‘The leaves again? He was walking through the leaves. You heard his feet in the leaves.’

‘Yes, there was that too. But something else. A plastic rustling. No, not plastic – nylon. He was wearing a nylon cagoule or anorak.’

Fry felt a little surge of excitement. ‘That’s very good, Maggie. Think carefully now. Can you see it, this cagoule? What colour is it?’

Maggie shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Black. Maybe blue.’

‘That’s good. Can you describe it? Does it have buttons or a zip? Has it got a hood?’

‘I can’t tell.’

‘Why not?’

Maggie paused. ‘It’s dark.’

Fry opened her mouth and shut it again. She looked at the tape machine, wondering whether it had heard the same thing that she had. Then she stared at Maggie Crew, resisting an urge to grab the woman by the shoulders and shake her, to force her to answer the biggest question of all.

‘Maggie,’ she said, ‘what were you doing on the moor in the dark?’

But Maggie was silent now. Fry thought she had lost her completely, that she had slipped away into sleep or some other world. But if she had, it was a world where there were only nightmares. Maggie’s body was rigid, her face strained and frightened. Her eyes were screwed tightly shut. She shook her head abruptly, like someone throwing off brambles tangled in her hair. Fry caught a glimpse of red, puckered tissue, glistening as if freshly burned.

Then Maggie put her hands to her face, covering her right eye, her fingers pressed tightly to her forehead for protection. There was only the sound of her breathing in the room, a ragged hiss through her nose that the tapes would fail to catch, though they kept on turning. And there was a high, distant noise, like the wheeze in the chest of an asthmatic, or the faint whimper of a small creature dying at the side of the road.

‘I can’t remember,’ said Maggie. ‘I can’t remember.’

19

‘Golden Virginia,’ said Owen Fox. ‘It’s their favourite.’

Owen had a six-pack of lager in one hand, a tin of tobacco in the other. Ben Cooper followed him uncertainly. He had paid for the lager and tobacco, and he knew perfectly well that he wasn’t going to be able to claim them back on expenses.

‘Are you sure it will work?’ said Cooper. ‘It seems a bit like bribing the natives with glass beads.’

‘It’s the only way to get close to these spiritual types,’ said Owen. ‘You’ve got to appeal to their materialism.’

‘Still –’

‘Trust me, Ben. I’m a Ranger.’