The door opened to show a big man with thick neck and a shaved head. If you asked someone to describe what a thug looked like, they would invariably describe someone exactly like this man. He looked around sharply, then raised his eyebrows at the sight of Linua.

“Hoblin, what the…?”

That must be the thief’s name. Hoblin shrugged carelessly.

“She got the stuff he wants.”

The big man rolled his eyes and stepped back, letting them pass into a narrow hallway with an ugly, old-fashioned carpet. The house smelled musty and unused. The thief led the way confidently to the front room, which had been decorated as a study. There were three other people in the room.

The first one Linua noticed was a businessman in a grey suit. He wasn’t fat, exactly but he had a round softness to him, and pale skin and glasses. He was sitting at the desk in front of the window, with a bulky metal briefcase lying in front of him on the desk.

On the other side of the room, against the wall, was an old-fashioned leather sofa with two people sprawled on it. One was a short, wiry guy who was jiggling his knee repeatedly, as if he couldn’t sit still. The second was a woman, flat-faced and broad-shouldered. Her hair had been gelled up with spikes on the top of her head, and shaved into patterns at the sides and back. She looked fit and muscular, and alarmingly like the sort of person who would be happy to comply with an order to ‘show someone out the back.’

Linua started as Hoblin put a hand on her back and gently pushed her forwards.

“Kid got the photos, boss,” he said.

The businessman looked at Linua with cold, emotionless eyes.

“Show me,” he said. His voice was soft, quiet and cultured. It sent a shiver up Linua’s spine.

“I want to see Eret,” she said, her voice trembling. She remembered the thief had said to be polite. “Please.”

The businessman’s voice went smoother and quieter, but it was more frightening than if he had raised it.

“You will see the boy when you show me the storage stick.”

Linua hesitated and couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder at Hoblin, who nodded. Her hands went to the complicated knot of hair that Anith had pinned to the back of her head and pulled out the hair clips. The storage stick was hidden in the centre of the knot. They had hidden it that way to prevent Hoblin from trying to take it from Linua by force.

She pulled it out and showed it to the businessman, but when he held out his hand she pulled it back.

“Please let me see Eret.”

The businessman raised an eyebrow. For a long, terrifying pause he said nothing, but eventually he jerked his chin at the woman on the sofa.

“Bring the boy.”

The woman got up and went out of the room. Linua heard her feet on the stairs, and a creak overhead from a floorboard on the first floor. Then there were two sets of footsteps coming back down the stairs. Eret was pushed in the room with his hands tied behind his back. Linua felt the most overwhelming relief at the sight of him, but then realised, to her horror, that he had a puffy lip and a black eye.

“Are you alright?” she blurted out.

Eret’s eyes widened at the sight of her and he looked fearfully around the room.

“Linua! Why did you come here?”

“Shut up,” the businessman said coldly. He didn’t raise his voice, but Linua and Eret immediately shut up. “Give me the stick.”

Linua licked her lips nervously.

“It’s encrypted with a password. If you let me and Eret go, you’ll get the password.”

She made herself step forward and put the storage stick on the desk, then darted nervously back. She was unable to shake off the impression that if she got too close to the businessman he would deliver a fatal bite, as if he was a fat poisonous snake coiled up in the chair.

There was silence. The businessman didn’t touch the stick. Instead he put his elbows on the desk, and steepled his fingers in front of his mouth.

“I could simply have my people break the boy’s fingers one by one until you decided to give me the password.”

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“I don’t know the password. It was set by someone else.”

“I find it unlikely that a group of schoolchildren could set up an encryption strong enough to defeat my computer experts.”

Linua swallowed. Now she was glad that Pickle had given her so much information about the methods he had used to encrypt it, even though she had been frustrated with him at the time for over-explaining.

“It’s a ten-digit password that uses both letters and numbers, which means it has over three trillion possible combinations. It was generated using a website that listens to random atmospheric noise, so it’s…” What had Pickles said? She couldn’t remember the actual words he had used. “…it’s really random not pretend random. It could take thousands of years to crack it using a... using a…”

“A brute force method,” the thief—Hoblin—supplied.

“Yeah. Even if you had the…” oh gods what was it called? “…the hash thingy for the encryption program it would still take years to run through all the possible permutations.”

The businessman sat back.

“Trying to impress me with your hacking skills?” After Linua didn’t reply, he went on. “Well then, tell me who has the password, hand over the stick, and only then will I let you go.”

Linua spoke rapidly.

“My friend who set the password is sitting in a café. I’ll give you the storage stick now. If you send one of your…” The thief had called them thugs, but Linua wasn’t sure how to describe them without sounding rude. She didn’t want to offend anyone more than she had to. “…your people to the café, I’ll radio my friend as soon as we’re out of the house, and he can give your, uh, person the password.”

There was absolute silence as the businessman considered this. The short, wiry man on the couch sniggered.

“These kids been watching too much crappy TV.”

The businessman transferred his stare to the wiry man, who immediately straightened his face and looked down.

“Sorry, sir.”

“You could be lying about the password,” the businessman said to Linua. “I have no guarantee that the password works.”

Linua hesitated, not sure how to persuade him.

“How about this?” The businessman smiled, a small, tight, satisfied smile. “You call your friends in the café and tell them the plan has changed. You need them to give you the password now. In return, I won’t hurt you and the boy here. How does that sound?”

He made it sound like he was offering her a special treat.

“They won’t give you the password until I tell them it’s safe.” Linua could hear the creaky sound of fear in her voice.

The businessman could hear it too. His smiled curved a little wider.

“They will if you are screaming with pain into the radio.”

The plan wasn’t working and Linua didn’t know what to do. The room and the businessman seemed all fuzzy and far away.

“You know who they all are,” Hoblin said suddenly. “You know all their names and where they live. It would be stupid of them to cheat you that way.”

The fuzziness receded slightly. Linua nodded frantically.

“I just want my friend back,” she said. “We don’t care about the photos or the storage stick.”

“Also,” Hoblin tipped his head towards Linua. “This one’s connected. She lives in a big plush house up in the hills what’s worth millions, and she gets driven everywhere by a chauffeur.”

The businessman was not impressed by this intelligence.

“I thought you said she was a cleaner.”

Hoblin shrugged. Oh fantastic, Linua was going to have to explain her weird upbringing again.

“My Grandmother makes me volunteer at the Observatory,” she said quickly.

The businessman considered Linua again. She felt sweat trickling down between her shoulder blades. There was no breeze coming through the open window. The air in the room already seemed hot and stifling, even though it was still early in the day.

“If you cheat me,” he said eventually, “I will make my displeasure known. As Hoblin says, I know all your names, and where you all live.”

He seemed to be waiting for something.

“I understand,” Linua croaked.

The businessman opened the briefcase on the desk, which had a keyboard in the base, and a screen embedded into the lid. There was a whine and a hum as he powered it up. He pulled a lead from the side of the briefcase computer, and connected it to the storage stick.

He stared at the screen for a moment, then looked up at Linua and pushed his glasses further up his nose with one finger.

“Where is the café?”

Linua named the café where they had had flatbread, the night they had gone to the museum.

“Who will be waiting there?”

Linua described Pickle and Solly. The businessman jerked his chin at the man on the sofa with the jiggly knee.

“Go and get the password.”

“On it, boss.” The man stood up and went out.

Everyone waited. The businessman used the time to tap away at the briefcase computer. The big man just leaned against the wall, and the woman stood behind Eret and rocked back and forth on her feet occasionally. Hoblin perched on the arm of the leather sofa while Linua stood next to Eret.

“Are you okay?” she asked quietly. He nodded.

“Thank you for coming for me.”

After about twenty long, excruciating minutes, during which Linua imagined every possible way in which the plan could still go wrong, there was the crackle of a radio from the big man’s waist. He answered it, and nodded at the boss.

“He’s with the kids now, sir.”

The businessman’s eyes travelled towards Linua and Eret standing side by side in front of his desk, like children hauled in front of the school principal. His pale eyes were as cold and grey as ice.

“Untie the boy,” he said.

The woman drew a huge knife from a sheath strapped to her calf, underneath her trousers, and cut through the rope that fastened Eret’s wrists together. Linua couldn’t help noticing how easily it sliced through the bindings.

“If I don’t get access to the images on the storage stick in the next few minutes, remember my promise,” the businessman said. “As Hoblin so adroitly put it, I know who you are. I know where you live. I will come after you and make you regret it.” He jerked his chin at the door. “Show them out.”

He hadn’t mentioned the back door. Linua and Eret went, followed by the woman. They came out onto the front doorstep. The woman closed the door behind them.

“Now we get a few streets away, and I radio Pickle and he gives the man the password,” Linua said. She heard the businessman’s voice floating through the open window, as he gave instructions to the big man.

“Once I have the password and verified that it works, show Hoblin out the back,” the businessman was saying. “He has been very…” significant pause, “…helpful.”

It was followed by the rumble of the big man’s voice as he responded. Linua grabbed hold of Eret.

“They’re going to kill Hoblin,” she whispered.