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Steven’s mouth opened in understanding. They’d all seen thermal imaging on Police Camera Action! Bright white shapes with arms and legs, trying to hide in bushes or run across fields away from the scene of the crime, their own body heat a beacon to the hunters overhead.

Jonas saw it clearly now. When the helicopter or the searchers had come, the children were drugged and gagged and forced into the icy flesh room and stuffed inside dead cows and horses until the coast was clear. The idea made his stomach recoil. No wonder poor Charlie had freaked out when he’d heard the sound of the blades.

How many times had they suffered so? He thought of the long-ago day of the search, the dry grass whispering against his legs, the smell of heather and sunblock and the helicopter droning overhead, coming and going. Bob Coffin had searched with the rest of them. That meant Pete and Jess had been inside the cold, cloying carcasses all day long, as rescue passed by so close – with the police helicopter triggering a fresh ordeal every time it launched.

It astonished Jonas that those same children could be right here in front of him, playing ‘I Spy’, making daisy chains, singing, gathering leaves for him to eat, being kind to each other in the midst of a waking nightmare. How did they do it?

Only Charlie was coming apart at the seams. He didn’t have the language or the understanding to cope with what was happening to him. Either he was bouncy, or in tears. Increasingly it was the latter. Right now he was grizzling the way a two-year-old does when it’s missed a feed or a nap.

‘Hey, Charlie,’ called Pete. ‘You want to sing?’

‘No.’

‘OK. One man went to mow, went to mow a meadow. One man and his dog …’

Kylie joined in, and then the others, but Charlie slumped listlessly against the shade of the back wall.

Jonas peered through the fence. ‘Hey, Charlie. Do you want to try my meat? It’s much better than yours.’

Charlie looked from Jonas to the untouched bones in Jonas’s kennel and back again, lips pursed. ‘You don’t eat meat.’

‘No, but if I did eat meat, this is the meat I’d eat.’

Behind him Jess said, ‘OK, Dr Seuss!’ and Steven laughed, which made Charlie laugh too.

‘You want to try it?’ Jonas asked.

Fresh from laughing, Charlie looked more malleable. He screwed up his face and twisted his hands in front of him while he decided. Finally he gave a huge melodramatic sigh and a shrug and said, ‘No.’

They all laughed then, even Jonas. It was crazy – laughing at a starving boy refusing food while they were all being held hostage by a lunatic – but it still felt good.

Jonas got to the end of his chain and reached out for the closest bone. It was too far to touch with his hand. Aware of Charlie watching his every move, he turned and stretched out one long leg. His toes felt the meat. He rocked it and it tumbled towards him. He pulled it the rest of the way until he could pick it up in his hands. Just the touch of it made his skin crawl. The double-fist-sized hunk of greying flesh, marbled with clots of yellow fat. All wrapped around the smooth protrusion of bone …

He closed his eyes and brought the chunk of meat to his lips. The smell! He swallowed sick. He couldn’t do this. He grimaced and opened his eyes. Charlie was watching him with interest. Without thinking about it again, Jonas sank his teeth into the meat.

It was like trying to bite the nose off a face. That horrible, that hard. And it wouldn’t come off. He had to start chewing while it was still attached.

Like an animal.

He retched but kept going, tears streaming from his eyes, until at last he was able to tear a small gristly chunk away and swallow it whole. He panted with tension and disgust, saliva running over his lower lip and his stomach cramping, as his traitorous system suddenly readied itself on a promise of nourishment.

He wiped his mouth and composed his features into something he hoped resembled appreciation, before looking at Charlie. ‘This is good,’ he said. ‘I feel a lot better now.’

Charlie seemed interested.

‘You want some?’

Charlie looked from his own untouched bones to the one in Jonas’s hands.

‘OK then,’ he said, and got up. Jonas once more stretched to the end of his chain and just managed to tip the joint of meat through the gap where the roof stopped.

Charlie looked doubtfully at it for a moment, then dug his teeth in close to the place where Jonas had.

‘Yours is nicer,’ he confirmed.

‘I told you so,’ said Jonas.

‘You can have mine,’ Charlie said magnanimously, and threw them over the fence. They tumbled wetly across the cement.

Steven gave a short humourless laugh.

Jonas looked at the gross chunks of old animal. His stomach clenched like a fist in desperation.

You have to save the boy, Jonas.

I will. I promise.

How could he save anyone if he were dead?