‘I’m fine. But are you, Nick? This wasn’t what we expected, but it’s not bad news. I don’t want you to worry. Look, I’m coming home.’

‘Good. But stay calm, baby, please. Come on back. Everything will be fine, I promise.’

‘Let me drive, Nick. I don’t want to talk just yet. Let me get out of the city centre. You know I can’t drive and talk.’

‘Okay. But watch how you go. Are you sure you’re okay? Drive carefully, please.’

Drive carefully? That elicited a wild cackle that quickly transformed into uncontrollable sobbing.

Part Two

Eight

Nick grabbed the radio, shook his head in answer to a question from DS Bennet, and strode from the room in order to speak with his wife in private. In Josie’s playroom, he sat at the table, where Busy Day caught his eye. He put the radio down, and stared at it, and waited for her to speak. He could hear the car’s engine because the channel was wide open at Anna’s end. And the sound of sobbing. But he held his tongue to give her time.

‘Earlier this year a woman threw a petrol bomb through a house window.’ Nick looked round to see Bennet in the doorway. ‘It only killed the dog because the owners weren’t in. But she admitted trying to kill the family. It was retaliation for a snowball the owner’s kid threw at her two months before.’

‘So this is your snowball story? I get it. People can hold grudges for the slightest thing. Okay, ten years ago I spilled a guy’s pint in a pub in London. Go get him.’

‘The kidnappers mentioned you paying dues, Nick, and—’

‘This is about her father’s money,’ Nick cut in. ‘He flaunts it. Someone wants it. Sounds to me like this dues thing simply meant I should be the one delivering it, and lo and behold that’s what they’ve now asked for. Seems straightforward and I don’t know why everyone’s worrying. Now, can you please leave me alone to speak to my wife?’

Bennet came closer so he could watch Nick across the table. ‘Start taking this seriously, Nick. They mentioned dues and now they want you to take the money. Not, as you put it, someone small and frail they can easily overcome. Why pick you, a bodybuilder with attitude, unless these people wanted to get you in a certain place at a certain time?’

‘If they wanted to hurt me, they could have done that when I was drugged up in the back of their van. They could have killed my girl in front of me, if getting to me was their plan.’

‘Maybe something’s different now,’ Bennet said.