Were his wife here now, she would have told him to go to the police. Had he refused, she would have contacted them herself, and probably condemned their daughter to death in the process. It was as well that she was elsewhere. Decades of working with the Vuksans had given Frend an insight into how men of their stripe operated. They did not make idle threats. The questions, of course, were: a) Who had his daughter? and b) What did they want from him in return for her? The first step was to find out the answers, which would determine his next move. Already he had some inkling, but best to be sure.

‘Papa, they showed me films. They’ve done this before. They showed me what would happen if you contacted the police. Papa, don’t let them do that to me.’

The video ended. He replied to the email. A single word: Received. Two minutes later, his cell phone rang. The caller’s number was withheld. He answered immediately.

‘Yes?’

‘Anton Frend?’ The voice was disguised by software. It sounded almost female, but he could tell it was a man speaking.

‘That’s correct.’

‘You saw the film?’

‘Yes,’ said Frend. ‘What do you want?’

And it was as he had feared.

‘We want the Vuksans.’

Bob Johnston took the call at the cottage in Cornwall. In the kitchen, Pia Lackner was playing cards with Rosanna Bellingham. The two women were getting along well enough, but the peculiar combination of boredom and tension had already begun to get to Pia. She was growing more short-tempered, which was hardly surprising. There were only so many games to be played, books to be read, and shows to be watched. Eventually, Johnston knew, her patience would run out. If she wanted to leave, he and Rosanna couldn’t stop her. Well, they could, but it would be counterproductive, and would turn the operation from a simulacrum of a kidnapping into the thing itself.

The game stopped as soon as the phone rang. Pia and Rosanna watched Johnston answer it. He listened, said ‘I’ll let her know,’ and hung up.

‘Your father has made contact,’ he told Pia. ‘It’ll move fast now.’

And Pia Lackner burst into tears.

Chapter LXVI

The Great Lost Bear had been in business since 1979, when Dave Evans, along with his wife and a cousin, had arrived in the city of Portland from North Conway, New Hampshire, and decided to open a bar of his own after years of working for other people who did a lot of stuff right and, sometimes, even more stuff wrong.