He felt confident. He’d found a place where He’d been able to park without difficulty each time he’d been in the vicinity. It was in a street where on one side a stained brick wall formed the boundary of a school-yard and on the other a cricket ground lay in darkness. The street wasn’t particularly close to the gym, but Fu didn’t expect that to present much trouble because, more important than anything else, the place He parked was on the route the boy would have to take to get to his home.

When he emerged from the gym, Fu was waiting although He made it seem as though their meeting were a coincidence.

“Hey,” Fu said, all pleased surprise. “Is that…What’re you doing here?”

The boy was three steps ahead of Him, shoulders hunched, as they always were, head hanging down. When he turned, Fu waited for recognition to dawn. It did quickly enough to satisfy.

The boy looked left and right, but it didn’t seem so much because he wanted to escape what was coming, as to see if anyone else was there to witness the circumstance of such a person being in such a place where that person patently didn’t belong. But there was no one nearby, for the gym’s entrance was on the side of the building, not the front on the main route more used by pedestrians.

The boy jerked his head in that age-old male adolescent form of hello. His short dreadlocks bounced round his dark face. “Hey. What’re you doing round here?”

Fu offered the excuse He’d planned. “Trying to make peace with my dad and getting nowhere, as usual.” It meant nothing at all in the general scheme of life, but Fu knew it would mean everything to the boy. It told a tale of brotherhood in twelve brief words, obvious enough to be understood by a thirteen-year-old, subtle enough to suggest that a bond of the unspoken might actually exist between them. “Heading back to the banger. What about you? D’you live round here?”

“Up past the station. Finchley Road and Frognal.”

“I’m parked in that direction. I’ll give you a lift if you like.”

He moved along, keeping His pace somewhere between a stroll and a brisk, wintertime walk. Like a regular mate, He lit a cigarette, offered one to the boy, and confided that He’d parked a bit of a distance from where He’d met His dad because He’d known He’d want to clear His head afterwards with a walk. “Never works out with the two of us talking,” Fu said. “Mum says she only wants us to relate to each other but I keep telling her you can’t relate to a bloke who walked out before you were born.” He felt the boy’s eyes on Him, but they suggested interest and not suspicion.

“I met my dad once. Works on German cars over in North Kensington, he does. I went to see him.”

“Waste of time?”

“Bloody waste.” The boy kicked a squashed Fanta can that lay in their path.

“Loser?”

“Bugger.”

“Wanker?”

“Yeah. No one else’ll prob’ly touch it.”

Fu gave a bark of laughter. “Motor’s just over that way,” He said. “Come on.” He crossed over the road, careful not to watch to see if the boy was following. He took His keys from His pocket and jangled them in His hand, the better to telegraph the nearness of the van should his companion begin to feel uneasy. He said, “Heard you’ve been doing well, by the way.”

The boy shrugged. Fu could tell he was pleased by the compliment, though.

“What’re you on to now?”

“Doing a design.”

“What sort?”

There was no reply. Fu glanced the boy’s way, thinking He might have pushed too far, invading what was delicate territory for some reason. And the boy did look embarrassed and reluctant to speak, but when he finally replied, Fu understood his hesitation: the discomfiture of a teenager afraid of being labelled uncool. He said, “For a church thing meets in a shop down Finchley Road.”

“That sounds good.” But it didn’t, really. The idea of the boy’s being attached to a church group gave Fu pause because the disenfranchised were what He wanted. A moment later, however, the boy clarified the level-or lack thereof-of both his virtue and his connection with others. “Rev Savidge’s got me in care at his house.”

“The…vicar is it?…of the church group?”

“Him and his wife. Oni. She’s from Ghana.”

“From Ghana? Recently?”

The boy shrugged. It seemed a habit with him. “Don’ know. It’s where his own people’re from. Rev Savidge’s people. It’s where they came from before they got sent to Jamaica on a slave ship. Oni, she’s called. Rev Savidge’s wife. Oni.”

Ah. The second and third time he’d said her name. Here, then, was a real something to be mined, several nuggets at once. Fu said, “Oni. That’s a brilliant name.”

“Yeah. She’s a star.”

“Like to live with them, then? Reverend Savidge and Oni?”

The shoulders again, that casual lift of them that hid what the boy no doubt was feeling, not to mention what he was wanting. “All right,” he said. “Better than with my mum anyway.” And before Fu could press, asking the boy questions that would reveal his mum’s imprisonment, thereby allowing Fu to forge yet another false bond with him, the boy said, “So where’s your car, then?” in a restless manner, which could be interpreted as a very bad sign.

Thankfully, though, they were nearly upon it, parked in the shadows of an enormous plane tree. “Right there,” Fu said, and He gave a look round to make sure the street was as deserted as it had been on His every recce of the site. It was. Perfect. He tossed his cigarette into the street, and when the boy had done the same, He unlocked the passenger door. “Hop in,” He said. “You hungry? I’ve some takeaway in that bag on the floor.”

Roast beef, although it should have been lamb. Lamb would have been richer with appropriate associations.

Fu shut the door when the boy was inside and going for the bag of food as required of him. He tucked right in. Happily, he didn’t notice that his door had no interior handle and that his seat belt had been removed. Fu joined him, heaving Himself into the driver’s seat and thrusting the ignition key into its home. He started the van, but He did not put it into gear, nor did He release its hand brake. He said to the boy, “Grab us something to drink, okay? I’ve a cooler back there. Behind my seat. I could do with a lager. There’s Cokes if you want one. Or have a beer yourself if you’d rather.”

“Cheers.” The boy twisted in his seat. He peered into the back where, because the van was carefully panelled and thoroughly insulated, it was conveniently dark as the devil’s bum. He said, “Behind where?” as required of him.

Fu said, “Hang on. I’ve got a torch here somewhere,” and He made much of searching round His seat till He put His hands on the torch in its special hidden spot. He said, “Got it. Have some light, then,” and He flicked it on.

Focused on the cooler and the promise of beer within it, the boy didn’t notice the rest of the van’s interior: the body board firmly in its brackets, the wrist and ankle restraints curled to either side on the floor, the stove from the vehicle’s former days, the roll of tape, the washing line, and the knife. Especially that. The boy saw none of this because like the others who’d preceded him, he was just a male adolescent with the male adolescent’s appetites for the illicit and in this moment the illicit was represented by beer. In another moment, an earlier moment, the illicit had been represented by crime. It was that for which he now stood doomed to punishment.

Turned in his seat and bending to the back of the van, the boy reached towards the cooler. This exposed his torso. It was a movement designed to aid what followed.

Fu turned the torch and pressed it into the boy. Two hundred thousand volts scrambled his nervous system.

The rest was easy.

LYNLEY WAS STANDING at the work top in the kitchen, downing a cup of the strongest coffee he’d been able to manage at half past four in the morning, when his wife joined him. In the doorway, Helen blinked against the overhead lights as she tied the belt of her dressing gown round her. She looked extremely weary.