On impulse, as he passed the small hide, he walked in. The flaps had been shut and it was very dark. Suddenly, quite tangibly, he was back in Afghanistan, in Kabul, where young Europeans and Americans on the hippie trail to Katmandu sat in cafés no Afghan used, sat with their beads and bells and guitars, smoking cannabis. In the hide the smell of cannabis, mixed and enhanced with damp wood and creosote, was unmistakable. He stood for a moment, taking it in, and as he did so other unrelated memories of India returned, memories which evoked the same response as the experience had done, the same astonishment that a country could live, so easily with magnificence and poverty. He was perfectly sure of his identification of the smell. Rob had smoked it occasionally in the Land Rover. He supposed that twitchers had been using the hide. He was not shocked. He was, in a way, grateful.

The couple must have been walking very slowly, because he could hear them still ahead of him on the marsh. If he walked quickly he should be able to catch them before they reached the village. The use of cannabis was so widespread that it would probably add little to his investigation, if he were to find out who they were, but he was interested. Besides, he needed to hurry now, to keep warm. He nearly ran the last few hundred yards, which was a firm sandy track, but when he reached the main road there was no sign of anyone. To the right the street ran straight for over half a mile to the village. There were no lights and until it reached the Blue Anchor there were no houses. There was not even a barn or a shed where a twitcher might be sleeping rough. To the left the road curved sharply, towards the White Lodge hotel. Whoever had been smoking cannabis on the marsh had headed for the hotel.

Molly was still up when he got home but she was asleep, deeply asleep in the chair in the kitchen in front of the stove. She stirred when he touched her shoulder and drank the tea he made, but did not ask what he had been doing. Only as they were preparing for bed did she remember the phone call.

“It was a girl called Sally Johnson. She said that she was a friend of Tom’s, and she wants to talk to you.”

Chapter Four

Every night since Tom’s death Sally had been the victim of the same nightmare. She dreamed that she was trying to run across the marsh, along one of the narrow tracks through the reed bed. It was nearly dark. She could feel the wet rushes catching against her legs. She was pushing Barnaby, not in a pram but in a small, square, wooden cart. It was a great effort. She could feel the dampness of the fog on her face and in her throat and lungs. The fog was thick, tangible, with a smell and a taste. She did not know why she was there, and only wanted to get Barnaby home as soon as she could. Slowly she became aware that she was being followed and that she was frightened. She tried to run faster, but the cart was heavy and the wooden wheels were tangled with weed and would not move round. The hunter, for this was how she thought of the person who followed her, was coming closer and was calling after her. She could not breathe. She was not sure if she were moving. The marsh and the fog seemed to be invading her body and she could not fight them off. She knew that the hunter would catch her, so she stopped to face the attacker, and stooped to lift Barnaby into her arms to comfort and protect him. But Barnaby was no longer there. Sitting in the cart like a bonfire night guy was Tom, one side of his head battered and distorted, so that he stared at her with one blank, incriminating eye. In that instant she knew that she had killed him.