“What are we going to do?” Dake asked Jenner. “I mean, we can’t just keep waiting for him, can we?”

“Do you want to give up?”

“Well, no, but —”

“If you want to go, just go. I’m not stopping you.”

“I never said anything about going, did I? I was just wondering what we’re going to do if he doesn’t show up, that’s all.”

“He’ll show up.”

Jenner glanced over at Shirley and Grace. They were both sitting on the floor by the radiator now, both bound and gagged, and both looking the worse for wear. Shirley’s complexion was a sickly gray-white, and although the gash on the side of her head had stopped bleeding, it was badly bruised and swollen. Grace had a nasty-looking wound on her face too. She’d fought like a wild thing when the two men had grabbed her — screaming at them, kicking and punching, biting and scratching — and Jenner had had to hit her twice, and hit her hard, to knock the fight out of her. His first blow, a vicious punch, had cracked her jaw and loosened one of her teeth, and the second — a brutal hammering with the butt of his pistol — had caught her just below her right eye. The eye was already blackening, and it had swollen up so much that she couldn’t see out of it anymore.

She watched, one-eyed, as Jenner came over and stood in front of them. He gazed coldly at them, idly scratching at his increasingly itchy Santa beard with the barrel of the pistol, and then — without looking around — he said to Dake, “Are the cell phones still out?”

Dake reached into his pocket and pulled out three cell phones — one of them was his, the other two were Shirley’s and Grace’s. He looked at them one by one, checking the signal indicators, but nothing had changed since the last time he’d checked. No bars, no reception.

“Nope, nothing,” he told Jenner. “It must be the weather.”

“Check the landline again.”

Dake went over to a small table by the settee and picked up a handset. He pressed the call button, put the phone to his ear, then shook his head.

“It’s still out,” he said.

Jenner just stood there for a while, calmly thinking things through, then he casually raised his pistol, leveled it at Grace’s head, and turned to Shirley.

“Same rules as before,” he told her. “I’m going to take the tape off your mouth and ask you some questions. If you lie to me, or scream for help, I’ll put a bullet in her head. Understand?”

Shirley nodded.

Jenner had already questioned her about Gordon — what time did she expect him back? why was he so late? where could he have gone? — and when Shirley had told him that her son was due back at one o’clock, and that she had no idea why he wasn’t home yet, or where he might be, Jenner knew she was telling the truth. He was a consummate liar himself, and he’d always prided himself on his ability to recognize a lie when he heard one, and he was as sure as he could be that Shirley wasn’t lying.

When he stooped down this time to peel the tape from her mouth, she couldn’t help flinching away from him, but he didn’t make anything of it. He just reached out, grabbed an edge of the tape, and quickly ripped it from her mouth. She squeezed her eyes shut and grimaced at the pain, but she didn’t cry out.

“All right?” Jenner grunted.

She nodded.

“So what do you think?” he said. “What’s happened to Gordon?”

“I really don’t know.”

“What would he have done if his car wouldn’t start or if he got stuck in the snow somewhere?”

“He would have tried calling me.”

“And if he couldn’t get through?”

“He would have walked back.”

“Really?”

“I know my son.”

“I’m sure you do. How long do you think it would take him to walk here?”

“From where? The bank?”

“Yeah.”

Shirley thought about it. “Forty-five minutes, maybe. Something like that.”

“So if he’d started walking at around twelve thirty, he would have been back by now, wouldn’t he?”

Shirley nodded. “He would have been back ages ago.”

“And if his car got stuck in the snow somewhere between town and here, and he’d left it and started walking, he would have been back even sooner, wouldn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“So we can rule out car trouble.”

“I guess so.”

“Maybe he’s dead,” Dake suddenly piped up.

There was a stunned pause for a moment, then all three of them gazed over at him.

“What?” he said, bewildered by the looks on their faces. “It would explain everything, wouldn’t it? I mean, he can hardly walk home if he’s dead, can he?”

Gordon wasn’t dead. Far from it. In fact, at that very moment — 4:34 p.m. — he’d never felt more alive. Admittedly, he’d never felt quite so strange either, and as he approached his silver Vauxhall Corsa and beeped the lock, he was amazed to see the sound of the beep turning into a fluorescent bird of paradise and flying up into the snowy night sky.

“Sheesh,” he muttered.

The echoes of his voice swirled all around him, a hundred thousand tiny “sheeshes” whirling and spiraling together, like a vast school of silvery fish feeding on the falling snowflakes.

Gordon held out his hand. A snowflake landed on it, and he brought his hand up close to his eyes and stared at the delicate white crystal.

A memory came to him.

A voice?

No, not quite . . . just words.

. . . millions of snowflakes dropping down from the sky like invaders from another planet, silent and serene, menacing . . . awesome . . . an alien world . . . crystals . . . symmetrical patterns . . . snow . . . snowball . . . snowdrop . . . drop of snow . . .

“Snow goose,” Gordon muttered, smiling to himself, “that’s no goose, that’s my wife . . .”

He paused, frowning, momentarily unaware of where he was, or where he’d been, or what he was doing . . . and then he blinked once, and something clicked inside his head, and although he still wasn’t sure where he’d been, or why it was dark, he at least knew where he was, and what day it was.

It was Christmas Eve.

He was standing by his car, in the staff parking lot at the back of the bank, and it was time to go home.

He opened the car door and got in. As he closed the door and settled into the seat, he realized right away that something didn’t feel right. He couldn’t pin it down at first — it just felt different — and for a moment or two he actually wondered if he was somehow in the wrong car, but after a quick look around, he knew that wasn’t it. The pine air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror was his, as was the satnav and the beaded seat cover . . . yes, this was definitely his car. There was just something . . . something missing . . . and then it struck him.

The steering wheel.

It wasn’t there.

He reached out in front of him, moving his hands around the space where the steering wheel should have been — as if, perhaps, it was still there, but had somehow become invisible — but he couldn’t feel anything. The steering wheel simply wasn’t there. The only thing he could think of was that it must have been stolen. Someone must have broken into the car and stolen his steering wheel . . .

But even as he tried to get angry about it — which he didn’t really want to, but felt that he should — the truth of the matter suddenly dawned on him. He slowly turned to his right . . .

And there it was — the steering wheel. It wasn’t missing. No one had stolen it. It was exactly where it should be — right in front of the driver’s seat.

It was Gordon who wasn’t where he should be.

He was in the wrong side of the car.

He was sitting in the passenger seat.

He started laughing then. It was just a quiet chuckle at first, but the more he thought about what he’d done, and what he’d thought — a steering-wheel thief? — the more ludicrously hysterical it all seemed, and his quiet chuckle quickly became a manic chortling, which in turn grew into a howling fit of unstoppable laughter that had Gordon doubled over in his seat, clutching tightly at the pain in his sides, while a torrent of tears streamed from his eyes.