37.

I turned to see Langdon, flanked by Amelia and Xander, standing in the entrance to the restaurant on the other side of the pool. He had his hands on his hips. There was no way that he could have heard my half of the conversation from over there, but he looked angry with me. Possibly he’d read my body language. I tried to walk tall as I returned to him.

‘That was the kidnapper, I take it,’ Langdon said.

‘One of them. They keep referring to “we”, so I guess there’s a team,’ I said.

‘That’s not a bad thing,’ said Xander, trying as ever to look on the bright side. ‘The more people are involved, the harder it will be for them to keep what they’re doing a secret.’

Langdon looked Xander up and down and said, ‘Good point. And with my connections, once I’ve put the word out for people to keep an ear to the ground, I’m sure we’ll turn up a lead.’

‘What do you mean by connections?’ asked Amelia.

Langdon ignored her. ‘So?’ he said to me. ‘What did they say?’

I told him what the kidnapper had said, relaying the unthinkable threat word for word. When I say unthinkable, I mean it: hearing myself repeat out loud what the kidnappers were threatening to do to my parents, my brain put up a kind of shield that stopped me connecting the horror to them. Instead it gave me two random memories in quick succession. The first was an image of Dad with his hands on his hips in a very Langdon-style way. They’re brothers after all. Dad was in the downstairs hall at home and I was viewing him from the top of the stairs. His hands were on his hips because I’d made myself some toast and left everything out with the lids off. He wasn’t particularly angry, just annoyed in an everyday sort of way. The second memory that came to me was equally standard issue. It was just me glancing across at Mum as she steered the car through traffic at night. Headlights swept across her and I saw she had her concentrating face on, lips pursed, eyes alert and glistening. That was it: two normal memories of my parents to blot out the horrible unknown of wherever they were now, and how I’d be unable to cope without them, in the aftermath of the kidnapper’s call.

‘They put Dad on,’ I whispered, once I’d lain the full horror of the threat at Langdon’s feet.

‘Bang goes your last theory,’ Amelia said to him. ‘It’s not a hoax.’

‘She doesn’t mean it triumphantly,’ I felt I had to tell Langdon.

‘Of course I don’t!’ said Amelia, confused. ‘I’m just ruling things out.’ As if my uncle wasn’t standing right beside her, she went on: ‘Langdon said the kidnappers might not in fact have your parents, but we can discount that possibility now. The kidnapping is real.’ Seeing me wince, she was kind enough to add: ‘Sadly.’

‘I’ve never heard Dad sound so scared,’ I told my uncle.

Langdon smiled sympathetically and said, ‘Your dad’s no fool. He’ll want to make the kidnappers think he’s cowed by them, but really he’ll just be feeling the same anger we all do, and weighing up his next move. He won’t want to provoke them by showing his steely side though.’

‘It’s hard to think of what his “next move” might be if he’s being held captive,’ said Xander, adding, ‘Just putting that out there.’

‘He’s a Courtney,’ Langdon replied. ‘Whatever the situation, he’ll work to take control of it.’

‘He said to pay the ransom,’ I said quietly.

‘Of course he did,’ said Langdon. ‘For the same reason. He’s got to look as if he’s cooperating.’ Deliberately, like a man laying bricks, he went on: ‘The last thing your father would want is for us to actually pay a ransom. He wouldn’t forgive us for doing that.’

I couldn’t bring myself to reply. Langdon hadn’t heard my father’s voice. I had, and the fear in it wasn’t made up; it was real. My fists balled up at my sides. Luckily, before I had a chance to threaten Langdon with them, Amelia spoke for me.

‘Hold on.’ She looked askance at my uncle. ‘You’re claiming that when Nicholas said “pay the ransom” what he actually meant was “don’t pay the ransom”?’ To me she added, ‘I know all about how people don’t say exactly what they mean, but your dad tends to be fairly straight-talking and in this instance it seems, how can I put it, unlikely.’

Xander under his breath, chimed in: ‘What she said!’

Langdon puffed himself up. ‘Now then,’ he said, ‘one of us here is an adult with fifteen years’ experience negotiating the complexities of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The others are children, none of who, with the utmost respect, has fifteen years’ experience of anything!’ He gave me what passed for a kind smile, put an arm around my shoulders and added, ‘Trust me, Jack. I know how best to handle this.’

The anger that had built within me withered as he said these words. I felt lost and deflated and I realised, however reluctantly, that I wanted him to be right. ‘But Friday is the day after tomorrow,’ I said lamely, ‘and I said –’

Langdon waved away my attempt to tell him that I’d already agreed to pay the ransom. ‘That’s time enough for me to put out the word. Tell you what, let’s agree the following: we’ll decide upon a course of action on Friday at noon, in the light of what I can find out between now and then. In the meantime, sit tight and have faith. I know what I’m doing.’