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‘How far are you going?’ said Shane nervously as he settled himself on his mother’s cushion.

‘Not far. I’ll be out of sight in case he realizes I’m there, but close enough. OK?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Shane. ‘Two for a stranger, three for danger.’

‘Exactly. Don’t worry. We’re going to be rich and we’re going to be heroes. It’s going to be brilliant.’

‘Yeah,’ said Shane doubtfully.

Davey walked away from him into the woods, unravelling the twine through his fingers, lifting it around saplings and over branches.

Shane watched him become increasingly hard to see through the undergrowth, waiting for Davey to look at him and give him a last nod of joint enterprise, but he didn’t. Instead his friend just stopped being visible, and soon stopped being audible too. Shane watched his hand jiggle on the steering wheel or jerk about like a puppet’s as Davey continued to move through the woods. He willed it to stop, so that he would know that Davey had settled somewhere not too far away, but it went on for longer than he’d hoped.

Then his hand stilled, and he placed it on the blistered wheel.

He looked around.

The sound of Davey had faded away or stopped – he couldn’t tell which – and the forest seemed unsually quiet.

He’d sat in this car a hundred times, but had never felt so vulnerable. They’d talked in abstract terms about ‘fishing’ and ‘bait’, but now he realized that he really did feel as exposed as a worm on a hook. He kept eyeing the trees around him, even though he and Davey had agreed that the bait should not ‘act all suspicious’. He wondered if Davey could see him acting all suspicious, but he couldn’t help himself.

Every second took a week, and every leaf that trembled on the hot breath of summer was a killer in the dim greenish shade. There was a big beech tree behind his left ear – maybe fifteen metres off – wide enough to hide even a fat kidnapper. Shane tried to ignore it, but couldn’t stop twisting his head to look. Once, when he turned suddenly, he caught movement behind the tree. He was sure. Just a shadow but it was there. He knew it was. He strained his eyes until they watered, but didn’t see the dark motion again.

Sunlight stabbed through the trees in biblical rays, making the shade even darker, and turning the light into patterns that painted faces on the bark.

He looked at his watch. Fifteen minutes. Only! The watch was crap; his father had got it free with ten gallons of petrol. It must be wrong. It must be Davey’s turn by now.

He fiddled with the dashboard controls. The clicks of the indicator and wiper switches sounded too loud – as if they might attract the wrong kind of attention – so he stopped and the thick silence fell about him once more.

Shane started to feel truly scared. He knew his job was to sit there and wait and make the kidnapper come to him. He understood that. But he just couldn’t. Not with that shadow moving behind the big beech.

He sucked in his breath as he heard a rustle in the woods. A proper rustle this time – the big sound of somebody moving towards him. Or away from him. It was hard to tell. It was off in the direction of where Davey—

Shane let the breath go and laughed out loud with relief. Shi–it! It was Davey. Come to be the bait. He knew his watch must be wrong. He laughed out loud.

‘Hey Davey! You sound like a hippo!’

Davey stopped.

‘C’mon, you tosser. Your turn!’ Shane gave two sharp jerks on the twine and felt Davey at the other end.

A twig cracked behind the beech and Shane scrambled out of the car. Fuck this for a game of soldiers, as he’d once heard his father say. His shift was over and it was Davey’s turn to be the bait. See how he liked sitting there waiting to be snatched by a perv.

Shane hurried through the ferns and fallen logs towards Davey, winding up the twine as he went, casting nervous looks back at the big beech, grateful to be leaving it behind in the clearing. The Mazda disappeared behind him.

‘Davey, you tosser!’ How far had he bloody gone? There was no way he would have made it back to the car in time if Shane had been jumped by the kidnapper. No fucking way! He’d have been all on his own. The thought made Shane so angry that as he reeled in the twine he knew he was going to beat the shit out of Davey when he saw him. Bollocks to the reward. He was sick of always being the one doing the dirty work.

‘Davey!’

No answer.

‘It’s not funny, you dickhead!’

Shane stopped dead and frowned. He’d run out of twine. His fingers followed it to the point where it had been wrapped several times around the branch of a silver birch sapling, before trailing down to the remainder of the reel, which lay at the foot of the tree. Shane picked it up.

Underneath it was a square yellow note.

* * *

Steven was watching Em’s heart beat like a butterfly trapped under the pale skin of her left breast when Shane burst through the bedroom door.