I drove slowly down to the very end of the road and stopped between two of the big soulless buildings. I turned the car around so I was looking back up the road, but my Volvo was the only car about, and I began to wonder if I was in the right place.

“Are you here?” I asked.

“I’m here,” he said.

“Where?”

“Shut up and wait.”

I wondered if he was waiting to see if I’d been followed. I sat there for what seemed like ages, but it was probably only a couple of minutes. I looked all around. If he was watching me, I couldn’t tell where from.

“OK,” he said finally through the phone. “Open the car door, put the things out on the ground and drive away.”

“What about my wife?” I asked.

“When I am satisfied that I have everything, I will let her go.”

“No way,” I said. “If you want your things, you will have to let her go now.”

“Do as you are told,” he said again.

“No,” I said. “If you want this stuff, then you will have to come here now and swap it for my wife.”

“An exchange?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “An exchange.”

He laughed. “Mr. Talbot, this is not a spy movie. Leave the things on the ground and go.”

“No, I will not,” I said again firmly. “I want my wife back now.”

He didn’t answer, and I began to fear that he had gone. But then a small silver hatchback moved slowly down the road and stopped, facing me, about thirty yards away.

The driver’s door opened, and Kipper stood up next to the car. He lifted the phone to his ear.

“Where’s my stuff?” he said.

I opened the door to the Volvo and stood next to it. I too lifted a phone to my ear.

“Where’s my wife?” I said.

He reached down into the car and pulled her up from the backseat. She stood up next to him. I could see that her hands were behind her back, presumably tied, and there was what looked like a pillowcase over her head.

“Take that off her head,” I said into the phone.

He pulled the pillowcase away, and Sophie blinked in the bright summer-evening sunshine. He held her in front of him with his right arm over her shoulder. And he had his twelve-centimeter-long knife resting against her neck.

“Where’s my stuff?” he asked again through the telephone.

I could feel my heart pumping in my chest. I put my hand into the Volvo, picked up the canvas shopping bag and held it up.

“Show me,” he said.

I pulled the wad of banknotes out of the bag. I held it up above my head and waved it at him. Most of the notes were tenners and twenties, but he wouldn’t be able to see from his distance that they weren’t all fifties or even Australian hundred-dollar bills.

“Show me the chip writer,” he said.

With a dry mouth, I put the money back in the bag and carefully picked up the television remote control. I held it up with the back of it facing towards him. From where he was standing, I hoped that it would appear to be a black box of approximately the right size and shape. I held my breath for a few seconds, and then, equally carefully, I put the remote back in the bag.

“And the chips?” he asked.

I held up the sandwich bag with the grains of rice in it. I could hardly tell them apart from the real RFID chips, and I was the one holding them. He would have had no chance of doing so from thirty yards away. I put them back in the shopping bag as well.

“And here are the horse passports,” I said, holding up and waving the TV instruction booklet around so that he couldn’t see it too clearly. “Now, release my wife.”

“Go over there and put the bag on the ground.” He pointed towards the building to my right, his left.

I put the TV instruction booklet back in the bag and walked about fifteen or twenty steps over to where he had pointed. I put the bag down on the ground and stood next to it. I was still twenty yards or so from where he stood holding Sophie, the knife at her neck glinting in the sunlight.

“Now, go back to your car,” he said through the phone, even though I could hear him plainly without it.

“Let my wife walk away from you,” I said to him. “When she starts walking, I will walk away from the bag.”

“Mr. Talbot, you really have been watching too many spy films,” he said with a laugh.

It may have amused him to think that we were taking part in a spy movie, but I didn’t feel at all like laughing. Not with my humble TV remote control acting the part of an electronic microcoder/chip writer and a bag of simple rice grains appearing as some programmable RFIDs. And certainly not when my wife’s life might depend on them remembering their lines.

“Let my wife go,” I said firmly to him, “and then these are yours.” I pointed down at the bag.

The recovery of the items must have become an obsession with him. He looked over longingly at the shopping bag. He removed the knife from Sophie’s throat and gently pushed her away from him towards my car. I let her go a few strides, just enough to be out of his reach, and then I started moving slowly backwards towards the Volvo, watching Kipper intently for any sudden movements.

He walked around the front of his car and started towards the bag.

Sophie was now about halfway to my car, but she wasn’t going anywhere near fast enough to my liking. Her face showed relief at being away from Kipper’s grasp, but she clearly didn’t fully realize the ongoing danger of the situation.

It would have been nice to have had the time to allow Sophie to climb gently into the passenger seat, but Kipper was almost at the bag, and a single glance would enlighten him instantly that my kitchen television remote control was not the microcoder/chip writer he was expecting.

“Sophie, run,” I shouted at her urgently. At the same time, I sprinted for the Volvo and opened the rear door. Sophie ran towards me. I took a couple of strides forward, grabbed her and literally threw her across the backseat. I slammed the back door and was in the car almost before Kipper realized he’d been fooled. I tossed my phone over onto the passenger seat as I slammed the driver’s door shut and locked it

The first part of the scheme had gone exactly to plan. Now all I had to do was get Sophie and me safely away. I started the engine, threw the car into gear and shot past Kipper’s silver hatchback with my back wheels spinning on the loose surface.

I could see him shouting something at me, but I couldn’t hear what it was, and I didn’t care. He ran over to his car, and, all too soon, the silver hatchback appeared large in my rearview mirror as I waited at the junction with Birmingham Road for a gap in the traffic. He came right up behind me at speed and rammed the Volvo forwards, right out into the path of a speeding white van.

I closed my eyes and waited for the crash, but somehow the van driver managed to avoid the collision by swerving around me with a squeal of his tires and a blast of his horn. It didn’t seem to me that he had braked one little bit as he sped away towards the A46 roundabout.

Sophie was lying full-length across the backseat where I had thrown her, still with a black plastic tie binding her hands behind her back. “Ned, what’s happening?” Her voice was remarkably calm and collected for someone who had just had a knife at her throat. Where, I thought, was the expected panic?

The answer was that the panic was up here in front, with me.