She does. The message says:

Silence. Under Shelf.

‘I will do whatever you want,’ she says, to relay her own message: that she understands. There will be another message under the shelf, because a tiny phone handle offers no room.

‘We don’t want you to do this. We want your husband to bring the money. Go home and we’ll call again.’

Click.

She drops the receiver. She leans on the phone book shelf, gripping it tightly, her fingers feeling beneath. Rubbing. Reading.

Escape the police at 12.25 p.m. Get to Bex Park. Bring your Forcefield. Destroy the messages.

She stands. Picks up the receiver again. Says ‘Hello’ into it, but this is just cover so she can rip away the ticker tape as she hangs up and withdraws her hand. Both hands come together, mashing the two messages together.

Forcefield.

The bigger message, the size of a postcard, is on paper, so it can be destroyed easily; the smaller, though, is on thick ticker tape so that it can withstand the friction of palms that used the phone before she took hold. This piece of plastic refuses to gel with the paper and skips from her rubbing hands. She sees it tumble to the floor. She cannot retrieve it, because the camera is watching. But it’s tiny, scrunched up, and no one will see anything but a piece of litter. She leaves the phone box with the other message squashed in her fist. Carefully punched holes in the paper now ruined by her hands, it will tell no one anything even if they find it on the floor of her already-littered car.

Forcefield.

The shock of it is like an icy lake dousing, but she holds her outward demeanour firm, for the police watching and listening, as she walks back to her car.

Forcefield.

A simple, single word, but all-powerful, and all-encompassing.

Because now she knows who took her little lady, and why…