The Door That Led to Where by Sally Gardner Page A

flew up and sat on the rafters cleaning its wings.
    â€˜That’s that,’ said Elsie as they stood outside in the rain. There was another funeral party waiting to go in. A family affair with weeping relatives, a huge glass hearse, pallbearers and even a small lad with a bugle to play ‘The Last Post’. So many wreaths. The largest spelled out ‘DAD’ in chrysanthemums.
    Elsie had told the minicab to wait. Slim said he would rather go home by tube but Elsie was insistent.
    â€˜There is no tube to Stokey,’ she said. ‘What you going to do, love? Walk back in the rain?’
    â€˜No,’ said Slim. His phone bleeped.
    They sat, the three of them, in the back of the car.
    â€˜What’re you going to do about her ashes?’ asked Slim.
    â€˜I’m picking them up tomorrow,’ said Elsie. ‘I’ll keep the urn in the lounge until Leon comes back. I mean, what else can we do? At least she can watch TV with me.’
    Slim’s phone bleeped again.
    AJ only now realised that Slim’s phone had been bleeping all the way through the service.
    Slim looked at it nervously as if the phone itself might attack him. At Stokey Town Hall he asked the minicab to stop. He said he had something to do.
    â€˜I’d better go with him,’ said AJ.
    â€˜You be careful, love,’ said Elsie.
    On the pavement Slim was as jumpy as a bag of nuclear beans.
    â€˜What’s up, bro?’ said AJ.
    Slim handed him his phone. The last message read ‘if i CU your dead.’
    AJ scrolled down. All the messages were to do with the killing of Slim. He handed back the phone.
    â€˜Moses,’ he said.
    Slim nodded. ‘Not just Moses – his whole gang are after me. And his dog. Bloody vicious, that dog, a prizefighter. It’d kill a man for a bone.’
    They walked together up Albion Road. After a bit AJ realised that Slim was crying.
    â€˜He’s going to kill me and Sicknote doesn’t care. She went back to him. She told me I was pathetic, that I didn’t know nothing about ladies, that I should go back to school and learn the facts of life. Bitch. She put these pictures up on Facebook, of her and Moses. I might as well kill myself and save Moses the trouble.’
    â€˜Don’t say that,’ said AJ.
    â€˜You tried to warn me. So did Leon. I wish I was dead, man.’
    â€˜What? And be stuffed in an urn?’
    â€˜What do I do? Where can I hide? This is no joke.’
    It came to AJ in a flash. He still had to find the documentation – there was more than a chance that Mr Baldwin would be back in chambers any day now. Why not take Slim through the door? At least in 1830 there was no chance of Moses getting his hands on him. Yes. It might well work.
    â€˜Can you lay low until Friday?’ AJ asked.
    â€˜I hope so.’
    â€˜OK. On Friday I’ll meet you at Phoenix Place, about six o’clock. Just be there. Oh, and make sure you’ve had all your jabs – measles, polio, typhoid, anything like that. Go to your GP and say you’re going travelling.’
    â€˜What?’ said Slim. ‘He’ll think I’m going to a jihadi training camp. Anyway, I don’t have a passport.’
    â€˜You won’t need one,’ said AJ. ‘Not where I’m taking you.’

Chapter Seventeen
    Once you’ve made it over the bump of Wednesday it’s downhill all the way to Friday. And Friday couldn’t come soon enough for Slim. He had phoned AJ to say that he was holed up with a cousin in Dalston. He sounded terrified and said he was too scared to go to his doctor.
    â€˜They’re still after me. I tell you, man, I’m dead meat.’
    AJ had insisted. ‘Go in disguise,’ he said. ‘But go.’
    By Thursday Leon still hadn’t been in touch. AJ felt weighed down by his friends, work, worry. Ever since he had visited Mr Baldwin he had been as edgy as a dog with fleas. At any moment