Beyond the factories, indentations preserved the direction of a narrow-gauge track running towards the mine. I returned to my car. It started. I had no idea where I’d get to beyond the factory, but I wanted to find out. I followed the traces of the old track until the town disappeared behind me. Then a warning sign appeared, this one bright and startling, placed on a gate in the road in the past few weeks: Danger. Private Property. KazMunaiGaz.

It was getting dark, the white disc of sun sinking. Clouds moved fast, as if getting out of the way of the approaching night. I entered woods again, my petrol light came on. I refilled from the canister. The trees blocked the rising wind at least. I needed headlights now but was reluctant to use them. Then my phone lit up: radio frequencies ahead. Military radios.

I stopped, unwound the window and listened, then reversed slowly into the trees, positioning the car so that passing headlights wouldn’t illuminate its reflectors. It was bitterly cold once out of the car. I could make out faint light ahead: pervasive, artificial, paling the sky above the trees. I set my phone to pick up radio activity, pocketed the knife and tucked the gun into the back of my waistband. Whatever lay ahead, it connected to Joanna’s visit here, and her subsequent disappearance.

The road felt conspicuous. I continued deeper into the woods until I was out of sight, but close enough to the road that I didn’t lose it entirely. I could hear vehicles half a mile ahead. Forty miles from the Russian border, I estimated. The signals pattern on my phone showed layers of radios. Then the trees were interrupted by a chain-link fence and I heard Russian voices.

I crouched, then reluctantly flattened myself on the ground. Torch beams came closer, snow crunching between boots. There were five of them, bulky with black combat gear – the pouched tactical vests of special forces, assault rifles with mounted night sights. No insignia that I could make out. Vehicles had Kazakh plates. Kit was carefully generic. But these weren’t local farmers.

The steps stopped. My fingers were already throbbing agonisingly with the cold, my body starting to shake. I needed to move but the noise would reach them. I needed the cover of some other sounds. None came. Two of them spoke a language that wasn’t Russian. It took me a second to place it as Serbian. That was unexpected. I was considering a run for it when there was a crackle from their radios; they adjusted their kit and walked on.

I waited a moment, then eased into a low crouch, trying to still my shivering and stop my hands from going numb. They’d wandered away from the site. I moved towards it, following the fence to a gate with another KMG warning sign but no guards.