The trap was simple. I made it myself. Chicken wire on a frame, with a door that slides open and shut. You put the food inside. You loop a piece of fishing line through the top of the door. You pull the door up, using the fishing line. You practice pulling the door up, then letting it drop. You do it a few times, to get it right. Rats are pretty clever. If you miss, they’ll never come back. Then you run your piece of line somewhere quiet and out of the way. Like an old abandoned car. Then you wait for Ratty.

Ratty must have been hungry today. I got him in twenty minutes. Of course, rats get hungry in winter. Or maybe I’ve just had practice. Anyway, there he was in the cage, a young rat, brown, with long whiskers, sniffing anxiously at the food. You could tell he wanted to eat it. But he was worried about the cage, and the fact that the door was shut. I went to have a look at him. He looked back at me nervously. I could see him wringing his paws. Yes, I thought. He’d do nicely.

At four o’clock Goldie arrived, with Poodle trailing after him. I’d been sitting in Poodle’s den, wrapped in my duffel coat to keep warm. I’d brought my Bible and found the right place. I’d left the cage, with Ratty inside, at the back of the old car. When Poodle saw it, his eyes went round.

“What’s that?”

“What do you think?”

In his cage, Ratty was still wringing his paws and sniffing at the wire.

Goldie came closer. “Why’ve you got a rat?” he said.

I said: “I’ll tell you later. First of all, Poodle’s got something to say.”

Poodle looked at me. “What?” he said.

“I promised I wouldn’t tell,” I said. “But for us to help you, you have to come clean. It’s like what Mr. Clarke says. All you need is courage.”

Poodle’s eyes went even rounder. He shook his head.

“Come on,” I said. “You want to be cured, don’t you?”

“Ziggy, you’re crazy,” said Poodle. “How’s a rat going to cure me?”

I opened my Bible and read from it. “And they came over to the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes. And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit.”

“You’ve got to be joking,” said Poodle.

I went on. “And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones.”

“It isn’t like that,” said Poodle.