'Put your hands on the table, please,' said Cooper.

Kemp stared at him sourly. 'I suppose you're going to spoil my breakfast,' he said.

'I'm afraid you're under arrest.'

The other man sighed and held out his wrists. 'They only got what they deserved,' he said.

* * * *

Yes, it was the sound of feet. Feet creaking around her in the snow. Marie Tennent's heart lurched painfully against her diaphragm, and a spurt of adrenalin ran through her muscles like acid. She was sure she could hear the footsteps of human rescuers, as well as those of something quicker and lighter that skittered across the surface of the snow. She became convinced that a search dog had sniffed her out, and that arms were about to pull her from the snow and wrap her in a thermal blanket, that friendly hands would bring warmth to her skin with their touch and reassuring voices would ease the agony in her ears.

But the footsteps passed her by. She couldn't cry out for help, because her reflexes failed and her body had no strength left to react. Her lips and tongue refused to obey the screaming in her head.

Then Marie knew she was wrong. The feet she heard were those of wolves or some other wild predators that lived on the moors. She could sense them creeping towards her and scuttling away, dragging their hairy bellies through the wet snow, eager to claim a share of her body. She pictured them drooling in desperation to tear off chunks of her cooling flesh with their teeth, yet afraid of her lingering smell of humanity. The faint tingling on her cheeks and in the folds of her eyes told her the predators were close enough for her to feel their breath on her face. If she'd opened her eyes, she knew she would have found herself staring into their jaws, into the drip of their saliva and the whiteness of their teeth. But she could no longer open her eyes. The tears had frozen her eyelids shut.

The fear passed, as Marie's brain lost its grasp on the thought and it went slipping away. The pictures were still in her mind, but the cold had drained all the colours from them. The dyes had melted and run, leaving washed-out greys and dark corners, bleeding the meaning from her memories. She could no longer capture the sounds and scents and tastes, no longer even keep hold of that one overwhelming emotion which had swollen so large that it filled her mind, but which now wriggled away from her grasp. Was it grief, anger, fear, shame? Or was it just the same unnameable longing that had haunted her all her life?

Marie had forgotten how she came to be lying in the snow, with the pain in her head and the blood in her mouth. But she knew there was a reason she ought to get up and go home. And she knew it had something to do with Sugar Uncle Victor. But the fingers of ice were squeezing out her consciousness, so that she would soon know nothing at all.