But this morning a car had arrived. He had been expecting the tanker turning in from the road, but the sound of the engine was wrong. The big diesel always made the glass in the windows of the farmhouse vibrate, and the layer of dust on the window ledge dance and slide before it settled into a new pattern. There had been plenty of police vehicles going by the farm for the past two days, of course – but they went straight up the lane, past the front of the shippon. They didn’t turn into the yard like this car did.

Leach’s chest grew tight with apprehension. He had known it would only be a matter of time before the men he feared arrived.

The farmer looked at his hands, astonished at the dirt ingrained in his fingers, as if he hadn’t washed for days. How long had his hands been like that? He glanced at the steel cabinet where his shotgun was locked, and waited for the familiar surge of aggression to come, for the righteous anger to drive strength and heat into his limbs. He was the sort of man who ought to be able to see a bailiff off, no problem. But something was wrong. Somehow the adrenalin failed to flow, the flush of testosterone never came. He felt weak and helpless; he was alone and cornered, yet with no fight left in him. It was the feeling that he had always dreaded would come to him in the end.

Leach laughed quietly as he listened for the men to enter the gate. ‘You’ve had it, Warren. What use are you now?’ He thought of not answering the door, of hiding in another room until the strangers went away. It was what a woman might do, or a child. Was he reduced to that?

Unable to face the answer, he stood paralysed when the knock came at the door. A second knock followed, more impatient. Then Leach moved, without a thought in his head about what he would say. What did bailiffs do in these circumstances? Obviously, the men hadn’t come alone in a car to take away his furniture. Maybe they had come to deliver a court notice. Maybe they had just come to check what he had that was worth selling. Good luck to them, then. There was precious little.