36.

‘What’s not simple about it?’ I said, trying to keep the heat out of my voice.

‘First up, it’s a matter of principle: as a businessman here, and more importantly as a member of the Courtney family, I simply cannot give in to demands of this type. If we pay once, we send a message that we’re prepared to pay again.’

‘That’s a sound train of thought in the abstract,’ said Amelia loudly. Her voice rose further still: ‘But hello – these are Jack’s parents we’re talking about, one of whom happens to be your own brother.’

Langdon replied in a steely whisper, ‘Precisely. And he’d never forgive me for bowing down before such a threat. What he – and your mother – would want is for us to track down these crooks and make them rue the day they heard the Courtney name.’

Langdon’s ire was actually pretty rousing. The flush of anger I’d felt on first reading the note rose within me again. But just as I was about to ask him how he planned to track them down, my phone, which I’d set to maximum volume, chirruped loudly. The screen read ‘number withheld’. I rose from my seat, walked out beyond the pool area – somehow I had to take this call alone – and pressed answer.

‘Jack Courtney speaking,’ I said.

‘Do what I say and nobody gets hurt. Disobey and your parents die. Understand?’

The voice was mechanical, distorted, and utterly chilling. All the bravado I’d felt in the wake of Langdon’s ‘rue the day’ speech drained from me instantly. I shut my eyes, saw my mother’s face, and the thought that I’d been holding at bay since discovering that they were missing crashed in. I’d lost my brother. If I lost Mum and Dad too, I’d be alone in the world. I gulped air.

‘Hello, you’re still there?’

‘Yes, yes, I understand,’ I stammered.

‘You have visited the national museum and seen the statue of the tyrant criminal Leopold.’

‘Yes, but how –’

‘Your mother gave us this information.’

I was standing next to a gardener’s hosepipe wound in a coil and bolted to the wall. It made me think of a noose, a coiled whip, a poisonous snake. How had they got Mum to reveal this bland fact about our visit? ‘Tell me they’re OK,’ I blurted out.

‘They can tell you themselves,’ said the voice. My ear filled with random noise as whoever was holding the phone manhandled it, and my eyes filled with tears at what I heard next.

It was my father’s voice, shaky with fear but unmistakable, saying, ‘Jack, listen. Do exactly what these guys say. We’re fine for now. It’s just money. Your uncle Langdon will put it up. He knows I’ll repay him. This isn’t a time for heroics. I love you.’

‘You will find your mother’s headscarf at the foot of Leopold the butcher’s statue this Friday at 4 p.m.,’ said the mechanical voice after another bout of phone-shuffling. ‘Place the money beneath it in an envelope and leave the museum immediately. Your parents will be at your hotel, safe and unharmed, on your return. If you fail to deposit the money, or attempt to follow the representative we send to retrieve it, we’ll kill them both. Understood?’

Still blinking back tears, I nodded, only thinking to add a weak, ‘Yes,’ after a pause. ‘I understand,’ I said more firmly. ‘Four o’clock on Friday, under the headscarf at Leopold’s feet. Yes.’

‘Good boy,’ the voice replied. ‘Very good.’