‘Hey!’ she shouted. ‘We need to talk to you.’

She kept going, ignoring Chris’s outstretched hand as she clambered over the fence between the two areas and righted herself, looking back at the spot where the figure had been.

No sign.

She strode towards the now empty space, aiming the torch at the distant treeline, straining to pick out signs of movement in the gathering gloom. She stopped a few laboured steps in, forced to acknowledge that their uninvited visitor clearly didn’t want to talk, and that by the time she’d covered almost thirty yards of soggy ground, whoever it was would be long gone.

She turned to see Chris straddling the fence, his weight precariously balanced on the twitching top wire, one tentative foot probing for earth on her side.

‘Don’t worry,’ she instructed, trudging over to help. ‘Whoever it was, they’ve gone.’

The two officers struggled back into the church grounds, and Hawkins turned to look up at the tower’s five-hundred-year-old architecture. An icy wind groaned as it hit the uneven walls, disturbing the tree beside the tower, its craggy limbs scratching loudly at the jagged surface.

She heard Chris’s feet shift nervously beside her on the rough ground. ‘Ma’am, shouldn’t we be getting back to the car?’

Hawkins glanced around them, suddenly feeling the cold once more. The winter sun had all but disappeared, a residual glow above the leaden horizon all that remained of daylight.

She turned to Chris, ready to accept that there was no more to be gained here today, when a small puff of dust clicked off the wall behind the constable’s head.

She frowned, moving closer to the spot. ‘Did you see that?’

Chris turned. ‘See what?’

‘Just here.’ Hawkins ran a hand over the pitted stone. ‘There was a—’

She stopped, turning towards the rushing click that skimmed the leaves above them. As if something had forced its way through at speed.

Realization hit.

‘Get down,’ she barked, grabbing Chris’s arm and dragging him into a crouch as another dust cloud exploded from the wall of the tower, inches from where his head had been.

Chris stared at her, his eyes like saucers. ‘What’s happening, ma’am?’

‘Someone’s shooting at us.’ Hawkins swallowed her own fear and herded him around the corner of the tower, putting the tower wall between them and their assailant. She kept them both low, scanning what she could see of the horizon, in case whoever was taking pot shots at them wasn’t alone. Saw nothing.

‘Keep still,’ she commanded, crouching beside Chris, feeling tremors in the young man’s shoulder as she steadied him, sensing the manic thump of her own heartbeat. She waited, ready to instigate flight if they came under fire from a second angle.

But the shots had stopped. For the moment, anyway.

She took a deep breath and held it, minimizing the destabilizing effect of a racing pulse.