodging and running than huge police boots.

Whoever had been shouting stop or they'd fire ... fired.

There was a crack and a clang somewhere ahead of Bigmac, but he turned down a corridor, ran under the outstretched arms of another policeman, and out into a yard.

A policeman was standing next to a Jurassic bicycle, a huge machine that looked as if it were made of drainpipes welded together.

Bigmac went past him in a blur, grabbed the handlebars, swung onto the saddle and rammed his feet onto the pedals.

"Ere, what're you doin'-"

The policeman's voice faded behind him.

The bike swung out into the lane behind the station.

It was a cobbled street. The saddle was solid leather. Bigmac's trousers were very thin.

"No wonder everyone was very depressed," he thought, trying to cycle standing up.

"Nyer nyer nyer. Spy spy spy."

"Shut up!" said Wobbler. "Why don't you run away to London?"

"Ain't gonna run away to London now," said the boy. "S'lot more fun catchin' spies here."

They were back in the heart of the town now. The boy trailed behind Wobbler, pointing him out to passers-by. Admittedly, no-one seemed to be about to arrest him, but he was getting some odd looks.

"My brother Ron's a policeman," said the boy. "He'll come up from London and shoot you with his gun."

"Go away!"

"Sharn't!"

Opposite the entrance to Paradise Street was a small church. It was a non-conformist chapel, according to Yoless. It had a shut-up, wet Sunday look. A couple of elderly evergreen trees on either side of the door looked as though it'd take a shovel just to get the soot off their leaves.

The three of them sat on the steps, watching the street. A woman had come out and was industriously scrubbing her doorstep.

"Did this chapel get hit?" said Kirsty.

"You mean will. I don't think so."

"Pity."

"It's still here ... I mean, in 1996," said Yoless. "Only it's just used as a social hall. You know, for keep-fit classes and stuff. I know, "cos I come here for Morns Dance practice every Wednesday. Will, I mean."

"You?" said Kirsty. "You do Morris Dancing? With sticks and hankies and stuff? You?"

"There's something wrong?" said Yoless coldly.

"Well ... no ... no, of course not ... but ... it's just an unusual interest for someone of your-"

Yoless let her squirm for a bit and then said, "Height?" He dropped the word like a weight. Kirsty shut her mouth.

"Yes," she said.

Another woman appeared, next door to the one scrubbing her front doorstep, and started scrubbing her doorstep.

"What are we going to do?" said Kirsty.

"I'm thinking," said Yoless.

Somewhere in the distance a bell went off, and kept on going off.

"I'm thinking, too," said Johnny. "I'm thinking: we haven't seen Bigmac for ages."

"Good," said Kirsty.

"He might be in some trouble, I mean," said Johnny.

"What do you mean, might be?" said Yoless.

"And we haven't seen Wobbler, either," said Johnny.

"Oh, you know Wobbler. He's probably hiding somewhere."

Another woman opened the door on the other side of the street and entered the doorstep-scrubbing competition.

Kirsty straightened up.

"Why're we acting so miserable?" she said. "We're Nineties people. We should be able to think of something. We could ... we could... "